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Tank may be crashing?

dirtycontour

dirtycontour

I posted this on RC as well, just looking for more opinions and ideas.

My 75 gallon softy/LPS tank is about five years old. I tried to add some SPS a few months ago. For the first month or so they were doing well, encrusting around plugs/rock. Then they took a turn for the worse and slowly but surely died. I figured, SPS wasn't for me.

About a month ago, I noticed my duncan coral not fully opening and flesh bubbling, favites losing flesh and color going pale and my two chalices are losing flesh as well.

All softies are doing well. I have a bubble coral and a hammer coral that do not seem to be affected by whatever is happening.

I test weekly to every other week and do not see any issues. Numbers are as follows:
Ca: 450-480
Alk:9-10
Mg: 1400-1500
SG: 1.026
NO3: 1-5ppm
PO4: 0.03-0.07
(Ca, Mg, NO3 tested by Salifert; tests not expired)
(Alk & PO4 tested by Hanna; tests not expired)

I put in a poly filter pad last week in hopes of showing some kind of copper or heavy metal leaching. The pad is a light brown color today.

The only recent change is that I switched salts from IO to Coralife. I do weekly 5 gallon water changes.

I'm running out of ideas here. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
dirtycontour

dirtycontour

saltkreep88 said:
Are you running carbon? Any magnets in the tank? When was the last time you calibrated your refractometer?
Click to expand...

I run carbon 24/7.

Yes I have a bunch of magnets in the tank. Mag float, Tunze ATO, and two MP10s. I checked for rust but didn't see anything. I imagine the poly filter would have showed some evidence?

Refractometer is calibrated at least twice a month.
 
iTzJu

iTzJu

Officer Emeritus
NJRC Member
maybe a bad batch of salt?

I've switch between coralife and IO all the time and i see no ill effects. When my 40b Frag tank was going strong it was using coralife salt. bad batches do happen sometimes.
 
JRWOHLER

JRWOHLER

Softies can release chemical warfare, though carbon should help. Are you dosing any algaecides or anything new?
 
dirtycontour

dirtycontour

I'm running a six bulb Sunpower with ATI bulbs, bulbs are about 5 months old. Carbon is from KZ, I switched from ROX about four months ago.

Other than that, maintanence etc. has been business as usual.
 
J

Jcurry@wesketch

What is the proximity of the troubled corals to the bubble & hammer? Both of the LPS corals are known to put out long sweeper tentacles that can sting adjacent corals. I've had hammer and bubble corals with 6"+ sweeper tentacles that have stung other corals seemingly overnight.
 
dirtycontour

dirtycontour

The bubble coral is about a foot away from the duncan. The hammer is relatively small but only six inches from the favite. I think it would be a heck of a coincidence for them to start stinging each other out of the blue at the same time. Although it's a good guess and I'll keep an eye on that.

No temp spikes. Apex would have alerted me.

I'm really leaning towards the salt mix change.

As soon as you think you have this reefing thing figured out, bam!
 
Brizjuan

Brizjuan

dirtycontour said:
The bubble coral is about a foot away from the duncan. The hammer is relatively small but only six inches from the favite. I think it would be a heck of a coincidence for them to start stinging each other out of the blue at the same time. Although it's a good guess and I'll keep an eye on that.

No temp spikes. Apex would have alerted me.

I'm really leaning towards the salt mix change.

As soon as you think you have this reefing thing figured out, bam!
Click to expand...

Yup thats the name of this game brother. Sounds to me like u were doing everything right and got stung by a bad batch of salt or carbon. Incredible how buying something to improve the quality of your tank actually ends up hurting it.
 
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