SPS Issues

[Satsujin]

Try lowering your alk to 8.0. When you first noticed your sps going down hill, what are the first signs, no pe, tips burning, corals bleaching?

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They usually start bleaching sometime in the night and by morning they are dead. As for the alk I did try to lower it by not using any kalkwasser in the ato for a week but no changes, so it's making me lean toward the test kit is off. I'll clean out the ato reservoir in case there is still some diluted kalkwasser

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[brandon0350]

I have a red sea alk test kit I'm not using that you can have. Also if you wanna give me a ziploc bag of water or something I'll run a full set of tests for you

[Satsujin]

I have a red sea alk test kit I'm not using that you can have. Also if you wanna give me a ziploc bag of water or something I'll run a full set of tests for you

That'd be awesome, I can get you some water from the tank on Thursday/Friday

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[crustaceon]

Some thoughts:

If your LPS is doing fine under the AI, it’s probably not too crazy for your SPS at that setting.

Crazy high alk needs crazy high nutrients. If you’re feeding that little, I would recommend dropping the dkh to 8. I’m sitting at 7 dkh with 2.5ppm nitrates and undetectable (still present) phosphates and my sps is bright and growing well. My tank isn’t heavily stocked...yet. If I were you, I would start by determining your exact nutrient level and see where that slots in with your alk. From what i’m reading and seeing your stocking, you would be better off running a more reasonable alkalinity level. That can of course change as your tank fills with corals and you become one of those “coral gurus” who swears by a dkh of 12, feeding 17 times a day, not using a skimmer or algae scrubber and gets 1/4” of coral growth per week.

That 34 gallon only needs around 2000 gph of indirect flow and even that may be pushing it. That would give you 60x turnover. I’m not sure what pumps your big tank was running but you might want to dial it down if you were using mp 60s or gyre 280’s. As far as flow direction goes, I’m willing to bet most people have their pumps going at one speed all day long, are having no problems and only turn on the “wave mode” to show off to guests. As long as the flow isn’t directly blasting your corals, you’re probably ok and the fact that wave makers haven’t been around as long as people have been successfully keeping coral tells the tale.

IMO, you’re probably shocking your corals to some degree with the volume and frequency of your water changes. As stated, even small but rapid alk swings can weaken sps and make them more susceptible to illness which turns into burned tips or rtn/stn. As your salt is inherently adding way too much alkalinity during water changes, you could counteract this by doing multiple smaller water changes stretched out over the week and for a smaller percentage overall. I actually started with a 34 gallon bowfront and did a ten percent water change over the week. That 3.4 gallons of water was extracted while siphoning sand in a grid pattern every day. A little bit of water out and a little bit of water in. It worked extremely well for me and best of all, it put very little stress on my corals.

Seeing that you’re pretty diligent with maintenance, I also wouldn’t he surprised if your water was “too clean”, which would absolutely cause issues in more sensitive corals in the stated time frame. A nitrate and phosphate test will tell the tale.




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[Satsujin]

I'd like to give a big thanks to Brandon and freshsalth2o for all the help. I will fix try to fix the alk first before buying a new powerhead. I shall update you guys with whatever happens next

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[Satsujin]

Some thoughts:

If your LPS is doing fine under the AI, it’s probably not too crazy for your SPS at that setting.

Crazy high alk needs crazy high nutrients. If you’re feeding that little, I would recommend dropping the dkh to 8. I’m sitting at 7 dkh with 2.5ppm nitrates and undetectable (still present) phosphates and my sps is bright and growing well. My tank isn’t heavily stocked...yet. If I were you, I would start by determining your exact nutrient level and see where that slots in with your alk. From what i’m reading and seeing your stocking, you would be better off running a more reasonable alkalinity level. That can of course change as your tank fills with corals and you become one of those “coral gurus” who swears by a dkh of 12, feeding 17 times a day, not using a skimmer or algae scrubber and gets 1/4” of coral growth per week.

That 34 gallon only needs around 2000 gph of indirect flow and even that may be pushing it. That would give you 60x turnover. I’m not sure what pumps your big tank was running but you might want to dial it down if you were using mp 60s or gyre 280’s. As far as flow direction goes, I’m willing to bet most people have their pumps going at one speed all day long, are having no problems and only turn on the “wave mode” to show off to guests. As long as the flow isn’t directly blasting your corals, you’re probably ok and the fact that wave makers haven’t been around as long as people have been successfully keeping coral tells the tale.

IMO, you’re probably shocking your corals to some degree with the volume and frequency of your water changes. As stated, even small but rapid alk swings can weaken sps and make them more susceptible to illness which turns into burned tips or rtn/stn. As your salt is inherently adding way too much alkalinity during water changes, you could counteract this by doing multiple smaller water changes stretched out over the week and for a smaller percentage overall. I actually started with a 34 gallon bowfront and did a ten percent water change over the week. That 3.4 gallons of water was extracted while siphoning sand in a grid pattern every day. A little bit of water out and a little bit of water in. It worked extremely well for me and best of all, it put very little stress on my corals.

Seeing that you’re pretty diligent with maintenance, I also wouldn’t he surprised if your water was “too clean”, which would absolutely cause issues in more sensitive corals in the stated time frame. A nitrate and phosphate test will tell the tale.




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Thank you for the input, I usually don't do huge water changes but my family over fed the tank 2 weeks in a row which is why I did them as to not get an algae outbreak. Like the water would be a really really dark brown, I couldn't see the bottom of the bucket with only a couple of inch of water. I was out both weeks during the week days btw. I was also thinking in the back of my head maybe this tank is too clean lol but the previous tank that I had definitely had a lot lot more nutrient but also lower dkh. As for the water change, I think I should be fine with my 5g water change once a week once I get the sump and all the plumbing ready next week as I'm pretty much adding 20-30 gallons depending on how much I fill the sump. And yeah I am pretty diligent as my last tank had nitrate and phosphate over the roof due to my family not letting me do water changes on a big tank, but I can get away with doing 5g a week for this 29g.

I am definitely going to lower the dkh since I don't really have any need for such high dkh as or right now, and hopefully that will fix the issue. I will try your advice on smaller water changes throughout the week tho. If that doesnt work I think I will go back to reef crystal, which has given me the best result in growth for the price

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[crustaceon]

I used to do a 5 gallon bucket water change on the weekends but noticed better nutrient control and way less hassle overall to spend a few minutes with the gravel vac, even if the overall volume taken out was less each week. That sand can hold A LOT of crud and mine was only 1 1/2” deep so the bacterial benefit was negligible when compared to how quickly detritus was getting in there. That tank ran at 9 dkh and 5ppm nitrates consistently using reef crystals, a tiny tunze skimmer and 3.5 gallon-ish weekly water changes. It was WAY overstocked with fish (two ocellaris, two firefish, lawnmover blenny, coral beauty angel, yellow prawn goby, tiger pistolshrimp, a mated pair of ruby dragonets that received daily pipet feedings with nutrimar ova, a saddle valentini puffer and a coral banded shrimp that would beat up said puffer. I mainly had lps and softies but also had a single miscellaneous bright red acro that grew like a weed under two finnex ray led strings. It was probably 6” under them, lol.


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[crustaceon]

FWIW, keeping a big tank changes how you have to approach maintaining it. Water changes become expensive/time consuming and that’s when people typically get into carbon dosing as I did, running macro algae in a refugium or running an algae turf scrubber, which is what I use now. I also run bare bottom and still siphon detritus but it all goes into a filter sock which gets swapped out a few times a week. I think the only reason I would do a water change now is to replenish trace elements that i’m theoretically low on, but I’m running a calcium reactor with Reborn and Brightwell Kalk + 2, so maybe I’m ok on that front. Everything is looking healthy and growing so I’m not too worried.


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[Satsujin]

FWIW, keeping a big tank changes how you have to approach maintaining it. Water changes become expensive/time consuming and that’s when people typically get into carbon dosing as I did, running macro algae in a refugium or running an algae turf scrubber, which is what I use now. I also run bare bottom and still siphon detritus but it all goes into a filter sock which gets swapped out a few times a week. I think the only reason I would do a water change now is to replenish trace elements that i’m theoretically low on, but I’m running a calcium reactor with Reborn and Brightwell Kalk + 2, so maybe I’m ok on that front. Everything is looking healthy and growing so I’m not too worried.


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Yeah I did want to go into that kind of stuff but being a high schooler, I couldn't afford the right sized equipment for the bigger tank. As for the refugium, I got that tank from a hobbyist that getting rid of the set up and he had a wet dry filter and I never got around to modding it so it could have a refugium

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[crustaceon]

Wet/dry filters require a fair amount of care, refugiums require less and a biopellet reactor, if set up with an appropriate amount of media and combined with a skimmer typically requires just emptying the skimmer cup every so often. The refugium probably provides the most benefits (nutrient reduction, lots of pods, ph increase) and is easiest to set up as you’re basically just pointing a light on a timer at algae in your sump. If it’s chaeto, you want to make sure it’s always slowly rolling and a little koralia pump in the sump chamber directed towards the bottom of the algae ball can do that.


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[Satsujin]

Wet/dry filters require a fair amount of care, refugiums require less and a biopellet reactor, if set up with an appropriate amount of media and combined with a skimmer typically requires just emptying the skimmer cup every so often. The refugium probably provides the most benefits (nutrient reduction, lots of pods, ph increase) and is easiest to set up as you’re basically just pointing a light on a timer at algae in your sump. If it’s chaeto, you want to make sure it’s always slowly rolling and a little koralia pump in the sump chamber directed towards the bottom of the algae ball can do that.


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Yeah I will be setting up a fuge for this tank within the next couple of weeks, getting the sump tomorrow and plumbing sometime next week. Also got an unused pump that I can most likely use to make roll

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[brandon0350]

Just ran tests on the OPs water
1.025 (refractometer)
11.4 dkh (hannah)
470 ca (redsea)
1400 mg (redsea)
400 k (salifert)
25 no3 (salifert)
.3 po4 (hanna)

[Satsujin]

Just ran tests on the OPs water
1.025 (refractometer)
11.4 dkh (hannah)
470 ca (redsea)
1400 mg (redsea)
400 k (salifert)
25 no3 (salifert)
.3 po4 (hanna)

Thank you so much for the full test, so it seems the test kits are good, must be the salt then. I mix the salt bucket again and mix 1 gallon and test it if I just did not mix it well enough. If that doesn't change, I will try smaller water changes throughout the week, if that doesn't change, apart from changing salt, what other option is there?

[brandon0350]

Mix the bag of salt up. In a large bucket add 1 gallon of rodi. Next add a little less than 1/2 cup salt. Mix the water for 20 or so minutes. Check salinity. If it is 35ppt or 1.026, run you alkalinity test. If it's not 35ppt, add more salt or rodi depending on what your refractometer says. I would also stop adding kalkwasser to the ato until your dkh and ca drop to roughly 8dkh and 420 ca

[Satsujin]

Mix the bag of salt up. In a large bucket add 1 gallon of rodi. Next add a little less than 1/2 cup salt. Mix the water for 20 or so minutes. Check salinity. If it is 35ppt or 1.026, run you alkalinity test. If it's not 35ppt, add more salt or rodi depending on what your refractometer says. I would also stop adding kalkwasser to the ato until your dkh and ca drop to roughly 8dkh and 420 ca

Yeah I havent added any since last weekend when I added more rodi