What am I doing wrong? Help Needed!

[PaulM]

First off, sorry I haven't been around more. I have been going crazy this summer getting everything ready for my wedding which is less than 3 weeks away!!! I am looking forward to going to a meeting once the honeymoon is over. Well over the last few months I have been slowly loosing corals. Mainly SPS. I even lost a clam which I was pretty upset about. I am worried about my larger clam now. He is not opening up fully like he used to. I also noticed that he has not grown as much as he has in the past. My sps corals I have left have stopped growing. I thought it was mainly from a fish bothering him so I tried moving him but no luck. I just checked my water parameters and everything seemed OK except for my alkalinity. Would this be causing all my issues? I am cooking baking soda now.. I have a 70 gallon tank with a 20g sump, SOLARIS g series light, Skimmer, cheato, korillin ca reactor, @100lbs live rock, mag 7 main pump, 2 korilla 3's, 1 korilla 2 and 1 korilla 1.
last water test:
PH: 8.2-8.4
nitrate: not detected
nitrite: not detected
Phosphate: not detected
Calcium: 420
Ammonia: not detected
Alkalinity: 1 mEq/L

Any advise would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Paul

 

[RichT]

Have you calibrated your pH probe lately?

 

[PaulM]

no not recently. The ph reading was from a test kit.

 

[chaoscat]

I guess with LED lighting you can rule out "old bulb" syndrome.

What kind of sand base is under your rocks? Did you do any significant re-landscaping that might have substantially disturbed it? I pulled out a large rock once that disturbed my base and it must have released some sulfor dioxide into the water because baaad things happened and continued to happen for quite some time afterward.

 

[PaulM]

I did have Fiji pink sand in there but I recently switched it to a coarser reef grade sand so I can up the flow. I wonder if that had any effect... How long did it take for your tank to recover.

 

[chaoscat]

I lost several corals over a period of a little over a month and a half. One colony of GSP's that had been very healthy and growing like crazy just closed up overnight and never reopened. A different variety of GSP withered away bit by bit over time. Nothing I did seemed to help. My Torch coral showed immediate effects, but held on for 6 weeks before it croaked.

You might have had a sulfor dioxide release, or might have just had a mini tank cycle due to the substrate change. Either way, even after the water is recovered - the stress to the corals seems to live on for awhile. Some will recover and be fine, and some just wont.

 

[blange3]

Whether or not the sand removal had an impact remains unclear, but clearly you have an alkalinity problem.

I would check with another test kit; and to be thorough what are your magnesium, temperature and salinity readings?

If your ph is truly 8.2 to 8.4 you didn't need to bake the baking soda. plain baking soda would be enough. You should slowly raise the Alk to a minimum of 2.5 meq.

 

[stcreef]

+1 for blange's suggestion

 

[PaulM]

Salt is at 1.024 (refractometer) I am using the baking soda to slowly raise the Alk. Not sure that the magnesium is at.(Don't have a test kit for that) Temp has been fluctuating between 80 - 84 depending on the day. Should I ditch the CA reactor? I don't have that many SPS / LPS corals. The soft corals are doing great though.

 

[adesimone1]

If your alk is low and your running a calcium reactor. I believe if you increase your bubbles in your bubble counter that will raise your alkalinity. Hey guys chime in if I am wrong but I am almost positive that is what the tech told us at reeftek