I need help with sps

[snowmansnow]

The tank is mature enough to support whatever I want in there. But you're right tank age does seem to have a bearing on a lot of things.

Interestingly  enough everything else in the tank seems perfectly fine. Even my maxima clam. Its just something is weird for the SPS.

As an update I've raised the ALK to 9.5 and will monitor from there.

I need to pick up some more checker reagents from BRS this week.

 

[snowmansnow]

anit77:

"I dose some Kent and Brightwell products. With the Kent it’s Strontium & Molybdenum. Brightwell it’s either Replenish or Koralcolor, every other week. So one week it’s one or the other. I also dose their Ferrion every other week and a few drops of BoroChrom once a month. All dosing, no matter what it is, is done at half the recommended rate. I back this all up with a Triton test every 3 to 4 months. During the last 2 months I really neglected the system during a big remodel project at the house. Tonight will be 2 weeks since I started to attack cyano and will be my 3rd water change in that time. It’s all cleared up now and the tanks look great. Dan was having issues with color and I don’t remember if there was tissue loss or not. But after starting to dose micro’s everything got better for him. He doesn’t do water changes very often though, so it’s even more important for him to dose. I have a Triton test ready to go and I’m going to send it off next Monday. The next one I do I’m seriously thinking about trying ATI’s new test. They will do you’re RO water as well, for less money to boot. Would be nice just to verify that all is good there too."

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I do need to re up on my NO3 test kit. You're right nutrients play a role, but I haven't experienced tissue loss because of low nutrients. What I HAVE seen is RAPID growth and pale color. Some time ago I went through dosing NaNO3, and bingo. Colors came back within  3 days (for real).

In an attempt to narrow down what is going on with my tank I recently stopped dosing pretty much everything. I even took my CaRx offline so that I can manually dictate everything that happens for a while. The only thing I will dose a little of right now is the KZ Coral food. I forget the name, but it also adds color although not as quickly as the NaNO3.  If I'm feeding the LPS in the tank I'll just drop a drop in the food as it melts and spot feed it with whatever I've feeding at the time.

When dosing the NaNO3 I have a little scoop and through testing I've determined that 4 of those scoops (dissolved in tank water and added) will raise the measured NaNO3 by 1 point. For me the sweet spot seemed to be around 5. IMO this is the best way to raise NaNO3 because I know what I'm putting in there, and can dictate the levels MUCH more accurately than simply feeding more or adding livestock or whatever. Also a little goes a LONG way. I purchased 5lbs of the stuff from amazon and I don't think I'll ever need to buy it again haha

 

[danh]

I lost a lot of my SPS. I do believe the TN started at the base,  not the tips, like you are experiencing. I was slap out of trace elements. I'm  now dosing Seachem Reef Trace and Fuel. I think I was using more than I needed for the first month or so and I've backed off considerably. I was able to save most of my sps and they're all now bigger than they were before the issue.

 

[danh]

https://atlantareefclub.org/forums/topic/should-i-downgrade-from-140g/

 

[snowmansnow]

Danh, it is a possibility. And, given the salt I'm using, there isn't a lot added into the mix. From my experience it is just a nice clean stable mix, so I COULD well be missing something, but still, I normally experience color loss, and not tissue necrosis if it is just a nutrition issue. That said I'm sure it could play a part.

 

[Adam]

Are there any differences between the system you had before the move and the one you're currently running? Size, equipment, salt, water change frequency, lighting... and so on. If it's not a pest of some kind I would think that something is missing nutritionally, beyond what your feeding. As the feeding would replace whatever is short unless it's being rapidly depleted after entry to the water column. What brand of salt are you using and how often are you doing changes?

Another thing I dose is CoralAmino's. It can feed Cyano so I have stopped it in the display but I still add it to the qt. It's really helps with growth and adding new tissue. If you have a QT setup for coral maybe adding some pieces to it from the DT will allow you to isolate the issue and also get those pieces back on the right track.

Are you against the idea of getting an ICP test?

 

[danh]

Fixing my issue was REALLY cheap and easy. I had a bottle of MARINE trace... Not even REEF trace... that I won at a meeting... I dumped some in and within a week or so I saw it was working. Reef trace is like $13 for a bottle that lasts me a few months now.

 

[Adam]

SnowManSnow  April 25, 2018 at 10:22 am

And, given the salt I’m using, there isn’t a lot added into the mix. From my experience it is just a nice clean stable mix, so I COULD well be missing something, but still, I normally experience color loss, and not tissue necrosis if it is just a nutrition issue. That said I’m sure it could play a part.

Hey Brandon, When I'm asking about the salt I'm not trying to start a whole which brand is better whole drawn out thing. Just wondering which brand is low on trace. The only thing I'll say on salt personally is I started with RC and used it for over a year. I got tired of the alk and cal swings I was getting after changes along with Lithium constantly getting higher, the Lithium is also why I didn't go to IO. I tried Sea Chem's Vibrant and it didn't work for me for a variety of reasons. I'm currently using Liveaquaria's and so far I'm very happy with it.

I hope you figure it out and that we've been of some help to that end. Please keep us updated as to what works and what doesn't.

 

[snowmansnow]

Hey!

all t comments are always immensely helpful! I appreciate all the input

the salt I use is Fritz Reef Pro.

i like it

 

[Adam]

The LA salt I'm using is reportedly the same as Fritz. So far I'm really happy with it. I'm at about 10 weeks in on it and maybe 6 or 7 changes. I'm sending off a Triton test on Monday but given I've been dosing trace, it won't shed any light on what you're dealing with. The next test I send off I'll do a fresh batch after mixing. I'm now mixing to 1.025, 33.x ppt.

Do you have a frag or qt tank to try some different things with? Also if you ever find yourself on my side of town I'd be happy to throw a struggling frag in my frag tank to see how it responds to a different system.

 

[snowmansnow]

hey ant.. no extra tanks right now. I seem to have stabilized some things by balancing out the alk and ca ratio. We will see if they remain stable.

 

[FutureInterest]

I think I remember reading that you dose for nitrates.  If you're using stump remover which is fairly common... some batches have impurities that can cause the RTN.  Everything might look great until you reach a certain level of toxicity and then problems arise.  Another possibility is that you might've experienced elevated potassium levels from stump remover which could also be a problem.  You might want to look at CaNo3 or NaNo3 instead of KNo3.  You can get food grade or even lab grade stuff at a reasonable price.  I know the spectricide container says 100% pure but come on now... they are marketing it for removing stumps... it doesn't have to really be 100% pure for their purposes.

 

[danh]

I think I remember him using NaNo3, but those are some helpful observations.

 

[danh]

I just updated my thread with a new observation. Might not be pertinent to this.

 

[Adam]

I saw this over on R2R. Don't know if you are dosing nitrates or not @SnowManSnow but after seeing it posted here I thought it might be pertinent.

Has anyone ever had their SPS die due to Dosing Spectracide for Nitrats?https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/has-anyone-ever-had-their-sps-die-due-to-dosing-spectracide-for-nitrats.386025/

 

[bhodges82]

I use spectracide, it works like everyone says it does. If everyone has good results then one person kills their system it’s usuall user error or other testing errors. There are so many factors that come in to play. I won’t completely abandon kno3 because someone kills coral in their tank.

 

[FutureInterest]

The other possibility is that the spectracide has contaminants.  It's a stump remover and the package says pure, but it certainly isn't food grade or lab grade... so I for one wouldn't use it.  Especially when you can just buy some food grade from amazon for 5 bucks more.

 

[Adam]

@bhodges82 the purpose of posting that link wasn't to bash kno2 dosing with spectricide. I've never used it couldn't tell you if it was any good or not. Also don't know for sure if Brandon is even using it. If I ever needed to dose nitrates not sure it'd be my 1st choice though.

I don't know if you read through that thread or not but two people that had low to no detectable no3 and an alk level not far off from Brandon's had similar issues as he was seeing in his corals after dosing it. Was just sharing something I stumbled across.

 

[bhodges82]

I didn’t think that you were bashing the process, I was just stating that in my personal opinion I think that people always want to blame something(a product) other than themselves (I made a mistake) when something goes wrong. I agree that food grade would be better, I don’t have any food grade and the bottle I have has plenty in it. Again there are many different factors that come into play, nitrate dowsing may not work for everyone. I use it because I was losing color on chalices and other lps coral, works great. I think what is important is how your tank looks rather than what your “numbers” are.

 

[snowmansnow]

I HAVE dosed NO3 before, however I’ve always used NaNo3.