Let me apologize in advance, this is a long post.
As some of you know over the past two weeks I have experienced a rather severe (in my opinion) tank crash. I don't think the count is final but as of today I have lost 17 pieces:
11 Acro colonies
2 Stag colonies
4 Acro frags
Before I go into what happened, here my setup. I have (had) a 125 gallon rather well stocked tank. I have a 20 gallon sump and a 60 gallon refugium. I drip kalk 24/7; due to a lack of space I do not have a skimmer or a calcium reactor. Before this incident I had not lost a piece in quite a few months and my water parameters were all fine (Ph 8,1-8.4, no Ammonia, Nitrate or Nitrite, Calcium >460, Alk 9.6-10.0; I stopped testing for phosphates after installing the refugium).
Here is the sequence of events and possible reasons.
Sometime in the middle of February, I do not have the exact date but it was just right around Presidents' day, I changed my bulbs (2 250W 10K and 1 20K) from the 10 month old Hamiltons to brand new Coral Vues. I did not acclimate them. I immediately liked the color, a crisp clear white for the 10k, a nice blue tint in the 20k. Much brighter than my Hamiltons; I was very pleased.
The week prior to Presidents' day I started losing a 4" deep purple acro to what I thought was RTN. I should have pulled the colony out and either try to frag it or simply get rid of it, but I did not. On Presidents' day I went to Roozens and bought a feather starfish and therefore started feeding cyclop-eeze as I also have a sun coral and figured both would benefit. I was feeding a pencil eraser size piece every night. Since this was my first time ising this food, and knowing it could pollute my tank if overused, I started testing my water twice a week for phosphates, on Monday and Friday.
On the first Friday, my second test, I noticed the test seemed to be a bit blue, but did not worry. The next Monday my phosphate jumped to somewhere .25 and .50 (I have a real hard time distinguishing between the various color shades). I thought I had a false reading so I did it again with the same result. I then tested my RO/DI water and did not get a reading, validating the kit.
I started doing water changes. I changed 20 gallons each day, Tuesday through Friday and brought my reading back to 0 but the damage was done. That Friday I pulled out all the dead pieces. A puzzling occurrence was that none of my shrimps were affected, and I always thought they were very susceptible to high phosphates. Also, it worth noting that none of my LPS or clams were affacted at all.
In the beginning I said the count was not final as one of my blue torts has started to go, my three Hydonophoras are still very bright but do not have any polyps out, and my other stags are less than half opened up.
OK, so what happened? I have 2 theories; the first is that due to the overwhelming concentration of Acros lost, I introduced some kind of pathogen with the feather starfish that targets Acroporas and the high phosphates were either a by-product of the decay or a coincidence.
The second theory is that the losses were caused by the new bulbs, either because they are simply bad or becasue I did not acclimate them. I have switched bulbs on tanks before without acclimation and without any losses, but never in a heavily populated SPS tank. I did do some research on Coral Vue bulbs before buying them but, but did not find much as they are fairly new bulbs.
So I am looking for some help. Are the bulbs really the reason? Did I kill so many beautiful corals just because I wanted to save a few bucks on the price of bulbs? I am more than willing to order new Ushios or some other well known brand, if that would help. Does anyone have these bulbs? What have you experienced? Or did I really overfeed my tank and caused the problem on my own?
As you can imagine, I am more than bummed. If I do not understand what happened, I am simply going to repeat it sooner or later.
Thanks for any/all suggestions.
Eddi
As some of you know over the past two weeks I have experienced a rather severe (in my opinion) tank crash. I don't think the count is final but as of today I have lost 17 pieces:
11 Acro colonies
2 Stag colonies
4 Acro frags
Before I go into what happened, here my setup. I have (had) a 125 gallon rather well stocked tank. I have a 20 gallon sump and a 60 gallon refugium. I drip kalk 24/7; due to a lack of space I do not have a skimmer or a calcium reactor. Before this incident I had not lost a piece in quite a few months and my water parameters were all fine (Ph 8,1-8.4, no Ammonia, Nitrate or Nitrite, Calcium >460, Alk 9.6-10.0; I stopped testing for phosphates after installing the refugium).
Here is the sequence of events and possible reasons.
Sometime in the middle of February, I do not have the exact date but it was just right around Presidents' day, I changed my bulbs (2 250W 10K and 1 20K) from the 10 month old Hamiltons to brand new Coral Vues. I did not acclimate them. I immediately liked the color, a crisp clear white for the 10k, a nice blue tint in the 20k. Much brighter than my Hamiltons; I was very pleased.
The week prior to Presidents' day I started losing a 4" deep purple acro to what I thought was RTN. I should have pulled the colony out and either try to frag it or simply get rid of it, but I did not. On Presidents' day I went to Roozens and bought a feather starfish and therefore started feeding cyclop-eeze as I also have a sun coral and figured both would benefit. I was feeding a pencil eraser size piece every night. Since this was my first time ising this food, and knowing it could pollute my tank if overused, I started testing my water twice a week for phosphates, on Monday and Friday.
On the first Friday, my second test, I noticed the test seemed to be a bit blue, but did not worry. The next Monday my phosphate jumped to somewhere .25 and .50 (I have a real hard time distinguishing between the various color shades). I thought I had a false reading so I did it again with the same result. I then tested my RO/DI water and did not get a reading, validating the kit.
I started doing water changes. I changed 20 gallons each day, Tuesday through Friday and brought my reading back to 0 but the damage was done. That Friday I pulled out all the dead pieces. A puzzling occurrence was that none of my shrimps were affected, and I always thought they were very susceptible to high phosphates. Also, it worth noting that none of my LPS or clams were affacted at all.
In the beginning I said the count was not final as one of my blue torts has started to go, my three Hydonophoras are still very bright but do not have any polyps out, and my other stags are less than half opened up.
OK, so what happened? I have 2 theories; the first is that due to the overwhelming concentration of Acros lost, I introduced some kind of pathogen with the feather starfish that targets Acroporas and the high phosphates were either a by-product of the decay or a coincidence.
The second theory is that the losses were caused by the new bulbs, either because they are simply bad or becasue I did not acclimate them. I have switched bulbs on tanks before without acclimation and without any losses, but never in a heavily populated SPS tank. I did do some research on Coral Vue bulbs before buying them but, but did not find much as they are fairly new bulbs.
So I am looking for some help. Are the bulbs really the reason? Did I kill so many beautiful corals just because I wanted to save a few bucks on the price of bulbs? I am more than willing to order new Ushios or some other well known brand, if that would help. Does anyone have these bulbs? What have you experienced? Or did I really overfeed my tank and caused the problem on my own?
As you can imagine, I am more than bummed. If I do not understand what happened, I am simply going to repeat it sooner or later.
Thanks for any/all suggestions.
Eddi
