A few probs i could use some help with

[impur]

Hey everyone, i'm a little stumped on what is happening in my tank to specifically some of my SPS corals. My pH has been on the low side, around 7.8 at night and 8.0 daytime. I'm not overly concerned about that, but now i've got some odd bleaching on 2 of my corals. One is an awesome green slimer i got from Mike, the other a nice purple w/ green polyps. I just noticed the bleached spot on the purple one, the slimer had been down on the sand and i have since moved it up a bit in hopes that it was needing more light. But the purple is a mystery to me why its happening. The whole coral looks fine otherwise. Here are the pics. I just checked my levels 5 minutes ago as well and all is fine there.

temp 79.5
pH 7.9
SG 1.025
alk 8dKH
calcium 450ppm
phos 0ppm
nitrates 0ppm
nitrites 0ppm
ammonia 0ppm

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4070102.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4070097.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4070094.jpg

slimer yesterday
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4070095.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4070096.jpg

slimer this morning
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4070100.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4070099.jpg

[drock59]

Im struggling with my pH as well. Try and bubmp it up a bit and see if that helps.

Also, how is your skimmate production?

This seems kind of weird.

[impur]

Skimmate is mediocre at best. I'm going to clean it and soak the pump in vinegar to see if i can get better production. My cheato isn't growing worth a crap either which is odd.

I'm not sure how i can bump up the pH and keep it there though.

[drock59]

how much and how often are you feeding? Perhaps you have too low of nutrients.

[impur]

I feed every day a pinch of flake and a pinch of freeze dried cyclopeeze. I use frozen in place of the dry stuff once or twice a week.

[drock59]

feed more and see what happens. Worked for me bigtime. if you have a decent skimmer and do water changes on a regular basis, heavier feeding will be fine.

[impur]

I haven't done a WC in about 2 weeks, planning to today. Typically i do them on a weekly basis. Maybe a larger than norm WC will help things.

[rude944]

Low PH, hmmm, did you read my recent whoops? Perhaps your (do you have a...) calcium reactor is pushing too much C02 to the tank? That will definately do it. The things that usually contribute to a higher PH are the substrate, rock and levels of Alk, O2 and other chemicals in the tank. You may consider renewing some of the hard calcium (rock, sand).

Are your dissolved levels of oxygen ok? Is your bioload pretty high? Are you brewing kalkwasser at all? Any new additives?

[drock59]

rude, im having these pH issues too. My reactor effluent is set to 7.0 and i assume I am getting too much CO2 into the tank. How the heck do i fix that?

[impur]

No CA reactor. I'm dripping kalk 24/7 at a rate of 135ml/hr. Bioload consists of 2 percs, a cleaner shrimp, and a porcelin crab as well as normal snails and hermits. I don't have a way to test dissolved oxygen. Only new additive is switching from Kent superbuffer to seachem reef builder.

[rude944]

Someone suggested having the effluent drip instead of submerging the tube. I don't understand how that helps with gas exchange, but it can be done. Perhaps run the c02 into a fuge with macro to try to limit the co2 going to the display. The other way is to add a second chamber to the reactor to try to dissolve the media to calcium bicarbonate further.
CO2 is not the only thing that will make the PH fall tho. Think about things like over feedings, undiscovered dead fish/inverts, or lack of buffer.
The Kalk should start you on your way back up. That stuff has a PH of like 11! Use an additive to get it back into a tolerable place initially, but over a long period of time, say 24 hours. Drip the solution or something like that.
I would get on the water change thing and do a couple of 25%ers in a week at the least on my tank. Change some of the substrate. And test again. And test your test kit.

[rude944]

If you have a problem with dissolved oxygen, all your inverts will go to the top of the tank to get closer to oxygen evtering at the surface.
Are the two additives you swapped comparable? Ie, does one Buffer and the other add a trace element or stronium/calcium? I dunno as I don't really dose much besides Iodine and amino acids.

[Michael7979]

Miles maybe your issue is from the recent moving of the tank. The corals might just be stressed from that. If the slimer doesn't make it for some reason let me know and we can fix that. Hope you see a turn around soon.

[impur]

Yah the additives are almost identical.

Thanks Mike, I posted this at RC and someone thought the first coral looks like acro eating FW damage. I sure hope that isn't the case. I'm not sure where i would have gotten them.

[spayne]

Miles maybe your issue is from the recent moving of the tank.
That's what I was thinking. I just didn't want to say it as I figured someone much wiser than myself would speak up. ;)

Stacy

[Michael7979]

That's what I was thinking. I just didn't want to say it as I figured someone much wiser than myself would speak up.

Stacy
Wiser than you!? doubtful.........hehe

[spayne]

Wiser than you!? doubtful.........hehe
rofl Just wanted to try to keep my foot out of my mouth for once!

Stacy

[Michael7979]

Too late! (Rim)

[spayne]

Too late! (Rim)

That's what I'm here for! Comic relief! naner

Stacy

[impur]

That's what I was thinking. I just didn't want to say it as I figured someone much wiser than myself would speak up. ;)

Stacy

I sure hope so! The slimer is still declining, although it looks to be leveling off. Still have PE and more so than the last few weeks. The purple has always had PE and still does now, it has looked great thru the whole thing. Its odd that the bleacing was on the backside of the coral. Luckily i spotted it, who knows how long its been going on.

I checked the purple coral the last few nights with a bright LED light for AEFW. I don't really know what they look like so its going to be hard to see any. I didn't see any and the bleached area is not getting worse at this point.

Does anyone think redbugs would have anything to do with this? I mean they don't live on the slimer so it rules them out for its problems.

[Michael7979]

Flatworms are small and dark colored unless you are talking about AEFW then they are almost perfectly clear. I haven't ever seen them, thats just what I have heard...........HTH

[impur]

Yah i'm talking the AEFW. I'm going to pull the slimer today since its still going downhill and do a strong lugol's dip.

[rude944]

IME redbugs will cause the polyps to not come out at all. I did not have have any tissue recession at all with redbugs. HTH.

[impur]

Yah same thing i've noticed. Actually i do notice PE with redbugs, just the polyps do not have the vibrant colors they once did, they are the color of the coral in most cases in my tank.

[rude944]

Have you heard or seen AEFW in the Pacific NW?

[impur]

No, i haven't. Thats why i've been dismissing them. Plus everything that goes into my tank gets a strong dip of FWE, roughly 3-4x normal strength.

[impur]

I have been inspecting with a magnifying glass a lot the last few days. The purple acro has not gotten worse at all, and for the life of me there are absolutely no AEFW on it that i can see. The slimer is farther away from the front glass, but its showing much better PE since being moved. I'm going to hold off doing a heavy lugols dip for a few more days to see if they improve at all.

[impur]

Ok sat in front of the tank for another 20 min just staring at these 2 corals. Man, with the obious exception of the bleached/dead spots, the corals look fine. The purple acro actually has some new flesh growing over the bleached area, good news. The slimer has PE on the stalk of it now, whereas the last few days it has had none. The bleaching looks to have stopped. Even has PE where i cut a branch off a few weeks ago.

I'll get some new pics tonight.

[rude944]

Sounds like you've possibility beaten whatever factor was causing it. Keep this thread alive and tell us your progress.

[impur]

Thought i'd update this. The slimer continues to STN. Each day a little more. So Monday i fragged 4 braches off it and put the rest of the coral in a tupperware container overnight with 3 drops of Lugols to about 2 cups of water. Woke up next morning expecting it to be completely white. It wasn't, so i put it back in the tank. The frags looked good the first day, all of them had decent PE. But as the week has gone on, the frags are losing more and more color and PE is declining. The main colony has not shown any PE all week, it has browned out, but the STN has stopped. This afternoon the frags look terrible, so what the heck, i tossed them in the container with 3 drops Lugols until i get home from work around 6. We'll see how it goes from here.

So i think i will lose the slimer completely. The purple acro has not worsened. But it has not grown any new flesh over the bleached area either.

I just can't believe i'm going to lose the slimer from having it in a lower flow area for 4 days. Reminds you how delicate these corals are.

[Michael7979]

Hey man sorry to hear that but, if all else fails you know where you got it and where you can get another frag.

[impur]

Hey man sorry to hear that but, if all else fails you know where you got it and where you can get another frag.

Thanks Mike.

[Michael7979]

Sure thing bro, no problem.

[impur]

So heres where they are at. So sad :(

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4200138.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4200139.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4200143.jpg

[impur]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4200145.jpg

[Michael7979]

That's not very pretty. sick

[spayne]

I'm sorry, Miles! It's so frustrating to lose coral, especially when you're not exactly sure what's going on! :(

Stacy

[impur]

Thanks Stacy! It is frusterating when you don't know why. I'd like to learn from this experience for the future, but am only working on a guess that the lower flow for a few days did the slimer in.

I don't even have a guess as to what happened to the purple tricolor.

[Palani]

Hey Miles as for the purple one is concerned. Don't start worrying about the tissue growing back. It usually takes about a week or two till it will start. I had a stag just RTN a little bit on me. I made sure I fed it frozen cyclops and dosed the tank with DT's. In a little time the tissue started to come back. That's the next thing I would do, is to increase its metabolic rate by feeding it some photoplankton, rotifers, or cyclops. Just take a turkey baster and just bast the "stuff" all of it.

Oh yeah, I also used that coral sanitiser, which consists mostly of iodine, to kill off any bad bacteria that could be deteriorating the tissue. I would do that first, but then again I don't know what that stuff you dipped the slimer in earlier.

[impur]

It was just Lugols iodine. I haven't dipped the purple acro in it yet, the bleaching has stopped on it and hasn't progressed for a good week. I was suprised to see the recession stop on the slimer after the iodine dip. Might be something to remember for the future.

Thanks for the suggestions Jansen. I haven't tried target feeding it yet. I just got those reef-roids, might be a perfect time to try it out. I also have some DT's oyster eggs that the SPS seem to love. I'll try it out after work tonight.

Thanks.

Miles

[Palani]

Yeah, just give it a little over a week and I'm sure you'll see some improvment with that purple one. Good Luck.

[impur]

Well i've spot fed the troubled corals over the weekend. Will probably do it again tonight. Here is how they looked yesterday. The purple is recovering real nicely. I'm going to lose all the frags of the slimer and ironically, its the main part i chopped up that has not receeded anymore.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4260184.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4260185.jpg


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4260188.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/P4260187.jpg

[impur]

Crappy pics of the frags, but all have STN to the point of very little flesh remaining