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Euyphillia and scolys dying (1 Viewer)

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Veggiemel09

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My torches hammers and frogspawn are doing awful. My scolys are getting lighter.
I brought my calcium down from the 600s with stopping my doser and doing a water change, but nobody has really perked up.

Cal 495 ppm
Alk 9.6 ppm
Mag 1215 ppm
Nitrate 20 ppm
Phosphate. 25 ppm
Salinity 1.022 1597367704288899693678737365817.jpg

Help?
 

frankc

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Your salinity is a little low, but I don't know if that would cause this.

When I lost most of my LPS corals recently, the nitrate, phosphate, and iodine levels were all 0. I assume the loss was the result of this, most likely the nutrient levels. Clearly that's not your issue, so it might be worth checking the iodine level.
 

Cody

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My torches hammers and frogspawn are doing awful. My scolys are getting lighter.
I brought my calcium down from the 600s with stopping my doser and doing a water change, but nobody has really perked up.

Cal 495 ppm
Alk 9.6 ppm
Mag 1215 ppm
Nitrate 20 ppm
Phosphate. 25 ppm
Salinity 1.022 1597367704288899693678737365817.jpg

Help?
What stands out here is phosphates at .25. You need to be below .06. At the level yours is, some corals will start to die. Just had a friend go through that recently.
 

Cody

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Also, be careful when you’re bringing down your phosphates. I wouldn’t go much faster than reducing .05 per day, and that’s still a pretty aggressive move. Reducing .025 per day would be easier on the corals.
 

webster1234

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Not to disagree with Cody but I think there is more going on than just high phosphates. And this is speaking for my tank only and from my own experience, but I'm happy when my tank reads .25 on phosphates. It normally runs between that and .5 and I have some monster corals that are growing out of the water. I notice a little stress at .6 but I believe that corals thrive at some level of nutrients. It looks to me like you just aren't doing enough water changes. I would start by doing 10-15% water changes every couple of days until you have at least changed 50% of your water. I have come to realize over the years that the absence of things that we don't measure for is more of the problem. I have a large tank and dose everything from trace to strontium to aminos, iodine, iron, etc. I went a couple months recently without doing my weekly 10% water changes, figuring that as long as i kept up with dosing, I could "cheat" a little bit.

Well the tank started looking less than its usual self. A little red slime started creeping in, etc. I sent in an ICP test and everything looked good. It didn't make sense so I started doing some large water changes. Did about 200g over a few days and wow, things started perking back up and looking less stressed. My conclusion....even with all of the dosing and the ICP test looking good, there is no substitute for water changes.
 
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Cody

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Not to disagree with Cody but I think there is more going on than just high phosphates. And this is speaking for my tank only and from my own experience, but I'm happy when my tank reads .25 on phosphates. It normally runs between that and .5 and I have some monster corals that are growing out of the water. I notice a little stress at .6 but I believe that corals thrive at some level of nutrients. It looks to me like you just aren't doing enough water changes. I would start by doing 10-15% water changes every couple of days until you have at least changed 50% of your water. I have come to realize over the years that the absence of things that we don't measure for is more of the problem. I have a large tank and dose everything from trace to strontium to aminos, iodine, iron, etc. I went a couple months recently without doing my weekly 10% water changes, figuring that as long as i kept up with dosing, I could "cheat" a little bit.

Well the tank started looking less than its usual self. A little red slime started creeping in, etc. I sent in an ICP test and everything looked good. It didn't make sense so I started doing some large water changes. Did about 200g over a few days and wow, things started perking back up and looking less stressed. My conclusion....even with all of the dosing and the ICP test looking good, there is no substitute for water changes.
I hear ya on that. I’ve never let my phosphates get that high, and my opinion of that was based on coaching a few people through that situation. One in particular does 2-3% daily water changes as well. This person was losing skin on his colonies after his got that high.

I don’t think our two experiences conflict either. I’m certain your corals are doing well considering I’ve heard some amazing things about your tanks. Perhaps your water change dropped the phosphate a little and they liked it. Who knows. I guess my view of it is that yes, they possibly can grow well at that high, but it doesn’t always mean it’s the optimal scenario. People can live in Alaska or Phoenix, but it doesn’t mean that it’s preferable to say sunny Southern California. But at the end of the day, we are all flying blind. I keep asking my corals what they prefer but they’re rude and never respond haha :geek:

But to your point, I’m right there with you on water changes. That’s why I’ve been saying for a while that an auto water change system is probably the most important piece of equipment you can implement on a reef tank. I tried the Dutch reef system the same as you, and not only was I tired of chasing the number, adjusting dosing, buying dosing solution, etc., I just didn’t see the point. Every time you do a significant water change, you’re just hitting the rest button. It’s much easier to do that than to chase all those numbers, imo.
 

PicassoClown

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+1 on the water changes, I was a little lax with them and things weren’t doing as well. Now that I’m back on track everything looks great! Maybe you can try some reefroids, that seemed to help one of my hammers that was struggling a little bit
 
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Veggiemel09

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Have you tried target feeding the Scoly's, preferably at night, so the fish don't pick out the food?
Yes, I target feed everyone at least 2, 3 times a week, they're eating still. Feed a mix of reef roids, mysis and rods reef, then throw some red sea a and b in while pumps are still off
 

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Idk but if I were you, I’d be taking the seriously effected corals to the LFS to hold or to another reefer to try to revive. Scolies and euphyllia are pretty expensive and itd be sad to lose them, especially cause you have so many. I’d look into that until you can figure out what’s bothering them.
 
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Veggiemel09

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Everything is about the same. I got a small fan to see if maybe it was rise in temperature. Fingers crossed
 
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