What is the deal?!?! (1 Viewer)

[Cakepro]

Several months ago my main reef tank, which is primarily sps and lps corals, began looking not so hot. My lps corals were receeding and I lost my treasured, precious deep blue Roger Holt millipora. My birdsnest began receeding from the inside-out. I have always been very lazy about water changes and testing my water, and up until then my ph, ca, and alk were always in balance by topping off with limewater everyday via 24/7 drip. This is a 75 gallon tank with a 40 gallon refugium and a 20/30? gallon sump. I get about 1.5/2 gallons per day of evaporation, which is replaced with 100% limewater.

So I test my water and what do I find? My alkalinity, in dKh, was somewhere in the 3.5 range. Calcium was somewhere between 300 and 350. I started dosing mega amounts of buffer to bring the alk up and for several weeks the chemical balance in my tank was very poor. After doing long-overdue water changes and making a saturated limewater solution with 45 ml/gal of vinegar and 3 tsp/gallon of kalkwasser, plus testing for and raising my magnesium levels, things are doing great. My birdsnest is growing once again and everything in my tank looks awesome except my lps, which were always very fat and fluffy. Why won't my brain corals and three large colonies of candy canes get fluffy? They look all constricted and not happy. The sps in the tank are growing like crazy. My clove polyps have rapidly shriveled up and are near dead. Could this possibly be chemical warfare? I don't understand what else it could be. Don't other mostly-sps tanks have lps in them that coexist peacefully?

I just tested my tank...here are the results:

spg: 1.025
temp: 80
pH: 7.7 (tested at night)
ca: 450
alk: 11.2 dKh
Mg: 1350

Lighting: 2 x 250 watt SE Ushios. 10 hour per day photoperiod. Bulbs less than 6 months old. 2 x 110 watt URI super-actinic VHO's. 14 hour per day photoperiod. Fresh carbon added to the tank last week. Nitrites, nitrates, and phosphates test zero. All test kits are Salifert. Additives: iodine sporadically (every month, if that often, but xenia pulses like mad), magnesium recently just to bring it up some. Water changes are done with Oceanic salt, which, incidentally, is very low in alkalinity and I don't like having to adjust it. :angry1:

So what do you think is the problem? I just got some Purigen and am going to put some in the sump in a little while.

 

[Cakepro]

Pics from tonight for comparison:

 

[djreef]

Something is irritating them. Definitely run the purigen. Are you using a pH probe or test kit? It's been my observation that LPS don't like pH spikes at all, as to where SPS seem to walk through them no prob. And then, the trauma didn't exactly happen overnite, so it may take a little while for things to straighten out with the chem being put back to normal, and all. Plus you mentioned running the carbon - I wonder if polishing your water changed it's refractive capabilities by clearing it out. You may be getting more light to animals that may not be prepared for it. Just a thought.

DJ
= 8-->{I>

 

[Cakepro]

Well, the water has never been clearer...it's almost like there is no water in there at all. I remounted the bulbs a couple of months ago too so that the tank is much, much brighter and the light is spread well from end to end.

I put in the Purigen last night...I guess I'll wait and see. Since straightening out the chemistry, I can easily see a lot of regrowth of tissue down along the skeleton of the candy canes, underneath the polyps. Maybe in time they'll fatten back up.

Thanks,
Sherri

 

[Rick]

Sherry,

Sorry to hear that, cause you have an awesome tank... I will try to make it out to your place with the colt sometime during the Holiday with the little piece of colt coral. I wanted to ask you if there is anything else you dose with besides the kalk and iodine... I've been trying some coral vite, but don't know if it is doing any good. Hope things straighten out. Do you know what caused the water parameters to get out of whack?

Thanks
Rick

 

[Cakepro]

Oh shoot...I meant to return your call from the other day about the frag. I'm so sorry!

Laziness is what caused my water parameters to get out of whack. No water changes, no testing, just observation. I waited until things looked unhappy to tell me things were not right in the tank rather than testing regularly to prevent problems. All of the reefkeepers that I highly respect here tell me how important weekly or biweekly water changes are, and I now believe them.

 

[Guest]

Hi Sherri. It sounds to me like the softies are getting too much light now that the water has cleared somewhat. They should adjust soon. Otherwise, it sounds like everything is doing quite well!

Merry Christmas, Steve

 

[Guest]

Sherri,

Do you think it might have something to do with switching from VHO to MH?

 

[incysor]

Sherri, I was gonna ask if this is the tank you re-mounted your MH lights and things looked brighter on? Maybe they're just adjusting to higher light conditions if it is.

B

 

[Cakepro]

They were acting unhappy before and now after I remounted the lights. Bobby, I switched to MH from VHO 2 years ago. Bulbs have been changed during that time.

 

[jamesw]

Hi Sherri,

Hopefully you won't take this the wrong way, but think about the fact that your system may be "saturated" with corals, and a mix of many different kinds that normally don't grow together. This is not the kind of reef you would see in the wild.

When you start out w/ mostly small frags, they can co-exist, but as they grow and get closer together and have larger body-mass they really start to duke it out.

More water motion is necessary, more water changes, and more pruning.

This is just my opinion.

Cheers
James

 

[Cakepro]

Hmmm, I never would have thought that after seeing some super-packed tanks on RC that seem to have a conglomeration of different corals from all over the world. What do you think should be moved out?

 

[djreef]

I say start fragging for the next swap. Girl, you could clean up. You still have that 45 breeder I sold you right? Turn it into a temp frag tank.

DJ
= 8-->{I>

 

[Cakepro]

Actually, we're moving in two months, so I have room for a much bigger tank!! I'm looking for one in the 150 - 210 gallon range...as long as it is 24" deep, front to back. I'm so tired of having an 18" wide tank!

Your 45 breeder is my refugium.

 

[Cakepro]

By the way, another thing I've noticed since I've done the water changes and added carbon is that every day the glass walls of the tank and the sump get coated in a clear film of mucous. It's just like someone painted all the glass with egg whites...it's thick and stringy when I wipe it off with my hands or with the Mag-Float. Whatever it is, it's gross. It's like super slime, but I don't have any corals that are noticeably sliming, nor do I have any soft corals that shed anything. It's a uniform layer of clear snot on the glass.

Any encountered that nastiness before?

 

[djreef]

It must be 'Marine Snow'.

DJ
= 8-->{I>

 

[Cakepro]

Well, it has become apparent that I burned the corals. I reduced the photoperiod by a couple of hours of both the MH's and the VHO's, and a week later, everything is looking much plumper and happier. The brain corals aren't all sucked and showing the shape of their skeletons, the candy canes are gaining size and regrowing tissue, and my blastos are once again fluffy. Lesson learned: a long-overdue water change and combination of adsorbents on way-too-old water drastically improves the light that beams down on the inhabitants. The slime seems to have stopped too. Now I just have to wait for my corals that browned out to return to their coloration...months down the line, I'm sure.

Thanks for everyone's help!
Sherri

 

[scottk]

Yes, Sherri. I got that mess when I first started up my frag system. It was nasty. But it gradually went away as the system matured and with some vacuuming, using a micron bag in the sump and some carbon. I think it is definitely organic but don't know what it was.

"Snot" is as good a name as any.