Ready to quit corals! Long Post

[jpc763]

I have been reefkeeping for close to 4 years now and never had the problems I have had for the last 6 months or so.

I started with a 55g and upgraded 2.5 years ago to a 125.

First - My Setup
125g AGA reef ready with a 55g Fuge
3x 250w XM 20k SE MH lights
2x 160w VHO 10k lights (unplugged)
Vertex In-250 skimmer
Bulk Reef GFO/Carbon system
Koralia 1 in sump
Koralia Magnum 8 power heads on wave maker
Mag 20 return pump
RKL with pH, ORP and Temp controlling lights, top off, heaters and probes

Next - Livestock
100lbs of well established live rock
60lbs of well established live sand
CUC - Hermits, Snails, Emerald Crabs, Sand Sifting Star, Brittle Star
2x Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
2 Ocellaris Clown Fish - Aquired 8/2007
Royal Gramma - Aquired 12/2007
Coral Hawkfish - Aquired 3/2008
Coral Beauty Angelfish - Aquired 1/2009
Yellow Tang - Aquired 4/2009
Blue Hippo Tang - Aquired 5/2009
Lyretail Anthias - Aquired 6/2009
Yellow Watchman Goby - Aquired 12/2009
Hawaiian Flame Wrasse - Aquired 8/2010
2 Maxima clams 2+ years old

Finally my Corals
Currently I have lots of Zoa's, Paly's, Rics, Mushrooms and a few LPS (Hammer, Brain, Acans, Candycane) left but they are dying and a

Now the problem...
December 2009 I got new MH bulbs. I switched from XM 10k to some AquaMaxx 14k bulbs from marine depot. Prior to the bulb switch, I had lots of LPS (Acans, Hammer, Candycane, Brains, Duncans, Hydnopora, Chalice, among others), some SPS (Monti Caps, Monti Digita, Acros, Birds Nest, Stylo's, etc) and a bunch of Zoas, Palys and Mushrooms.

About 1 year ago I had one of my 250w SE bulbs pop the outer glass off into the tank. The actual bulb kept burning so the tank was dosed with some heavy duty uV. I lost a couple fish shortly after that and had a few colonies die off. That started a cascade effect of colonies dying causing nutrients and I had a hair algae outbreak.

After several months of that battle, I finally got the algae under control by cutting all of the dead coral out. I lost a lot of my corals that way. Many of the Acro's died, all of the Monti's died but most of the LPS did not die... yet.

Today, I have no SPS left at all. I am now slowly losing my SPS one by one. I had a beautiful war coral that had about 200 eyes, it is now dead. I have Trachyphylia that I have had for almost 4 years that is now dying. The duncan is dead, and last night I began seeing the hammer begin to eject heads.

So I am at a loss. My tank is well established. I do water changes every 2- 3 weeks of 20g each. I do not dose but I have in the past. I have had my water tested professionally 3 times and the report comes back good (see pics below).

One additional note. About 6 weeks ago, I started getting a pH trigger alarm from my RKL. It would report a pH of 1.00 then immediately clear. With the help of DA support, I removed one of my heaters that was believed to be leaking current into the tank. Since then, the alarms have stopped. I DO have a titanium probe and have had one for years.

Any ideas?

 

[Off The Deep End]

Your alk is low i believe most of us try to keep it around 3.5meq/l

 

[Boogie]

Any pics of the tank? Have you tried dipping any of the corals in coral rx or the like? Possible bugs? I have no idea here but I'm just tryin to help brainstorm.

 

[gh0st]

It looks like you're Alkalinity has been running low, and seems to be getting worse as time goes on.
What is you're PH at? With low Alk and Boron, I'd guess it's probably fluctuating a fair bit, and it sounds like you're PH probe may be less than trust worthy.

Alkalinity is IMHO one of the most important parameters for coral health, especially SPS and LPS.

How does the sand bed look? If it's not getting sifted enough with cleaner crew, you may be running into build up of Organic Acids, which can pull down the Alk and PH.

Stray voltage can also cause some mysterious tank and coral issues, checking it out with a Multimeter is never a bad idea if thats a possible culprit.

 

[jpc763]

Well... I just got an email from my RKL - pH triggered and cleared so whatever is causing my pH probe to go wacky is still in there. DA is saying it is some other equipment interfering. I tell them that it has not been a problem since I got the system (December) until 6 weeks ago.

To answer some questions, the pH is pretty steady between 8.2 and 8.3. It is currently at 8.29. ORP is at 415 (I have no idea what ORP measures or what is good but...)

I dip my corals in CoralRX but they are all well established colonies that have grown for years and now are dying. Everyone of them has grown 2-10x from when I got them but are now slowly dying. I have fragged and given/sold frags many times.

I have excellent flow as wel las pretty good sifting going on at that sand bed.

Alk has *always* been difficult for me to maintain. I was dosing but couldn't get it to 3. My Alk was low when my Corals were great.

I have BRS 2 part but I am very worried about raising the pH so I stopped.

So how do you check with a multimeter and do you test with grounding probe in or out?

Pics can be seen from my webcam - http://jpcfishcam.dyndns.org:1024/img/main.cgi?next_file=main.htm

Thanks, John

 

[Cake_Boss]

Great idea on the webcam, how exactly do I do that? I've always just stuck the red lead into the water the black either in the water or the side of the container/tank/whatever the water is in. Try is both with and without the grounding probe in. If you get current with the probe in, the probe isn't doing its job. If you have current, the fun part is finding it. Pumps and heaters are always suspects, but I've been reading of a lot of other users saying current going from their fixture into their tank is an issue. I don't think stray current is the issue, you clam seems healthy in the webcam.

 

[Boogie]

On another board I read that a guy was getting voltage from the power strip he was using. Not sure how or why but he said his voltage went away when he switched out power strips.

 

[jpc763]

Great idea on the webcam, how exactly do I do that?.

The webcam is wired to my internet and just streams out. You punch it through your router then I use a free DNS service to give it a name. It is very handy to keep tabs on the tank when on vacation. That and my RKL .net module (when it is not sending me false alarms!).

For stray voltage, I removed all 4 of my heaters and replaced them with 2 brand new ones. The number of alarms has decreased dramatically, but has not ceased. I will check the voltage tonight.

So assuming that stray voltage is not my problem and low dKh is not my problem, can anyone thing of other causes?

Another thing I noticed is that a few pieces of my LR are volcanic. Could that be a problem?

Thanks, John

 

[Off The Deep End]

volcanic meaning lava rock? If so i do remember a few years ago someone put it in there tank and over time it wiped out everything, i cant remember what was leaching out of it, i will see if i can find it. as for lava rock god only knows what all metals and mineral are in the rock Iron copper zinc silver ???? and many many more after all it was magma from the earths core when it came up for air never use that stuff, Also I think your main contaminants would be phosphourous and sulphur.

 

[jpc763]

Yes, volcanic as in lava or more specifically Basalt.

If that is the case, I see a major tear down and restart in my future

So if some of the rock is toxic to the tank, is all of it a total loss?

Also, wouldn't those chemicals show up on the tests above?

Finally, why are the fish and inverts unaffected?

 

[Off The Deep End]

Do you dose copper at all? If no, than you can test your tank for copper. That should tell you if the rock is leaching, you might get a second opinion on this Its not that the rock is toxic its what the rock is putting in your water.

 

[Rebel]

I don't know if it would show up in a water test or not, but is there any chance that when your bulb broke some stray piece of something didn't fall in the tank and is leeching out and killing things off?

 

[jpc763]

I do not dose copper at all. The 3 tests above show a trace amount of copper so maybe it is leaching trace amounts of copper. I do not test copper unless I bring water to the AWT above.

So on a SE MH bulb, there is the actual bulb then there is the larg outer housing that has the uV coating on it. That outer housing cracked in half and the piece that came off the end dropped into the tank. The actual bulb was still lit when I found it. and turned it off. I then fished out the half of bulb that dropped in the tank and when both sides cooled I fit them together to see if I missed a piece. It fit together perfectly so nothing splintered off into the tank as far as I can tell.

I am going to test for voltage now.

 

[Wicked Color]

I dont just see trace copper, I see unbound copper levels on the rise. This is very likely the issue, you need to pinpoint its source.

 

[jpc763]

I am not adding copper at all. Is copper killing my coral?

 

[jpc763]

Also, on testing for voltage. Am I testing AC or DC?

 

[Cake_Boss]

If it was me, I would take out the lava rock, run some polyfilter, carbon, do a series of w/c. I don't know what else takes care of copper.

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

 

[Off The Deep End]

I dont just see trace copper, I see unbound copper levels on the rise. This is very likely the issue, you need to pinpoint its source.

+1 I would take out the lava rock

 

[jpc763]

OK, while I am not arguing or disagreeing, I am questioning. The water test from AWT says "Good" for my Copper levels (0.01, 0.02 and 0.03 respectively). If it is killing my coral, why would they (professional water testers) say "Good"?

I need to get rid of the volcanic rock. Not looking forward to that as I will have to remove everything to get one off the bottom. Bummer.

J

 

[WrasseAttack]

Do a search on ReefCentral's chemistry forums. RHF and a couple of the other chemistry minded guys had some issues with AWT.

Here's a link to some copper and heavy metal toxicity threads. Second link is pretty interesting as far as how accurate these test are:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1912165&highlight=awt


http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1935820&highlight=awt

From reading a couple of these threads about people's coral dying and heavy metals are suspected, it's always recommended to use something like cuprisorb, polyfilter and carbon.

I would also recommend buying your own alkalinity test kit and if it's really low, raise it using two part and then try and keep it constant with dosing and adding kalkwasser in your auto top off.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rhf/index.php#16