Dead acro

[Yourmedic]

Welp. . . Need help. . . Ideas. . . Anything! 
 

I started this 210 in Jan this year with dry rock and live sand. Added first fish in June, then some soft coral about a month after. Torches are doing good, gargonia and gonis doing great, even accans and sculys doing good. Acro on the other hand. . . Dies. . . Stripes the flesh and pops white. Sadly,2 coral have been killed in this tank thus far. 
 

current parameters: 

 

ALK: 9.6

CAL: 485

MAG: 1405

Nitrates: 54.9

Phosphates: 0.59

PH: 8.1

Temp: 78.1

I have not been dosing anything as I am wanting cal to be about 430 and alk to be 8.6-9. I have a sump with cheato, skimmer running, 1 mp-40, 1 mp-10, and 2 small no name power heads until I can get more mps. 
 

‘’Running XR-30 pros, g5 at 9” above the water set to 86% intensity. They turn on at 8am with a ramp up to 12:30 being full, then begin ramp down at 16:00 (4pm) till 20:00 (8pm) off and go into moon phase according to cycle. 
 

I don’t have a par meter, so that’s the only thing I am really questioning, but seems the par meters have disappeared from the thread, so I am ordering one today because I really want to have acro in my tank and flourish. 
 

any other thoughts or ideas that might be an issue? Willing to call, FaceTime, cook you dinner if you want to go north (Tri-cities, WA). . . Lol

[obrien.david.j]

1 minute ago, Yourmedic said:

Welp. . . Need help. . . Ideas. . . Anything! 
 

I started this 210 in Jan this year with dry rock and live sand. Added first fish in June, then some soft coral about a month after. Torches are doing good, gargonia and gonis doing great, even accans and sculys doing good. Acro on the other hand. . . Dies. . . Stripes the flesh and pops white. Sadly,2 coral have been killed in this tank thus far. 
 

current parameters: 

 

ALK: 9.6

CAL: 485

MAG: 1405

Nitrates: 54.9

Phosphates: 0.59

PH: 8.1

Temp: 78.1

I have not been dosing anything as I am wanting cal to be about 430 and alk to be 8.6-9. I have a sump with cheato, skimmer running, 1 mp-40, 1 mp-10, and 2 small no name power heads until I can get more mps. 
 

‘’Running XR-30 pros, g5 at 9” above the water set to 86% intensity. They turn on at 8am with a ramp up to 12:30 being full, then begin ramp down at 16:00 (4pm) till 20:00 (8pm) off and go into moon phase according to cycle. 
 

I don’t have a par meter, so that’s the only thing I am really questioning, but seems the par meters have disappeared from the thread, so I am ordering one today because I really want to have acro in my tank and flourish. 
 

any other thoughts or ideas that might be an issue? Willing to call, FaceTime, cook you dinner if you want to go north (Tri-cities, WA). . . Lol

How many XR-30's do you have over this tank, running 86% intensity?

[Yourmedic]

@obrien.david.j I have 3, spaced about 18” apart.

 

Edited December 2, 2022 by Yourmedic

[Manny Tavan]

You want to know why acros die? Do you have a million dollars? Nvm… That won’t even be enough

 

try some easy sps first. When those do well, then add acros 

[reefrun]

When I started a tank with dead rock it took a long time before my acros survived… even the ones that “did well” didn’t grow and then months later died. I never found another reason, so I think it had to do with building up maturity in the tank. Your alk and nutrients are in the high side, but i don’t think it’s  enough to kill things unless they aren’t stable. 
 

been there… I know how much it sucks. Maybe run an icp test?

I always test things out with sone birdsnest before adding other sps… let me know when you’re ready and I’ll kick you a frag to test out 

[goldenbasketreef]

Have you experiencing fluctuation in your water parameter? How often do you test the water?

Acropora doesn't like alk swing more 0.5 dKH for example, the effect usually will show a week after the fact.

Also sometimes RO water is the problem that being overlooked, replacing filter regularly is a must to keep optimal RO water for acropora keeping.

[DaveZ]

Sorry to hear this @Yourmedic. It’s a tough part of the hobby and don’t beat yourself up on it. 
 

As reefrun said, dry rock is a tough one to start with and can take a good amount of time to stabilize the full biome to handle sps. 

Lots of other factors for sps than just water parameters and par values. Have you seen coralline growth taking pace? If not, that’s a good indicator the tank isn’t mature enough for acros to do well. 
 

What was the process of decline look like? STN from the base up? Flesh peeling off from the tip or sides? Going pale and no polyp extension? 
 

I have found that observation of coral and learning how acros are supposed to look and reading the signs of stress can point toward the main contributing factor. 
 

personally I needed to learn that you cannot have enough flow for acros. Most of the early death I saw was a lack of flow. I would say you would want the flow to be strong enough to make your torches not extend. That’s likely closer to the sweet spot for acros. 
 

But if you’re willing to come up to Vancouver I can get you some super hardy acros for $10 per frag for a good size piece when you’re ready to try again. 
 

 

[Kerbash]

Not sure because I do not have as much experience as other people here, but when i first started out had alk above >9 i use to lose a lot of acro introduced into then tank within a couple of days to week, cuz RTN. Then I started dip acclimation over the course of 2 hours which drastically improved my acro survival rate. Compared to now with my alk around 8.6. I do a standard 30 minutes acclimation and they do fine.

I think the acclimation from other people tank which maybe lower might be too stressful for acros, because one thing to keep in mind to is that dkh is logarithmic which means the difference between 8 to 9 is 10 fold.

Definitely a +1 on the dry rock thing too. I found that as I age my live rocks its much easier to keep harder things.

[Yourmedic]

Thank you everyone for all the advice and knowledge. I will put acros on the back burner for now and wait for my tank to get some time under its belt. 
 

@reefrun I just got 2 ICP test kits and plan on sending one out Monday, I’ll post what that comes back with. 
 

@goldenbasketreef My water parameters have been pretty stable which is one of my frustrations. I’ve been wanting my ALK and CAL to drop some and it’s been just hanging out having a good time with where it’s at. LoL. Even with not dosing. Just this week my CAL started to lower (5 ppm) but hopefully that means the coral I do have is starting to use the CAL in the water and will lower is slowly over the next bit. Then as I dose more CAL, ALK will lower. I test weekly for all my water parameters and 4x daily for ALK, CAL, MAG. 
 

@DaveZ I am starting to get spots of purple and some of orange as well. I have been told the orange is coralline as well? Still pretty new though for sure, so I will wait for a lot more coverage before dipping my toe in the acro pool. The flesh started coming off from the bottom, then the top half just all went over night. I’m looking at adding 2 more mp-40s and 1 more mp-10, so we will see how that helps with the top flow too. 
 

@Kerbash yea, I would love my ALK to be lower, just couldn’t find a way to bring it down. Everything I researched said, “just wait, your coral will absorb it and it will go down naturally”. I should have taken that to mean, “your tank is still establishing itself, be patient…” but that’s not me, lol. I thought I could be patient enough that dry rock wouldn’t be a problem and the live sand would help; but wow, knowing what I know now, I would have gotten all live rock! 
 

Thank you again everyone for your insight and the offering of frags!! I will reach out once I have a TON of coralline and have a good go with some birds nest. 

[titus'reef]

Nitrates: 54.9 And Phosphates: 0.59 is very high for sps. I had my nitrates at 50 and phosphate at .25 without issues but didn’t stay long that high, and I took them down carefully without any side effects.  
 

I am keeping my nitrates between 10-20 and po4 is between 0.05 -0.1.  

Edited December 3, 2022 by titus'reef

[DaveZ]

Oh I missed the nitrates and phosphates. Ya my main acro tank sit at 2ppm nitrate and 0.02 phosphate. 
 

The 54ppm NO3 and .59 PO4 is far too high for Acros. I wouldn’t try Acros until your tank is going to stabilize at ~10ppm NO3 and .1 PO4. 
 

You should try easier SPS first like Stylophora or any Digi. 

[Emerald525]

@Yourmedic thanks for posting this thread there is a lot of useful information.  
 

I used dry rock and patience is key.  Usually what happens is after a year or two of dealing with algae and wacky parameters that you can’t change people give up and that’s right when it gets easier. 
 

I would take @DaveZup on a a hardy tricolor frag that he gave me. I can actually clip you off a piece.

I started with it as a browned out frag when my tank was about 2 months old as it colored up I got some other hardy acros from him. It was my canary in the coal mine so to speak. If it died then I knew it wasn’t safe to add other corals. 
 

Titus reef also makes a good point about acclimating. It doesn’t matter with the hardier acros but I have certainly had that happen with more delicate frags. 
 

Thanks everyone for all the good advice !