Reef nutrition

New to me Reefer 250

Hmm, then dosing nitrate won’t help bring the phosphates down. Maybe your system is carbon limited. Have you tried dosing vodka or anything similar? I recommend the ICP testing, all those corals should be able to increase their growth rate and use up those nutrients unless there is some limiting element.
 
Another acro is dying. This one is STN’ing

Had this one since I bought the tank [emoji22]

Im lost. All I can think is maybe that wild colony I bought from Neptune had something on it.

Just giving up and doing all my normal maintenance until things get better.



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Ok. I’ll google how to check.

In times of doubt and unexplained deaths after I’ve eliminated everything I can think of, I go ape s$&! on the water changes. Do like 25% every day for 5-7 days. Not the best solution since it doesn’t tell you what’s wrong, but I think more times than not it’s solved my problems (or at least made me feel better I was doing something proactive).
 
Another acro is dying. This one is STN’ing

Had this one since I bought the tank [emoji22]

Im lost. All I can think is maybe that wild colony I bought from Neptune had something on it.

Just giving up and doing all my normal maintenance until things get better.


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Well, have you dipped this or any other corals to see if pests fall off? Is it just the acros that seem to be suffering?
 
ICP is in. This is the second test showing elevated lithium. What can cause this?

My guess...maybe the transition elements from b ionic? I’m going to stop dosing those, do more frequent water changes and test again in a month or so.

The others are easily dealt with.


 
ICP is in. This is the second test showing elevated lithium. What can cause this?

My guess...maybe the transition elements from b ionic? I’m going to stop dosing those, do more frequent water changes and test again in a month or so.

The others are easily dealt with.


I bet it is just a testing glitch. Minor trace elements in the micro-gram range seem a bit unreliable on those tests.

But when in doubt, frequent large water changes are your friend.
 
ICP is in. This is the second test showing elevated lithium. What can cause this?

My guess...maybe the transition elements from b ionic? I’m going to stop dosing those, do more frequent water changes and test again in a month or so.

The others are easily dealt with.


Your paramaters look very good except for this Li..this is high clearly.
Are you using any ceramic or none live rocks structures?
What's your salt?
 
I see couple of articles link li contaminate to some salt mix and multiple call outs to alk and ca additives..you might be right that additives caused this.
That being said, multiple good reefers including randy are claiming high li is not an issue although I personally do not agree. I once heard Triton tech talk than called out high li values as a bad thing and can lead to slow poisoning effect on inhabitants. At the moment in would say try to bring it down by water changes( tmp) salt is solid and saw couple of posts stating that they managed to lower li values by changing his salt mix to Tpm and did aggressive water changes.
I would do another icp in a month or 2 and see where things are..
 
Things are starting to look better. I think the issue was flow. I know I have a ton of flow in my tank, but things got so packed in this tank that I was putting corals in little nooks and crannies. Other than the OP that died, the others just were in kinda dead zones.

That’s the optimistic me.

The pessimistic me still thinks it could have been the lithium issue. Just not sure.

Either way, I’m finally upgrading. I picked up @Twisted ’s reefer 450 yesterday. I will link the new build thread soon when I create it.

The plan is basically to just move everything from the 250 to the 450. No new rocks or anything. I have plenty of rock in the 250 to sustain 40-50 gallons of water. Plus all my equipment is way oversized for the 250.

Let the work begin
 
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