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Help me with my system! (1 Viewer)

spsick

spsick

Acro-poor-a
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I am at wit's end with my tank. I love the hobby but it has been a couple years now and I am really tiring of this lack of success. I was able to keep corals thriving with much less effort and equipment before which only fuels my frustration. Any suggestions are welcome.

My Problem: No LPS or SPS thrive. softies, rbta and clam do thrive and grow well. I do not see any pods or worms, not even in my fuge. My husbandry and maitenence are sound, I have even gone to a smaller skimmer and feeding more in an attempt to produce any kind of nuisance algae (I had this before along with thriving corals) and so far no luck. For gosh sakes I can't even keep my larry jackson alive that I have had since I had a 20 gallon with pc's and an airstone skimmer. As far as I can see the fact I do not see pods is linked to my poor success, I just cannot figure out why. Fire away with questions, I'm happy to answer.
 
I should also mention phosphate levels, magnesium, blah, blah, blah.... I had awesome success with no attention to these levels before. I have checked them, all params are reasonable. I do not have a test kit that test super low levels of phosphate, but I sincerely doubt this is the problem. (pretty sure I had high p04 as I had bryopsis but sps still grew like weeds) I just mention this because every time I mention my problem these are what people say is my prob. While they might inhibit growth slightly, all my normal testable params are good and I don't think any one being slightly off would cause me to not be able to keep sps alive. Even if I did have phosphate, I am changing 25 gallons a week (another attempt as resolution) which would remove it.
 
Is this your 120 or did you change? Can you remind me/us about all the equipment you're using? Are you dosing anything? What fish do you have? What lighting & bulbs? Circulation? etc. Basically everything.
 
I figured I should mention, but also figured everyone would know by now.

120 display w 30 gallon sump/fuge on reverse lighting

2x 6025 modded, 2x mj1200 on acjr. return: QO3000 I have tried several configurations but the way I have these running gives me good flow in all areas (not blowing polyps off sps but enough to provide good back and forth as well as irritate lps). I am using DG's method of back and forth.

octopus nw200 4-layer meshmodded with all restrictions bored. Should be performing very similar to an extreme 200. I had been running this for a couple years but recently went to a smaller backup to see if there would be any ill results.

I had been using c-balance for years with awesome success, but figured I should try BRS twopart a while back, which didn't work for me. Then I wen to kalk in topoff, which worked well at keeping pH up, but kept rising alk and Ca too much (from lack of growth) so I stopped and now i'm back to c-balance, which I use very little of because I don't have barley anything using it and I'm doing 25g a week WC.

Fish- pair of black saddle clowns, small LMB, 4-5" yellow tang, 3 chromis.

2x175 mh on mag ballast. great succes with xm10k for years but tried iwasakis and now going back to xms
2x110 vho had been 1 actinic, 1 actinic white since I set the tank up
2x54 overdriven, also 1 actinic, one ati aquablue. I kept all sps in the upper 12" of the tank. Yes I realize this setup may not be ideal for explosive growth, but certainly enough to sustain life and some growth(look at dobbs last tank, and my dad's growing the heck out of my ultimate blue stag on the sand bed under vho's)

12 hours on the fluorescent, 8 on the MH
 
Oh, yeah.... rodi that I change the filters obnoxiously frequent, always 0 tds after di, and I am just now seeing 2 before it. I always changed the membrane more than I needed to and fahz convinced me that it does not need to be changed for 1+ years until tds starts rising.
 
Does anyone on this board live close by that could come check your parameters with a different test kit?
 
The only thing I cannot get past is that maybe some metal or other chemical is getting past the ro, but the doc lives just on the other side of 35e from me and he has always had good luck. Perhaps we have different supply but I don't know if his comes from the little canada or roseville tower. Either way I think all our water comes from lake vadnais. Fahz also said st paul municipal water does not have chlorimine, maybe mine does?
 
Is there ANY possibility that you inadvertently leeched copper in somehow? Have you tested for it? Just a thought.
 
Do you run a ground probe? I worked at a fish store and had similar problems with the electricity only affecting certain corals and not others.
 
What problems were you having with the two-part? Magnesium needs to be kept at proper levels to make sure that your Ca and Alk balance doesn't get out of whack. I'm assuming that you know this, but just reiterating it to make sure that you don't let this get too low or go untested all together.

Flow seems to be lacking as well. Just by a quick and simple "turnover rate" check - 2x ~1200 gph (modded 6025's) + 2x ~300gph (maxi 1200s) + 500 gph (+/- depending on headloss from return) = 3200 gph / 120 gallons = 26x turnover when they're all running. When you're running DG's "tide schedule" your probably around 16-17x turnover.

I know this number really isn't all that significant, but I think it's way too low for keeping SPS. You should try to boost this up to at least 50x or more, IME.

I wouldn't worry about phosphates unless you're seeing algae growth. I wouldn't consider signs of bryopsis to equate to high phosphate levels either. It's able to grow in low nutrient water like an sps tank very successfully - but for some reason, doesn't like high Mg levels.

Finally, if you're doing regular large water changes, are you raising the newly mixed saltwater to proper levels before doing a water change? Or are you adding the new saltwater then raising the levels? I'm not sure how you're managing this aspect with "c-balance" (I'm not familiar with this product).

Those are a few of my suggestions.
 
from reading everything u wrote...I believe it is your flow/circulation...I just uped my flow to 40 and i would still need to add more for my sps. Eric is right on the 50x more flow...Sean mentioned to me the same thing.
 
Thanks Eric, I appreciate the input. I have toyed with more flow but cannot get it to work to my liking. Any more and it's too much for the acros, I have them all in areas to get excellent flow... Again my ultimate blue stag is thriving in my dad's tank with puny turnover. One mj900+ return in a 29...
 
What do you see happening when you've tried more flow and what is telling you that they don't like it?

I've had to really work with powerhead placement to get the flow that I want. (Still not there, btw). Only time I've noticed corals not reacting well is when there is a lot of sand being blown around or if it is in a direct line of constant flow. The sand being blown around has been my biggest issue to deal with (next time I'm going barebottom for that reason alone). But that's beside the point. In my opinion, flow is so important because it suspends particulate matter which can be more easily skimmed out, fed on, filtered, or decomposed by all of your creatures (skimmer, corals, beneficial bacteria, feather dusters, sponges, etc.).

Few other thoughts: what is your pH doing? Are you able to maintain a stable pH with the reverse lighting and kalk? What temperature and salinity are you keeping your tank at? What are you using to measure your salinity?

I ask because I think that softies tend to be much more tolerant of fluctuations vs. sps and lps.

Anyway, my intention is to help and don't want to further stress you out with all this stuff by looking for a needle in the hay stack to find what's causing you all these issues. Trying to take a more bottom up approach rather than top down, that's all.

You'll get your tank back! I know it!!!
 
I agree, I'd watch pH for swings and lows. If you're on a controller, recalibrate your probe (obvious, I know).

have you tried running... aaha, I can't remember the name of it, but it's like filter floss that turns colors depending on what it's absorbing. Then you could be sure there's not copper in there.

My only other thought is some bacterial thing that lingers in the tank that only affects your SPS.
 
Originally I had two sureflos running on mj900's in my 50G & I barely kept the SPS alive, then I added three tunze 6045's & in about a months time there was very noticable change in the growth of the SPS's. you might want to reconsider your flow preferences & try higher flow & see if you like the results. All LPS appeared stressed out initially then I rearranged the pumps so that the most tubulence was closer to the SPS ...wont hurt to try....:beerchug:
 
From my experiences as long as you have the pumps on the ends directly facing to the other side and mounted up as high as possible without allowing a vortex that your flow should be just fine as long as you keep it so that there is no collision going on.

I have just 2 mj1200 w/ sureflows ( 2200gph ) in mine as flow isn't an issue as long is it is all moving in the same direction. When you start to have collision this is when you need to up the flow to compensate. To me 10X, 20X, 30x, it's all hogwash too me...... Good linear flow makes up for gph.

It certainly isn't a silver bullet to this puzzle.


Have you consider running some heavy metal media to see if there is some type of contaminants in the tank and/or rock. Wasn't there a while back where you though you have some wierd bacteria or something. What did you use to treat that ? possibly some side effects that contaminated the rocks.
 
What do you have for a substrate and how long has it been there?

I'm trying to remember, did you do some experimenting with depth of the sand bed a couple months ago? If so, could that have mucked you up?

You could remove the sand bed and do a couple massive water changes. If that fixes it in a couple months, you could introduce a new clean sand bed.
 
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