Wierd issue

Z

zoa_king

I need some help here...

I have a 150 gallon of mixed tank with 75 gallon sump. LPSs thrive, clam is happy, candy cane is growing like crazy, zoas are doing great...SPS is a different story. Some of them are doing great others are not. I had a very hairy mili and was growing very good. last one month, it is not too well. The size of th e polyps are much smaller now. Garf Bonsai is growing very fast but purple plasma died :(.

I have been trying to find answers and so far unable to isolate the issue. Here are the params:

Water Chemistry: Salinity - 1.025, PH - 8.4 (solid), untreceable nitrate/phosphate, calcium:450, alkalinity: 11, magnesium:1600 (only thing that I am aware which is out of normal).I use ATO, calcium reactor, phosphate reactor, carbon in phosban reactor and a lot of live rock (400 lbs).

Flow: around 40x per hour inlcuding vortech wavemaker and 2 several Koralia 4.

Lighting: 2 400 watt metal halide 20K. 220 watt of PC lighting.

I also use chiller for a stable 79 degrees...and a UV sterlizer and change 10% water every week.

So far I have done everything to provide good lighting, good flow, good water chemistry and feed my corals too (marine snow, rotifiers and phyto).

I have also taken some crazy steps like remove all macroalgae, remove Shrimps (perppermint shrimp was getting way too aggresive with the corals)...

The only other observation that I see if that Coralline grows very well in shaded areas but fades out direclty under the light...can the bulb be emitting too much UV? It is double ended and is housed in a pendant with glass enclosure. I am not sure what else can I do to get crazy growth.

Any help or ideas will be great...low iodine maybe?
 
One more thing - I treated for reb bugs just in case as well...and I do not have any flatworms (all four monitoporas are doing great).
 
where is the sps in the tank is it very high in the tank directly under the lights and what is your time cycle like. It might be getting too much light. When i get new coral i generally put them low in the tank to get it acclimated first and then bring them to high levels after a couple of weeks or so. Did you get new bulbs or anything?
 
The bulbs are 5 months old. Corals are also old...the Milli which lost its "hairs/polyp size" was growing very good for the last three months.

The SPSs are high up but what I am noticing is that corallinne algae "whitening" all the way till the bottom wherever there is direct light....pls keep the ideas coming.
 
Also the light cycle is from 2 PM to 10 PM metal halide. 1 PM to 9 PM PC lighting so total 9 hrs of light. Apart of that it has moon lighting.

The things that I have seen off are the following:

- iodine: everytime i test, it commes out low
- magnesium: 1600+. Have you seen any issues like this because of high magnesium...
 
Possible UV exposure??? Not a lot, but some? Your bulbs could be jacked up.... I'd think it is your lighting, maybe try some different bulbs and see if you get a different response. What's your lighting schedule? Hours that you have your light cycle on and etc.
 
I use RO DI water with ~2 on the TDS meter.

the lighting cycle is 9 hours...with ice cap ballast running one bulb and the second bulb being run by pfo ballast. The bulbs are SPS 20K 400 watt DE.

I can give 14K a try but it will add to the PAR...I am not sure if that will help. If I can solve the Coralline puzzle, I am guessing I will resovle the issue for the SPSs as well.

Apart from the calcium reactor dosing a good grade ARM, I am dosing strontium, vitamin c, coralvite, amino acid and iodine.
 
Actually..I am not a fan of the ARM media however the coarse grade has been found to contain high levels of magnesium and very good levels of Strontium as well as other necessary trace elements. I would cut the extra dosing as you can overdose these elements pretty easily. If you are going to add iodine a few drops weekly is all you would need, you can also overdo that stuff really easy and it can reach toxic levels. If you are running anything that will clear the water(carbon, UV. ozone etc) then the extra clarity can impact the coral's with the higher levels of light reaching them. Make double sure your salinity and alk levels are....where you think they are, especially if you have been dosing magnesium. The coralline algea could be reacting to a higher light level(bleached), temp or salinity swing and should recover. I have had issues with adding amino acid's, I had 3 corals that did not like it at all while all others didn't not seem fazed at all. YMMV So to recap...stop dosing.....validate Sg and Alk levels.....maintain waterchange schedule........wait. [smilie=wink.gif]

Cheers,
 
Thanks Ron as always...I am not dosing Mg separately. ARM has Mg, K, iodine along with Calcium/alkalinity and other trace elements. As a matter of fact, I bought Dolomite but never used it.

I have used Salifert and API to test alkalinity. Salifert is consistently 1 KDH higher than API.API shows 10. Salifert shows 11.1

Salinity is pretty stable at 1.025 and ow I am using ATO which does not allow any fluctuation. If I zoom at bleaching only...here are the observations:

- The bulbs are 5 months old purchased brand new from DNA
- 20K 400 Watt DE SPS bulbs in a pendant with glass enclosure
- I have always used carbon and UV with crystal clear water. I used to use mechanical "polishing" as well but I don't anymore (it filters out food as well which then rots).
- The coralline in shade is awesome...

any more ideas on why bleaching can occur.
 
Renmar, why iodine is a whole different topic all together. I won't go there but I will say that I do test for it and am below the NSW level of iodide and I dose 1/4 of recommended amount.
 
hmmmm.....let's seperate this further. Take out the coralline and let's concentrate on the corals....you switched to the reactor from manual dosing to get the stability correct. Was the issue before or after the reactor???. You can also let the Alk drop 1 Dkh and run it there to see if you see a difference. You really don't have to run Alk at 11dkh with a reactor unless you are not impacting your ph too much, I actually found that my corals grew much faster and I had better results running 8-9Dkh than when keeping it at the high end.


Cheers,
 
I did several tests for iodine yesterday and today morning.

<u>Yesterday night </u>
Tank water - 0
fresh saltwater - 0.08 ppm
reference water - 0.06 ppm (testing this to make sure I am doing it right).

I added salifert iodine supplement yesterday night and today in the morning back to 0. Salifert has iodide and iodate...to ensure that the tests are showing corrently, I added one drop of iodine supplement in 50 ml of tank water...showed up nice and bright blue...so questions:

- has anyone experienced significant amount of iodine depletion inspite of regular wc and minor dosing (I dose 1/4 of recommended amount). I have several zoas,leathers , large clam, alveopora, 2 large frogspawn, a few chalice, several Acans, GSP, mashrooms (they don't do too well either), and a large toadstool.
 
I had a bigger issue before - none of my SPSs were growing before I put the calcium reactor in no matter how much I would dose. That ways, I am happy with the reactor.

The biggest setup I got was when I came back from a one week business tour and found alkalinity at 5. Several RTNs, coralline dead across the tank...this was two months back.

since I put the reactor in, the coralline has come back and some of the new frags have taken off...but some continue to do bad (brand new colony of purple plasma dead :() and Coralline bleaches whereever meatal halide hits them directly.
 
Well....there are many pieces to this puzzle. Lots of leathers and sps don't always go along unless you run carbon on you system to cut down on the allelopathy. Some coral may have come to a "understanding" and co-exist, other may not fair so well especially if in close proximity to leathers etc. Newer sps pieces are already stressed and may be further stress by chemical war's,that may be contributing to the sps decline but not sure, how much carbon are you using?

I think you are dumping in way too much iodine.... yes coral's need it(iodide) but probably not to the degree that you are putting in(along with the iodine form the salt + ARM media. I'm not sure why you are fixated on adding this stuff, it is a very strong oxidant as well as bacteriocidal.....you can wipe out your tank if you seriously overdose it.

The coralline will recover, it may take a while but it will come back as long as I know you mentioned that your Mg was very high without dosing but coralline actually is a big consumer on Mg, just double check the level to make sure your test kit is fine. My recommendation remains the same, I would do a nice water change, stop dosing all the really unneeded extra's. You have a reactor now so sit back and let it do it's thing.

Cheers,
 
My first thought when reading all of the issues going on is the amount of iodine that you are dosing into your tank is an issue. How about you stop and see if things change? When troubleshooting something, it's always a trial by error methodology on finding out what works and what doesn't. I say stop the iodine and loser the alk that you are dosing and see whatcha get, like bim said.

Also, let me re-ask this question ... Why are you dosing iodine, or better yet, why are you dosing so much iodine to your system? Even though you think it may be another topic and requires another thread ... it may actually help solve this issue.
 
Can you post some pics?
Sick corals, tank shot, filtration.
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You might have LFS test the water. Free second opinion.
Try a water change and do not use any carbon.
Not sure leathers and SPS go together.
I would stop dosing the Sra, aminos.
Switch you MH & PC light cycle - so the PC's are on longer.
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A pic would really help.
It is apparent that your problem isn't a lack of lighting.
Some SPS don't like a ton of light. Are the SPS bleeching?? or RTN from the bottom up?
It could also be something accidentally got in the water - like previously suggested - water change - make sure the water is the same temp as the tank water.
If you are noticing a big temp change after a water change - you might consider waiting an extra week before doing a water change.
 
The following quote is from this article about water parimeters, http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php

"Iodine dosing is much more complicated than dosing other ions due to its substantial number of different naturally existing forms, the number of different forms that aquarists actually dose, the fact that all of these forms can interconvert in reef aquaria, and the fact that the available test kits detect only a subset of the total forms present."
 
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