Ready to give up SPS, not that I would but I really need som

[Ben1]

Here is the chain of events that has ruined my spirit.

First about a two months ago I overdosed with the Kalk. My dripper fell off and a lot of kalk went into the system all at once. This started an RTN outbreak which killed about 12 tank raised acros I had for all over a year or so.

Once that was cleaned up things pretty much cleared up. I bought one new acro at my LFS, at this point I have two acros and 5 different Montiporas, 2 types of porites. In this tank I also have a few softies and a head of tank raised cualestra.

A few weeks went by and I noticed that the rest of my sps wernt opening at all. I did 3 25% water changes with my RO/DI water and IO salt. Now I tested my Alk and Ca and noticed my Alk was to high and Ca was to high also. I turned off the C02 on my reactor and got my levels to normal. This took leaving the reactor off for a week.

During this time I had used a large piece of epoxy from HD to patch a rock back that I split in half.

Now most of the corals are open but continue to very slowly bleach from the bottoms. Most have lost their original color and look all washed out. I still see good polyp extension though.

75 gallon tank
2 x 400 watt mh
3 x 110 watt VHO
turboflotor hang on skimmer
K2R reator
no sump.
3 hagen 402 red sea wave maker.

1: I have no problem algea but havent had any coralline algea growth in months.

2: My MH bulbs are old, one is a 10k and is 12 months old the other is a 65k and is 8 months old.
although the bleaching is acuring through out the system.

3: I started to feed new food, omega one flake twice a day, and used the epoxy I mentioned earlier.

4: I use the same RO/DI on my soft coral tank and have complete coralline covorage over all the glass rocks and power heads, so I feel this is ok.

5: I filled my reactor with the skelotons from when I had the RTN outbreak, they have almost completely dissolved already?

WHY AM I HAVING THIS PROBLEM!!!!!!!!!!

I will test my Ca, and Alk tonight and report my findings. Any one who can help please give your advice. Sorry this post is SOOO long. THANKS TO ALL!

 

[chris_h]

I have been keeping sps for 3 years, and I have found the best way to maintain calcium in a small tank like yours is by water changes. I have a 75 gallon with a 40 gallon sump and I change 10 gallons per week. Use frequent smaller changes like I do that dont disturb the corals. With just changing your water you keep all wastes low and all good things at an opropriate level. If you add a bunch of chemicals you end up having to test your water all of the time. Water changes are the best way to mantain every trace element. In my opinion, for all tanks smaller than 200 gallons, water changes are the easiest and best way to maintain perfect water quality. If you have corals growing like crazy and dont think the water changes can maintain the calcium, then get a deep sand bed to help with the calcium.

Just my $200

 

[chris_h]

There is something else you might want to worry about. You have a lot of light, and if you have significantly more light than your LFS has, everytime you buy a coral it will bleach.

 

[THillson]

My experience with SPS's that bleach/die off from the base up is to frag the healthy parts off and discard the base's. Some people call this STN (slow tissue necrosis) and the only way I know to stop it is to frag the coral. Make sure you break well into the healthy tissue. I can't tell you what causes this to occur, I have one do this every so often in my tanks, but nine times out of ten the frags will be just fine. I read an article several years ago where the authors likened this type of die off to a person with allergies. Something sets the die off in motion and even when the cause has been removed or remedied it still continues to react as if the problem is still there or it over reacts to a normally harmless occurrence. This is why I believe fragging stops the die off.

You might want to run carbon for a day or two incase the epoxy you used is causing the problem. I see that you have no sump so this may be hard to do.

That 10K bulb is almost at it's end, but the 65K should be good for 12-18 months. I wouldn't change bulbs until your problems stop though. You do have a lot of light over the tank, but I can't see that as a problem.

 

[Ben1]

Ca is 420ppm

Alk is 5.03 meg/l

The bleaching is on more then one coral. My Pollicipora, the new acro and, a year old Montipora.

I bought the reactor when I had all the acros, growing fast, before the RTN episode. At this time I was changing 25% every two weeks and this wouldnt keep up with the Ca. I was also dosing Kalk as all top off water. I have a 3-4" fine DSB full of all sorts of life and 2 cucumbers.

I havent dosed kalk since the RTN problem.

I think the bleaching is because of a problem with calcification. I believe this is why the coralline has stopped growing and bleaching begun. Any ideas on that???

 

[Ben1]

I actually used to have good coralline growth. Also 2 of the corals bleaching had been doing very well under this lighting for some time.

I did stop the KW dripping and dont plan on using it.

I just noticed my heater has been on almost all the time. This heater is only a 100 watt tronic and the temp is only at 82, but I have a new one right here so Ill replace it. I dont think this is the problem though.

Can old bulbs cause bleaching?

 

[cubera]

Hi, Ben. Todd's post should be contemplated seriously. I have this problem with some Acropora species like loripes where algae easily causes the colony to digest itself from the base up. This happens slowly over weeks not in hours like RTN. The only way to confront it is to get cuts in advance of the 'bleaching'. Also, you are running way too much light for healthy coralline growth. Cut your photoperiod down and see what happens. Why are you dripping KW??? This makes no sense to me whatsoever unless you are trying to precipitate something out of your water?? Your corals could be suffering from too much light. They have very negative reactions to over saturation IME/IMHO. HTH

 

[Gatortailale1]

Glad to hear you stopped dripping KW. Sounded like overkill when you also had calcium reactor running.

Chris H has some good tips in his post, as do most other ones. The fragging sounded interesting to me as well. Wish the article was available to read.

 

[MFisher]

What is the pH of the reactor effluent. It seems that this may be causing low pH in the area of the reactor and cause some of your problems. I personally have had good SPS growth with only Bionic and even with no Ca supplementation for long periods of time. I enjoy keeping reefs best when done as simply as possible. This gets me in a lot of a trouble with gadgety types but my reef looks just as good. I also agree with Cubera. IMHO most peples reefs are way overlit. 99% of all photosynthetic inverts will thrive in much less light than the max they can handle. IME clams are the only thing that need hordes of light. This summer I kept several types of acropora frags in 3 rather similar tank setups. 1 with VHO, 1 with bright MH and one with dim PCs. Guess which frags looked the best. PCs. More Color, better growth, better polyp extension and so on.

FWIW

Matties

 

[Ben1]

I did move my prized pink Pollicipora into my softie tank two days ago. Hours after I moved it its polyps were expanded, and it has been looking better every day. I have it under 3 55 watt PC's about 1" under the water level. In my SPS tank it was almost on the bottom.

The main problem now is my porites waxed over again today after only being open for a few days since its last waxxing. My Purple Montipora has only had about 50% polyp extention all day today, and the bleaching isnt getting better.

The "new" acro is a clustered acro with a tight formation of small 1-2" branches about the size of a baseball. The coralites are very close on this coral. I am not sure of an ID but if I frag it all out I will end up with a bunch of really small frags, if the bleaching gets any worse I will frag it all out.


ANY MORE IDEAS?

Thanks for all the replies!

 

[KenH]

Hi Ben,
Do you have any LARGE softies of the likes of Sarcs or Sinularia? I had a similar setup (70 w/ two 10K 400W MH). After several years, I had a problem with some of the SPS starting to die back from the base up. I think it was a combination of my softies growing very large and my use of fairly small water changes. I believe the water chemistry slowly got out of wack. Since I was sitting up a new tank, I did several large water changes and the SPS polyp extension was better. Once I moved everything over to the new tank, all the SPS recovered nicely. I have sinse removed the largest of the soft corals and increased the size & frequency of my water changes to help reduce the chance of a recurrance.

I would be concerned about the type of epoxy you used to glue the rock. Some of that stuff can be pretty nasty until it completely cures. Carbon at this point can't hurt.

Also, you alk does seem a little on the high side, but I don't know if it is enough to cause a problem. I generally keep mine in the 3.5 - 4.5 meq/l range.

--- Ken
website: www.ReefCorner.Com

 

[Ben1]

Actually I have one giant leather coral in this tank, and its the only softie.

It was over 12" across untill I had the problem with my kalk dripper. After that incident it wouldnt open for almost a week when I noticed it starting to get a rotten spot at the base I split it in two and discarded the base. The cap is now two hugh leathers attached in two different areas. It was only about 3 weeks ago when I split it. Both halfs are very healthy now.

Do you think this could be letting off toxins?

 

[KenH]

Well, when my troubles started, my large Sinularia which I have had for about 5 years had started to develop some rot in spots. I am somewhat convinced (although in this hobby, you can never be sure about anything), that was what triggered my problems. I have no doubt that unhappy soft corals of many types can adversely affect the health of SPS corals through release of compounds into the water.

You might try moving the leathers to your soft coral tank at least temporarily and then try a couple of decent sized water changes and see if there is a positive affect on your SPS.

I saw a post a while back on a board where they experienced death of coralline in the area where they had cut Xenia. Perhaps a sick soft coral could similarly cause coralline to not grow in your SPS tank? Just a thought.

--- Ken
website: www.ReefCorner.Com

 

[THillson]

Ben,

I can't say what is causing your problems now. The only sure thing is that when you accidentally overdosed with Kalk you stressed everything in the tank, some to the point that they died. You've done the right things to correct the problem: water changes and monitoring tank parameters to get things back in balance. The sad truth is that you may lose everything that was in your tank when it happened because of that stress. This may happen no matter what you do. My suggestion of fragging the corals that are bleaching is not so much a remedy to what is causing the bleaching but a way to stop it.

IMO, the best way to proceed now is to provide the most stable environment you can to prevent further stress. Don't run out and buy new bulbs. Especially if you decide to run carbon. The combination of new bulbs and clearer water from the carbon will probably shock the corals. If your tank has been running at 82 degrees, leave it there. My propagation tanks run in the mid eighties in the summer with no problems. There is a lot in the literature that says we may be keeping our tanks to cold. Look at mean daily temperature values for the areas where most of the corals we keep are collected and you will find that they run in the low eighties. Yes, your alk level is a bit high, bring it down slowly. Your Ca level will also drop (the two levels are linked) if you only use the reactor. When you get the alk down to where you want it you can add a Ca supplement to push it back up without raising the alk level.

Why are people still saying that you shoudn't keep soft corals with SPS. I've kept mixed tanks for years now and never seen a problem that I could nail down to being caused by a soft coral other than direct contact. Yes, soft corals can produce toxins to use in a defensive action and these may also be produced when one is not healthy. This does mean that you need to keep an eye on them, not that they shouldn't be kept with SPS. KenH, you experience could have been a result of just poor water quality. You admit that didn't do much in the way of water changes prior to the problem. The soft coral may have just been the first to react to this, not the cause. Or, the same chain of events may have occurred if a LPS coral began to die in the tank causing water quality problems.

We are way to quick to put cause to effect. Most of the time we try everything under the sun that we can think of to solve a problem. And because we did so many things at once or in rapid succession that it is impossible to say what really resulted in the recovery. Or, we do it all and they still don't recover. It's possible that by doing all these things and dramatically changing the tank parameters that we increase the stress on the coral and push it over the edge.

Gatortailale, the article I referenced was in an Aquarium Frontiers magazine from the mid 90's. Maybe you could find someone who kept back issues. I lost all mine to flood damage in 98.

 

[MFisher]

Sarcos can release a nasty black subsance when cut or rotting. I witnessed this when my tank was new and mine started to rot. I cut it back and black inky chemicals were released. They had to be a defensive measure of some sort that probably didn't help an already stressful situation. In a tank this would be disasterous where in the ocean an animal nearby would hardly feel the effects.

I agree with all but one thing that TH said. I wouldn't frag the corals until you see die back. IME bleached corals WILL come back as long as they don't lose tissue and the water parameters are in line. Just wait. A bleached coral will live for a long time in a pure white state. It is, however, stressed and chopping it into pieces won't make it "feel" any better.

HTH,

Matt

 

[Mac1]

I wouldn't recommend stressing things out any more by dipping them in some solution.. I think THillson was right on in his summary. My porites (yellow and green) both react strangely to changes in current and lighting. Both time's I've moved them, they took over a week to open back up, and looked "Waxy" and PO'd the entire time. Now they are acclimated to their home's, I'm never moving them again, and hopefully all will go well. If your corals are just losing some of their color, IMO, they will come back if given time, and a stable environment. Keep up the small, regular changes, and I think everything will pull through. Worst case, you could make the drive up here and I'll donate a few frags to your tank.

- Mac

 

[Ben1]

I was wrong to use the term "bleaching" it is so often misused this way. I am only having very slight pigment loss, the new acro actually has white band. I feel the yellow Montipora A..? is recovering from the slight white band it got. It has good extention today.

My purple Montipora Digitata is still only opening 50%, and the porites, both colonys arnt opening.

I still feel there is something polluting my water preventing calcification or affecting the coral. It could be toxins from the Sacrophyton or from a sponge I had that grew huge then suddenly died off. It turned black and I scrubbed the dead parts off with a tooth brush, not realizing some sponges let off toxins.

I guess my best bet now is controlled water changes, slight use of carbon, and a little TLC.

Would anyone recommend a lugols dip, followed by clorimephenicol dip (sp?). Where can I get this anyway, I know its been used by many to stop RTN. It should work for STN also?