Need help with sps

[Flare1185]

Hi everyone, while I meet a few of you on the last club meeting, I'm fairly still new to the club. While at the club meeting I express my interest in keep sps and a few weeks ago I purchase a few frags from Mike in middlesex. I have bought before from him and his frags are always top notch but my issue is I can never keep them for long. I spoke with Herb at the meeting and told me to check my parameters and so I did. My tank is 75gl with 30 gl sump with ASM 3G skimmer, DYI 12 cool white 12 royal blue led with 40 degree optics. It's dimmable and I have it about 70% and 9" high only on one side of the tank. The other side of the tank only have rocks and all of my corals are on the left side. I started testing a few weeks when I finally purchased the Hanna phosphate, alk, and calcium checkers. I also have nitrate and magnesium from Salifert. Below are my test results. Please note I did not test all parameters everytime but will list what I tested that day.
12/14/11
* 9.9 dkh Alk
* 1.59 Phosphate (realizing my phosphate is really high I did 15 gl water change and added GFO)
12/16/11
* 9.24 dkh Alk
* 1.16 Phosphate
12/17/11
* 9.18 dkh Alk
* 547 Calcium
* 10 Nitrate
* 1.22 Phosphate
12/18/11
* 1.28 Phosphate
* 5 Nitrate
* 1210 Magnesium
12/19/11
* .83 Phosphate (did a massive 50% water change I wanted to see if it'll lower my phosphate I also started running bio pellets and stop GFO)
12/22/11
* .72 Phosphate (everything seem fine until today)
12/24/11 (my one frag from Mike was a red planet's skin completely strip off this morning. I saw it still had polpy extension while it was bleaching off so I know there's something wrong with the tank so I tested for everything.
* .92 Phosphate
* 5 Nitrate
* 11.14 Alk (I think this is the reason behind the red planet demise alk burn?)
* 564 Calcium
* 1290 Magnesium (I added GFO back in a media filter bag while bio pellets still running)

I also have a few other sps all are doing ok. I have a pink lemonade polpy is still extended but not as much as when I first got it and a purple acro that's doing ok but I also purchase a green bird's nest that's slowly bleaching while still have polpy extension but loosing it's skin from the bottom up. Can anyone give me some ideas how I can fix this? Thank you.

 

[grink]

Specific Gravity of 26
Phos 0
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
Calcium 475
Mag 1350 t0 1500

However, there are more experienced guys out there that can comment

 

[qwik]

Are you dosing anything ? If so I would stop and just start doing water Changes for now. Do you wash your food before feeding,it would help . I recently had my water tested and found out I was using a bad test kit and over dosing . I stopped dosing,bought new kits and all is looking better. My refractometer was also out of Calibration and my salinity was low . If you can have your water tested at your Lfs every so often it will help you be sure u are testing properly.

 

[howze01]

Hey, I think you may have a couple things going on there. Phos is still high and that will definitely mess with the SPS. Alk is getting close to being high too. When you say 5 nitrate is that 5ppm?

 

[smcooler]

your po4 is off the chart for acros, alk a little high. lower you po4 slowly and you have more success, a high end skimmer is a real plus to keep acros.

 

[Flare1185]

My asm G3 is pulling some gunk and I believe it's rated for a bigger tank then mine I used to have asm G1 so I'm not sure if I really do a need bigger skimmer. The only way I see myself lowing my po4 is doing massive water changes but after those my alk seem to jump up really high. I've been doing 15gl water changes every other day. I believe my nitrate is 5ppm using salifer test kit it's said on the instruction that they multiply the number by 10 so my result on the chart was 50 which is really 5. I'm currently not dosing anything as I only have a few inches tall frags . Should I do small water changes each day or should I do large one. I did like 50% and that bump my po4 down to half but my alk also climbed really high. I also threw in a bag of GFO today in hoping that'll lower it. For feed I've only been feeding flakes and pellets so I don't rinse anything off while feeding. I usually don't visit any LFS often so I haven't let anyone else test my parameters beside myself. I was going to visit a local reefer to pick up some frags and see if he can test my parameters but he must be busy because of xmas eve. My refract is reading around 1.28. I usually like to keep my salinity around 1.25. Anymore help or suggestions is appreciate it.

 

[steamman]

You said you threw in a bag of gfo. You should run gfo in a reactor for best results. Do you or did you ever calibrate your refractometer? You can do it by either using a calibration solution or just use ro di water and set the refractometer to zero.

 

[Flare1185]

I checked my refrac with rodi today and its 0 also my tds is 0 my one reactor is running biopellets but i will see if i can fit another reactor for GFO tomorrow.

 

[qwik]

.What type of salt are you using ? Check the alk reading,and other params of a fresh batch of saltwater to seeif thatsthe cause of your high alk . Also lower salinity to 125-26.

 

[TanksNStuff]

Salinity should be 1.025 not 1.25 so unless that was a typo you're not mixing your salt at the correct ratio.

 

[smcooler]

water changes will not lower po4 its comeing from your rocks or sand, gfo needs to be in a reactor, try some zeo bac or mb7

 

[Flare1185]

I use IO, I will check my parameters with the new batch and yes it was a typo of 1.028. I'm not too familiar with zeo bac or mb7. How effective are these?

 

[Flare1185]

Here's my parameters of my salt mix taken at 1.025
* 557 Calcium
* 10.69 dkh Alk
* 1170 Mag

 

[Flare1185]

Just checked my p04
* .88 Phosphate
I also got another reactor online with GFO so hopefully this is bring it down. My sps polpy extension is a little better but no where it was when I first got them.

 

[spotter]

how old is your tank and where did you get your rocks from?

 

[GluttonousSolarWrasse]

I'd work hard to get that PO4 as low as possible, as quickly as possible. Put the GFO in a reactor. My PO4 runs an average of 0.04, and I'd like to see it at 0.00. Also getting nitrate as low as possible is another priority. By using vodka dosing I've been able to get mine from 50 ppm to 0 ppm. (of course it only took 86 days-as a matter of fact today was the first day I got a unmeasureable reading on nitrate). Mg-I try to keep it right around 1400 ppm, and I try to keep calc above 400 ppm. Your Calcium looks pretty high, but that is not a huge deal, because I don't think you can OD calc. It may interact with other Ions in the water affecting uptake. I try to keep alkalinity slightly above 10 dKH.

My average readings (taken comprehensively every other day) generally run:
Salinity-1.025
Temp-78.5-81.0 degrees F
pH-8.0-8.3
NO4-<5ppm
PO4-<0.05ppm
Mg-1350-1410 ppm
Ca-400-425ppm
Alk-10-10.5 dKH

The tank is dosed with 30 mL of Sr/Mo supplement, 5mL Brightwell trace, and 4 drops lugols solution per week. All Mg and Ca dosing are Brightwell products as well. I've been using ESV salt, and Alk dosing is done with baking soda. I run 2 Ecotech radions on the tank now, but was running the chinese knockoff LED for a while with great success. Flow is handled with 3 mp 40s, and 2 Koralia nanos.

This is my setup, and I've been having very good luck with sps, especially montipora. This is also a heavily stocked reef.

 

[Flare1185]

My tank is about 2 years old. I got the rocks when I bought my tank 2 years ago from Chris who used to work at Ocean Gallery II. Glad to see another reefer in Bridgewater. I think I saw your setup when I stop by Johnathan's for the group buy pick up. I'm trying keep my tank more simple so I haven't started dosing yet. I started bio pellets last week hopefully that will help with my po4 and nitrate. Once my level lowers I will try and start adding kalk via pickling lime with my ATO.

 

[GluttonousSolarWrasse]

My tank is about 2 years old. I got the rocks when I bought my tank 2 years ago from Chris who used to work at Ocean Gallery II. Glad to see another reefer in Bridgewater. I think I saw your setup when I stop by Johnathan's for the group buy pick up. I'm trying keep my tank more simple so I haven't started dosing yet. I started bio pellets last week hopefully that will help with my po4 and nitrate. Once my level lowers I will try and start adding kalk via pickling lime with my ATO.

It could be, if you picked up from Howze01, that is my roomate Jonathan, he did a group buy pickup here. Whereabouts in Bridgewater are you? Always good to know that there's another reefer nearby. As a matter of fact there are quite a few of us in this general area.

Jon is about to start his new tank, and will be using bio pellets. I'm kind of curious to see how they work. I test my water pretty religiously, and have a ton of data that I need to plug into excel and start analyzing. If you decide to try some vodka dosing, I've got all kinds of test data showing that it works, and works very well, it's supposed to affect PO4 as well as NO4. It's worked very well for NO4, but I can't comment on PO4 reduction because I run GFO.

2 years old-I'm not sure it's leaching PO4 from the rock. PO4 is a natural byproduct of many biological processes, and is a building block of all organisms present in proteins, cell membranes, DNA, etc., so essentially we are all adding PO4 whenever we feed. Your skimmer should definitely help with this, and in theory, the vodka dosing/biopellets should too. By using a carbon source to stimulate a population of beneficial bacteria, you are decreasing NO4, because that's what they eat, and PO4, because that's what they need to form their structure.

 

[Flare1185]

Yes, I saw your tank very nice collection of wrasses. I'm off 28 by power house gym. Why did you decided to go with Vodka instead of Vinegar? Also added a filter sock so hopefully that will catches any uneaten food. I also turn off my return pump when I feed to make sure the fish get a chance to eat everything before it get dump back into the sump.

 

[GluttonousSolarWrasse]

Small world, that is right near where my mom lives, and where I grew up!

I went with vodka for the main reason of there being more write-ups on the internet for it. Also it is my belief that when added to a system, the acetic acid dissociates, and would leave a surplus of H+ ions in the system, possibly lowering pH and eating up Alk. I know the doses probably would never do enough to actually affect anything, but I figured why chance it?

In retrospect, Vinegar I think would be just fine.

I went with vodka as it was the more popular option at the time, also, I absolutely cannot stand the smell of vinegar I hate working with it-except on sandwiches and in salad LOL.