My Corals are going to die, and I think I'm gonna let them

Over the last few months I've been battling trying to get my few little frags thriving and growing, and things were bad, and then they got better, then about a month ago, things suddenly took a turn for the worst.

Now for the last 6 weeks I've just been trying to fight one problem after another, and it seems I keep finding new things to have to deal with.

I think I'm at the end of my rope, and I'm not sure what's left to do.

Tank specs:
50 gal, with 30 gal sump. Total Volume is about 75-77 gals @ any given time.
ASM Mini Skimmer (I think it's perfect for my system) Skimming 24-7
Wet/Dry filter (with airstone in sump)
Cannister Filter (Took off about a week ago in my quest to defeat Nitrates)
T5 lights 1 Purple (i think, I'm colorblind), 2 blue, 1 white. I think they're all 10,000k. When I bought the Tek Light, the guy asked me if I was gonna do corals and chose the bulbs for me.
Refugium (added three weeks ago to battle my Nitrates problem.)
A lot of water movement, but not too much. I have an Azoo 2500 (rated 66gph) that runs for 10 secs every 10 secs against the back wall. I can see the water movement when I dose or feed and I think it's adequate.)
Salinity: 1.024
PH: 8.2
Temp: 76 (@ night) - 80 (@ day) <-- fan blowing
Ammo: 0
Nitrites: 0
Calcium: 560 (for the love of god I can't get it to go down)
Dkh: 12 (last checked about 5 days ago. Ran out of test kit)
Magnesium: Finally got a test kit and wasn't even registering on the scale. I started dosing with a kent supplement on Sunday.


SO! Things weren't looking too hot about 3 months ago, and then suddenly the mushrooms, which I use as my ultimate indicator of how things are going, picked up off the rocks and spread out and started popping. I even saw three tiny ones budding on the rock. I have some star polyps, a white polyp, and a couple others I'm not sure what they are. But the dude @ the LFS told me they're pretty hardy and good for the beginner (I trust him) They were all looking happy, bright, vibrant.

Then about 6 weeks ago, it seems like everything took a turn for the worst, and I've been trying to find out what the problem was.

I thought it was my using Tap water plus Prime that was probably catching up with me, so I got a tap water filter, and started using that about a month ago and I like it. I installed a Sterilzer as well and noticed my nuisance algae is about 95% less! But that didn't help the state of the corals.

I eventually realized my being colorblind was contributing to me reading the nitrate test results incorrectly and so I nailed it down to Nitrates being the problem.

I started water changes over the last couple weeks, and that cause PH to fall off and I got kent PH powder which seems to work perfectly, as opposed to the seachem brand. So PH became less of a problem.

My Nitrates didn't decrease like I expected it too, so I used some prime hoping that would help, it seemed to. I did another water change and dismantled my cannister filter, changed the filter pads on the wet dry and washed out some of the bioballs. Nitrates are down to 20 now.

A couple days ago I started feeling like there was hope, the corals started looking less pathetic, my algae problem is nonexistant, my fish are fine.

This morning I wake up and I notice all the corals look a little worse, and I'm not sure what to do anymore. I looked in the refugium and I see a ton of slimey like bubbles at the top and the seaweed and macro algae looks kinda pathetic (best word I can use). I raised the flow through the fuge. I believe I had it way too slow. I think when I was doing the water change I slowed the flow and never reset it. Maybe the water was too stagnant. The macro algae have a ton of little black specs on them. Wonder what that is....

I thought maybe too much heat from the power compacts, but I hit it with my ir thermometer which confirmed the reading from the main tank reading of 76. It just occured to me as I'm writing this that maybe I have the lights on too long. I think it's running from 6pm to 6am reverse cycle.

Anyways, I think I'm fighting the inevitable, trying to get this right, for some reason I can't find the balance. I'm gonna continue working on the magnesium and if this don't work and they die, I'll let the system ride out for a couple months and start from scratch again.

 

Tap water! Tap water can have anything in it and vary day to day. I would suggest at the very least, buying water from the grocery store. If you have the extra cash, get an RODI unit to connect to your sink.

Don't get discouraged. You are on the right track. How often are you do water changes, how much and what salt? Find someone to help you read the test kits once a week. 560ppm cal is pretty high. Try to get your temperature a little more stable too. If it shoots to 80 when your lights are on, turn your heater up so it keeps it at 80 at night too. Stability is key.

Get rid of your bioballs and your filter pads. Replace them with cheato and caulerpa.

 

well said matt. also how old are the bulbs? youve got some photosynthetic corals there. if the bulbs are old, they arent getting the proper strength of light.

 

++ What Matt recommended. When you wash the bioballs are you doing this in salt or fresh? Fresh water will kill any good biological filtration on the bioballs. It is a good idea to just wash them off from the water taken out during a water change (if you plan on keeping them).

I would also confirm the age of your bulbs and replace if necessary.

 

Tap water purifier = DI unit. You need an RO as well.

 

I have the tap water filter too. I can not justify the 4 to 1 waste ratio on an RO. Living in the desert and the fact that Im on a water meter, which would cost me a ton. The DI only filter works, it puts out 0 tds. The only problem when you have no RO is that the you go threw the filters twice as fast which can get pricey. But for me its still cheaper than the waste of an RO/DI unit.

 

Why not just collect the waste water in a 5 gallon bucket? I use the waste water for Cats / Dogs, plants around house. I do this primarily for the reason you mentioned regarding how fast filters go. I understand the water meter, my grandmother lived in the dessert and water was crazy high compared to city.

 

here's how it breaks down, Matt;

RO/DI unit =
1.Expensive (although I can't say the cost is the REAL problem, but it's a con nontheles)
2. Brooklyn, NY tiny apt means, no space for anything. Even if I got one I could connect to a faucet (which i'm sure is a piece of cake) I have no place for storage of the water I've filtered.
3. Water cost with the waste water from RO/DI

As for the salt, I've been using oceanic I think. It's in a big blue bottle. I started buying it cause it's the biggest size I have and I use the bottles afterward to hold my filtered water.

RE: the calcium, I've been battling for months to get it down and it's finally made a drop, it was well over 680 for a while. The recent water changes are bringing it down. I've been told by a million people that raising alkalinity is supposed to drop calcium. I haven't seen that in practice :-\

RE: the temp swings, this is a really recent thing. I had the fan up for a while and I was thinking of taking it off due to the massive amount of water that was evaporating and how humid it made the room, it's one of those 4 fan arrays from azoo, it fell in the tank the day I was taking it off and got wet and I tossed it aside for a couple months. Last week I broke it out, the soldering iron, and multimeter, and got it running again, the powerblock died, guess it shorted when the fans got wet, I have a computer that runs 24-7 close by so I slapped a molex on it, rewired the fans (salt corroded them) and got that running again, hence my drops in temp.

I never took my heater out and I think I have it set on 76 or so, but when the lights come on, I guess the fan can't compete with the lights enough to maintain the temps in a more stable manner. I've been readin recently and it seems that people tend to prefer 76-78 range, so I was shooting for in there, can't help the raise to 80. I even raised my lights a couple inches, I did get a degree drop in temps tho

As for dismantling my wet/dry. If i do that, then I'll have no mechanical means of filtration at all, since the canister is gone. Also, I have a fuge with seaweed that looks like a piece of dark green cellophane paper that's been crumpled and what i was told is macro algae that looks like Medusa's head. Dark green as well. it looks like a snake's mating ball. It has a tong of little black specs on it when i looked this morning.

Bulbs are about 7 months old. In my mind they seem dimmer than when I first installed them, but they are still pretty bright. If you look directly at them you'rer risking a headache. I know that's far from technical, but it's the best I can do without a light meter. lol. I have one white, one blue that comes on @ 930 till 6. then the one purple and one blue comes on @ 1 till 5.

Well looking @ my response to matt, you know I concur.

 

Well if the RO/DI is not an option, then a local store may be. You have <70gallons. 10% water change is 7gallons. I would just do 10 gallons every 2 weeks. You can get water from walmart or local grocery stores for $1.99/5gallons. If that is not an option, then try to get one of those filters that screw into your faucet instead. Anything is better than straight tap. The water can vary so much from day to day. 80 degrees is not hot. If I were you I would keep is consistantly at 80 vs 76-80. There are even some studies done on SPS that says it thrives best at 80.

How did your calcium get up so high? additives?

What are you using to test salinity?

As for mechanical filtration ie canister filters. don't need em with a reef. It actually does a lot more harm if you don't change/clean the pads weekly. A skimmer should be the only mechanical filtration you need. If you have a large bioload, get some filter socks to connect to your return. Gotta clean those every few days though. Your reef should be almost a self contained ecosystem. Most people that run reefs rely primarily on their refugium with macroalgae for filtration.

 

I agree with not needing a mechanical filtration, I will occasionally put a filter sock on my drain but that's it. Most of the time my system runs with no mechanical filtration besides the skimmer. This hobby requires a lot of sacrifices for most, particularly in time and money. City water is notoriously bad. My guess is that is where you nuisance algae issues were coming from and your coral issues.

As far as an RO/DI unit goes you can get a good one for about $100, I have the mity might from airwaterice.com and that's what it cost me. It's 50 gal/day with 4 stages. The amount of water your using really shouldn't add up to that much. You don't have to have it on all the time. I hook mine up when I need water and turn it off when I don't. If it is a 4:1 waste to product ratio, then if you make 5 gallons of clean water, then your wasting 20. If you do a water change weekly that's about 80 gals. a month your wasting, I don't know how expensive your water is, but in PA, that will cost maybe a dollar or two, unless your water if priced much differently, it's not an overwhelming cost and the benefits are worth it themselves IMO. There are only a few places in the US where tap water is good enough to use in a reef tank and most cities that is by far not the case.