Something's Gone Awry

Thats true, didnt think of that. Luna

 

Is a false zero phosphate reading possible? Can it be inhibiting the corals on the way to being 'taken out' by the algae and Phosban? If you were taking your water sample from the main tank, I could not see this happening as readily. From the sump, I could see there being a greater possibility. Just thinking.......

 

Yeah, where are you taking your water samples from?

 

One thing is for sure, you have dinoflagelettes... Thats the brownish stringy/slimey stuff with the bubbles in it.

Its looking like you're going through a cycle. I know you transfered to the tank 6 months ago, and this has been going on for a little while. I think your parameters finally got up high enough to effect the corals, and the algae and dinoflagelettes are keeping them in check. A minicycle will not efect the fish very much, but will definetly effect your corals.

 

+++3 Geek!

 

I hate to bring this up again...but wheres the coraline algae??? If your parameters were in check like you say they are, there would be some, atleast on the power heads or the overflow cover. 6 months is enough time for it to be in spots atleast and I dont see any.

Coraline is the first sign things are good in the tank, when it starts to go away, thats the first sign something is wrong...


I dont know if you are using salifert test kits, but they have had a few batches of bad test kits over the past year or so.

 

I just read your build thread again and noticed your tank has only been set up 3 months, not 6, and if this has been going on for a few weeks, your having problems from the transfer then too... I would be looking into testing your water for sulfates from transferring the sand.

 

I'm so sorry, I can't begin to imagine your frustration. I pray that everything starts to get better.

 

I looked closely at all your pictures. All I can see are a few Stainless Steel screws on the pumps. I doubt if those are a problem but I'll throw it at ya.

I noticed the dinoflagellates as well. I think that is something to consider.

One other thing that came to mind - Is it possible that there is something in the sand or in/on a rock that is leeching into the water?

Have you ever tested your RO for metals? Is it possible that the RO system is compromised and there is some bad stuff coming in?

 

If it's dinoflagellates (that is what it looks like to me too):

Here's what someone else did to beat it.

We cut the lights for 24 hours, and then every day there after we ramped it up an hour, and now its been running at 4 hours a day for the last week. We're going to start putting it up to an eventual 8-10 hours in the end, but slowly and monitor how things go. If the stuff comes back at all, the light gets cut an hour.

We also started using filter floss between the baffles of the sump, and blew the rocks off daily (sucking this stuff out was a pain, this was easy). The filter floss got changed daily, or sometimes multiple times per day depending on how gunked up it got.

Feeding effectively got cut in half.

And we also increased the flow. Those pictures were days after we added the SEIO 2600. We had a total of about 750gph flow in powerheads, plus the Mag 9.5 for return. This was too low of flow in the tank, but the SEIO 2600 kicked that up a bit, and now things are getting back to normal.



And:


No, we didnt do waterchanges, as they seemed to only fuel this outbreak. Oddly enough, all information I could find pertaining to dinoflagellets said the same - the trace elements in the new water fuel it. So we went without water changes.

We placed filter floss between the baffles of our sump, after the skimmer but before the return compartment, so if fo whatever reason it got tooooo clogged, the water would just fall over the baffle instead of through it.

No corals in the tank because this stuff was smothering them. We have a 40gal frag grow-out tank, seperate from this system, and put every coral that we could in there. Not enough room though, so some got moved to the fuge where this stuff, ironically, wasnt growing, or at least as fast. For what its worth, some corals did get overlooked and were subject to the full black out on day one, and then only an hour on day two, and so on. Ran at 4 hours for about 5 days, then bumped to 8-9 hours which is where we were in the beginning. The corals that remained in the tank survived and are actually spreading pretty well. Everything is in fact, now that this isnt choking things out.

Oh, and on top of everything else, we increased the flow 3 fold. So that seemed to help a little too

I guess in the case of this stuff - you have to take some chances. Our chaeto survived, and actually grew explosively after the lighting was back on track.

Actually, we had the fuge unlit for a period of 3 days. Then right back to normal.


Here's the actual thread:


Reef Central Online Community - Cyanobacteria or Dinoflagelettes?



I don't know if any of this applies to you, as I don't know how much you feed or how much flow you have, but this was at least good reading.