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Help me figure whats wrong............please

saltwatersig

saltwatersig

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So for the last 4 months or so .....I have had an issue with keeping my montis healthy and some sps tip seem to turn white.

A little History on my set up

120 gal display w/40 gal sump and kalkwasser rx , currently dosing 2 part , phos rx , carbon rx , small amount of Cheato in sump , euroreef 180 in sump skimmer.

parameters
temp 78 +/- .2 RKL controlled
ph 8.1-8.3
ALk 9.5- 10.0 redsea
Cal 375- 400 redsea
Mag 1300-1350 redsea
Sal 1.026 marine depot refractor
Nit less than 1 ppm redsea
Phos less than .50 ppm redsea

So long story short ...my montis will start to look like they are drying up ....most sps are fine and actually doing quite well , just a couple of them have white tips that develope if I don't do at least 2 water changes per week (10 gals per change). If I go an entire week without a water change then montis really look bad (almost completely dead) , if I do water changes 2 - 3 times per week ...montis start to regain polyps and color and appear to be on the rebound . I really don't like doing that many water changes weekly as it is time consuming and prior to montis going down hill ....weekly or even every two weeks seemed to have been all that was needed.

My salt is Salinity


Any advise greatly appreciated and NO I don't have monti eating nudis :p
 
holy Karp Erin ....thats like 300 gallons for you. I haven't thought too much about trying a larger water change and seeing if that would let me go at least a week between changes
 
Yeah ....I just hated thinking about doing bigger water changes because that will require me to actually shut down my main return pump in order to make the change (at 10 gallons it wasn't enough to turn off and just kept it running......hopefully it will turn back on ...you know how that can go :(( ) , pump is a reeflo snapper and has been running consistantly for the last year .
 
How about using two small maxi jets and siphon hoses into 5 gallon buckets to do the water changes ? That way you won't have to turn off the main return pump.
 
Sorry bud you lost me on that one.......if I drain more than say 12 gallons from my display .....my level in the sump drops below the reeflo pump return opening causing siphon break. I could remove 10 gals and add 10 then do it over again but wouldn't that defeat putting in 20 gals of new salt water ? the last 10 would be mixed with old water no ?
 
0.50 ppm is a WAY high phosphate level.
Did you mean 0.05?
Still could be better.

What is your lighting?
Do you by chance have bulbs that need to be changed?

Your Alk seems a bit high relative to low calcium.
Not bad, but the ratio is not great.
(Edited : Not sure why I put "Mg" as low in the first post - that is fine)
 
Given that water changes seem to help with the issue, it seems to be a water chemistry issue.

I think the Alk is too high. I don't know if you test is under reporting, but even if it is not, there is no reason to keep Alk so high. 8 causes far fewer issues.

For SPSs, any measurable nitrate can be an issue and a 0.5 PO4 is high and can also cause issues with some SPS corals.
 
@ rygh

I have to double chk the # i wrote down but I recall it being on the low side so maybe your right :)

for a while there my cal was upper 400's and mag was 1400+ so I let them come down a bit to see if anything changed but all still the same as far as nothing monti wise seems to improve without multiple water changes.

Lights , MH bulbs changed out early Dec (had the problem before that ) and t5's I chnged 2 of 4 earlier this month . the other 2 were changed back in Oct last year .
 
saltwatersig said:
Sorry bud you lost me on that one.......if I drain more than say 12 gallons from my display .....my level in the sump drops below the reeflo pump return opening causing siphon break. I could remove 10 gals and add 10 then do it over again but wouldn't that defeat putting in 20 gals of new salt water ? the last 10 would be mixed with old water no ?
Click to expand...
Yes, 2x10 is not as efficient as 1x20.
But it is not horribly different either, so is an alternative.
Benefit = no sudden chemistry changes.
I was trying to find the article on that, but reefkeeping.com seems to be down.
 
Sorry for the confusion. I don't like turning off the main return pump either during water changes. I start a siphon on the drain side of my sump into the floor drain and then run a hose from my make up water to the return pump side of the sump. The baffles in my sump keep it from mixing together. Depending on the layout of your sump, I would imagine you could do a water change 10 gal at a time without mixing the water.
 
@ Magnetar68

I had actually ran my system consistantly with Alk around 10 for years and had no issue. for the record I even let the Alk go down to 8 a month or so back because the white tips on the affected sps lead me to believe it was Alk burn .......nothing improved. As far as Nitrates....never really had an issue even when I had tested at 3 ppm , some corals darkend a little but over all everything thrived.
 
i suggest taking a water sample to a LFS and verifying the parameters match your test kits. I've had questionable results w/ my refractometer recently, different readings on the same sample. it didn't used to do that and it caused my salinity to get too high for a bit. Not that I think this is your problem but it'd be a good thing to verify w/ and LFS.
 
@ Gimmito I think I'll try to do the on and off first and cross my fingers that it will come back to life :)

@ coral reefer never really tested phosphates with consistancy, if I saw some algae start to show on frag racks , then I would change out media , since I haven't seen any algae I have kinda just let it ride so to speak. Also when I have put in fresh Phos media sometimes it would cause my montis to look bleached but they would always come back.
 
Water test at lfs , good idea at least I can get a second opinion . how long can water be transported around before it gets tested. I may be doing an LFS run in a week or so and wonder if I bring along plenty of water to test ....If it would not be a problem carrying it around for 6-7 hours or so ?
 
Since water changes help or reverse the damage, it must be related to something in the water. With those relatively small W/C, you must be right at the tipping point.

Did you change brands on any of the Rx media or 'two part' lately?

Any chance someone added something to the tank that you don't know about? Child dropping in a toy??

Really stretching it but...
How about some piece of equipment leaching 'bad things' into the water? I'm thinking about rusting parts, leak in the epoxy of a powerhead, that sort of thing.

Hope you find the answer SOON!
 
Aqua-nut

I started looking for an easy culprit....chked mag on frag racks , all good. looked at heaters for cracks, nothing. Even ran some polyfilter thing to see if some metal got into system and nothing. I cant say anything new has been added . The only new things I added was the redsea test kits and they don't effect water at all.
 
Someone (nameless to protect the 'innocent' :) ) at the last meet was telling me how little he thought of the RS test kits. Perhaps that is the real issue. Bad assumptions from bad test results?
 
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