Strange Problems...Please Help

[ajn81]

Okay, so my tank has been setup for a little bit over a year now. Up until about 2 months ago things were great. Healthy corals and fish no big algae problems. Then in August, I left for a month and when I came back, I started noticing brown algae growing on the rocks and glass (seen in the picture below). Wasn't too alarmed at the time, but for the last couple of weeks my LPS corals have started to look bad or dead. Fish and softies don't seem affected. I have no idea what could be wrong. I've changed nothing that I can think of. I haven't added and new livestock since like April. Any help/ideas that anyone can give would be greatly appreciated.

A bit about my setup:

Tank size- ~55 gal (29gal, 10gal tanks and 20 gal shared sump)
Age of tank- 1 year
Lighting- MH
Salinity- 1.025 (measure with hydrometer)
Water temperature- ~79 degrees
Nitrites- 0ppm
Nitrates- ~0ppm
Calcium (If applicable)- 440
Magnesium- N/A
KH-100ppm
pH- Not Sure.
Dosing anything?- No
Any recent changes to tank- No
Inhabitants (fish)- 1 osc. clown, 1 sixline wrasse, 1watchman goby.
Inhabitants (coral) - Various softies and LPS.

I have always used scripps for bi-weekly 10 gallon water changes.
I have always used RO water from the albertsons dispenser to top-off.

PLEASE HELP!!!

http://www.sdreefs.com/forums/imagehosting/47304afe008865270.jpg

[jason142]

First, I would check your phospate. I would borrow a refractometer and see if your hydrometer is reading your salinity correctly. Why did you put N/A for magnesium, that is a pretty important part of a reef. How did you get 100ppm for your KH?

[ajn81]

First, I would check your phospate. I would borrow a refractometer and see if your hydrometer is reading your salinity correctly. Why did you put N/A for magnesium, that is a pretty important part of a reef. How did you get 100ppm for your KH?

I've been keeping an eye on phosphate ever since the algae started to become a problem. I'm running a tlf phosban recactor with seachem phosgard and every test I run shows 0 phosphates. I'm using the API reef masters test kit for nitrate, phosphate, calcium, and kh.

I've been considering borrowing a refractometer as you mentioned. Just seems weird to me that this all started happening so suddenly after a year of everything going great. I didn't really change anything.

[ajn81]

I also should mention that I am using a protein skimmer. I have a in sump refugium with a DSB. It had chaeto in it, but that started to die off when all of this stuff started happening.

[Fine Fins]

Did you mess with the sand bed?

[ajn81]

Did you mess with the sand bed?

I did change the plumbing a bit in the fuge. Could be possible that it disturbed, or is disturbing the DSB in there....

[MustangBill]

I noticed you didn't mention your type of lighting, your bulbs might be old and the color spectrum has shifted on you, if your running metal hylide bulbs they should be changed once a year, compact flourecents last a little bit longer but they should be changed every 12-14 months.

[ajn81]

I noticed you didn't mention your type of lighting, your bulbs might be old and the color spectrum has shifted on you, if your running metal hylide bulbs they should be changed once a year, compact flourecents last a little bit longer but they should be changed every 12-14 months.

I'm using Halides, which are getting close to a year, but do you really thing that could cause this drastic of a problem?

I did inspect the DSB in the fuge and it seems that the new pluming I put in a couple of months ago is disturbing the sand bed. Do you all think that this could cause a massive algae outbreak and dying corals?

Also other that fixing the plumbing problem and doing a water change, anything I could do to put a band-aid on this problem and stop the bleeding?

[acbaldwin]

I can't help but think that disturbing the sandbed would have a significant effect on you N2, N3, and/or NH3 levels...

[ajn81]

I can't help but think that disturbing the sandbed would have a significant effect on you N2, N3, and/or NH3 levels...

I don't disagree. The algae growth could be throwing off the readings I'm getting from the test kit as well.

Any other idea out there on how I can fix this?

[gthaines]

I have similar tank size and symptoms on an off. I found that the floating organic(?) phosphates (the ones that the tests usually don't measure) were one major culprit, slightly high temps, and low magnesium levels were the others. I now boost my scripps water with Kent's tech M at every water change, and have floss on all my powerheads and overflow boxes (since I don't have a sump style filter sock setup). I also through in a pad of polyfilter when i started it, just to take out any weird chems that might be there, and any other phosphates. I literally was changing the floss about every 2-3 days, and it was fully loaded with stuff you can not see otherwise. So far it has kept the algae from spreading and cleaned everything up nicely. Good luck ;)