impur Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 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 slimer yesterday slimer this morning Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drock59 Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 8, 2006 Author Share Posted April 8, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drock59 Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 how much and how often are you feeding? Perhaps you have too low of nutrients. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 8, 2006 Author Share Posted April 8, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drock59 Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 8, 2006 Author Share Posted April 8, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rude944 Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 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? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drock59 Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 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? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 8, 2006 Author Share Posted April 8, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rude944 Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rude944 Posted April 8, 2006 Share Posted April 8, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael7979 Posted April 9, 2006 Share Posted April 9, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 9, 2006 Author Share Posted April 9, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spayne Posted April 9, 2006 Share Posted April 9, 2006 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael7979 Posted April 9, 2006 Share Posted April 9, 2006 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spayne Posted April 9, 2006 Share Posted April 9, 2006 Wiser than you!? doubtful.........hehe rofl Just wanted to try to keep my foot out of my mouth for once! Stacy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael7979 Posted April 10, 2006 Share Posted April 10, 2006 Too late! (Rim) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spayne Posted April 10, 2006 Share Posted April 10, 2006 Too late! (Rim) That's what I'm here for! Comic relief! naner Stacy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 10, 2006 Author Share Posted April 10, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael7979 Posted April 10, 2006 Share Posted April 10, 2006 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 10, 2006 Author Share Posted April 10, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rude944 Posted April 10, 2006 Share Posted April 10, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
impur Posted April 10, 2006 Author Share Posted April 10, 2006 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rude944 Posted April 10, 2006 Share Posted April 10, 2006 Have you heard or seen AEFW in the Pacific NW? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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