What the hell is in my water??

[eleyan]

What the hell is in my water??


I'm completely stumped. There is something in my tank that is causing all my zoos and frog spawn to stay closed. at first I thought it was a water quality issue, but after many water changes and enhancements to the filtration system, my parameters look great, but the corals are still closed.
It started when all my mushrooms and zoos closed up and stayed closed for about a month. Oddly enough, my kolt coral, hammer coral and frog spawn and clam looked very healthy. I did a large water change, added more LR and cleaned all the algae off the LR but my my zoos never opened. On top of that, my from spawn closed up as well. I got another rock with zoos from samiam_orami , and those also closed up within a day. I'm running activated carbon and poly filter to try to catch whatever is causing this, and nothing is changing. anyone wants to take a stab at this?

my setup is:
72G bow front
20G oceanic sump
Tunze skimmer
90-100lbs fiji LR
3" live sand
dual 175W 13k MHs
dual 55w actenic PCs

my live stock is:
3.5" yellow tang
3.5" blue tang
1.5" six line wrass
1.5" clown fish
1" chalk bass

large colt coral (18"x18")
hammer coral
frogs spawn
zoos
mushrooms
large clam
sps frags

a bunch of snail, and hermits

my water parameters are:
ammonia, nitrites, nitrates all zero
PH 8.2-8.4
kh 8
ca 450
phosphates 0
temp 78-80

[Ram_Puppy]

I found that my softies were very unapreciative of my lax top off schedule... after I whipped that into shape and salinity stopped fluxuating everything seemed happy. Only other thing I can think of is maybe chemical warfare...

[matt]

Probably as good a guess as anything. The large colt would be the prime suspect IMO.

[StephenA]

My tank has SPS and a rather large colt. I go thru the same phases. I keep my carbon in 24/7. They last for a couple of days then everything seems fine.

[Ram_Puppy]

my tank isn't all that big, but I run a 15 year old magnum 350 on it full of carbon, everything seems happier when that is on. I am thinking of replacing it, I think age is finally starting to show on this beast with reduced flow.

[Ram_Puppy]

the thought just occured to me, maybe it's not what's in your water, but what is NOT in your water. maybe your low on something like strontium or iodine? shot in the dark... my understanding is a water change will usually replensish these elements, but you may want to get a test kit and suppliment? not sure, (I don't even know if they make test kits for strontium (or is it stronium) :) I am pretty sure I have seen fast test or sea test iodine kits. and fo course, it could be something else as well.

[matt]

I'm certain your problems are not a function of no iodine or strontium. These substances are in all salt mixes at a higher concentration than NSW, and feeding your fish brings ALOT of iodine. You could have high dissolved organics, high organic phosphate which I think test kits don't measure, and is the type of phosphate that's introduced with fish urine, or any number of other things. The point is, we can only test for a small percentage of what's actually going on in our water. You could have sand bed problems as well, meaning some mortality in your sand bed animals is allowing a build up of waste products in the sand. You might try to scoop out a cup or so of sand from the bottom of your bed and smell it; if you get a strong sulphur smell, that signals a build up of organic waste without enough sand animals to process it.

Trying to keep corals in a tightly packed closed system can be really frustrating over the long haul. For some unexplained reason, several lare SPS colonies in my tank died a few months ago after years of health and growth. Not only did I not have a definite explanation for this, but neither did Ron Shimek or Eric Borneman, two absolute experts in coral keeping.

If aggressive use of activated carbon seems to help your situation, that's a clear indicator that there are either water quality issues (meaning some sort of build up of toxic substances) or chemical battles between the corals, or a combination of the 2. You can probably best test the chemical warfare possibility by removing the colt coral and making sure that the frogspawn is not near soft corals or leathers.

Another possible course of action, if you can do it, is to add a caulerpa refugium. For this, you don't need anything fancy, just another aquarium or even bucket that you can somehow plumb into your existing water circuit, and enough light to grow macroalgae. This should really help remove low levels of nitrate/phosphate that fuel algae in the main tank, but typically don't register on test kits.

[eleyan]

My salinity is verry stable. I have a float valve connected to my RO/DI water tank and it tops off as soon as water eveporates.

My suppliments are as follows:
- fish pellets once a day
- kent phytoplankton every other day
- kent lugol's once a week
- kent coral vite once a week
- kent kalkwasser in top of watter
- kent a/b everymorning
- 20% water change with oceanic salt once a month.

I'm using the recomended dosage on each of these. Coral vite says that it has all the trace elements, but I'm not sure if I need to suppliment more for some of them?
Does kolt coral produce toxins?
I have some macroalgae in my overflow where I added a PVC pipe to raise the water level. They seem to be doing well, they have been there for about 3 months. I would like to take the kolt out to test that theory, but my other tank has been treated with copper (this tank was never medicaed with copper by the way. I've use chem-clean and kick-ich in it before though, both are supposed to be reef safe)

[eleyan]

Well, three days after turning off the power heads and adding carbon and my corals are starting to look better. I did a little experiment today, I put the power heads in a 1G bucket of water and measured the voltage using my voltmeter between the wall plate's ground and the water. To my surprise, on is reading 13V AC for one and the other is reading 7V AC. These are the Via Aqua 1300, no wonder they are so cheap. I had one for about 4 months and the other for a couple of months. It might be that the epoxy seal they use breaks down with time, and that would explain why the voltage is almost 2x for the older one.

[TAXMAN]

Install a grounding probe for sure. Stray voltage may very well be your only problem.

I had the same problem on my tank. I lost nearly all my shrooms and the zoo's would barely open. But same as you, my frogspawn and other corals flourished. I found nothing definitive in my tank causing the problem. I added a grounding probe about 2 weeks ago and went 5 weeks between my last water change. It has helped. I also turned off my MH's and have gone with all VHO. I dont think light is your problem, it was just one of my changes in the last couple of weeks. I also ran carbon for 2 months solid with no apparent help to the tank. So I have gone without carbon for the last 5 weeks.

So with all of this, my shrooms are starting to come back, the Zoo's are opening more and getting thier color back. It looks like stuff is setteling down. I would have to contribute most of my problems to stray voltage and the rest to my lighting issues.

BTW. I also talked to Ron S. And Eric B. about this with my tank. They couldnt help me out either. Everything tested perfect.

I hope your tank comes back to you.

[BA]

good idea Johhny, did the one i picked up for you, make a difference after all???

[matt]

Okay, I think I have a better idea of your problem now. Stop using the the lugols and coral vite. They are doing nothing for the health of your tank, and very likely contributing to your corals closing. Also, stop feeding the phytoplex, try DTs live phytoplankton instead. There's a huge difference. Your corals don't eat phytoplankton, but your clam does and your sand bed animals will. BTW, did you scoop out some sand and smell it? It's worth doing. If your sand bed really stinks, it's worth considering a big project, which is removing a portion of your sand bed, and either replacing it with new sand or really cleaning the old stuff, which will unfortunately kill most of the animals in it, but get rid of the built up detritus. Then you'd repeat this procedure until all of your sand has been replaced and restocked with good live sand and some benthic animals, mostly worms. It kind of depends how long your system has been set up. If it hasn't been that long, like less than a year, probably the sand is okay and you could just heavily stock it. You might consider adding an inch or two of fine sand; 4" is the generally accepted minimum depth for a deep sand bed. You're almost there, so give it some thought.

[eleyan]

Taxman, so you didn't have to remove the voltage source, just added the probe and that fixed it?

Matt, what supliments do you sugesst to replace the coralvite and lugol's?

[matt]

Matt, what supliments do you sugesst to replace the coralvite and lugol's?

Nothing. Don't spend your money to poison your tank. Most "supplements" are toxins in anything above NSW levels, especially iodine. Why do you think it's used as a disinfectant on wounds? Because it kills stuff.

There's a pretty huge snake oil contingent in this hobby. If you listened to the hype, you'd wonder how anything has survived in the ocean without all these miracle products.

[eleyan]

what about all the trace elements? I also remeber people saying that Mg is important for coral growth? what exactly is your process/schedule on your tank? :?

[TAXMAN]

Eleyan. I didnt remove anything from my tank. I dont know if I had a voltage problem or not. I never tested for it. But I did several things all in the last couple of weeks. I'm not really sure what part helped my tank. As for supplements, I never dose anything except Alk and Ca when it gets low. I add alk about once a month and Ca even less. My Mg stays at 1500 with water changes alone. I test once a week for Ca, Alk, Mg, Amonia, Nitrates, Nitrites, Phosphates. I test PH whenever I am thinking about it. I use a probe.

[matt]

I feed my fish, feed the sand bed animals and corals with a plankton substitute (homemade seafood mush) top off water, and maintain calcium and alkalinity with a calcium reactor. That's it. Trace elements are definitely in abundance in salt mix; unless you never (and I really mean never) change your water, you got plenty.

Magnesium deficiencies have been corollated with lower calcium solubility, but if your salinity is correct and you use any decent salt mix, you have a low chance of having a magnesium deficiency; animals do not extract it from the water like they do calcium and carbonate. If you're really concerned about it, get a GOOD magnesium test, preferably by a company that does not sell magnesium (the conspiracy theorist in me :) ) and check it out. But I would stop adding anything you can't or don't test for; and remember that the animals are usually far more sensitive to the presence of some toxin than are test kits.

[matt]

Oh yeah, I'd be VERY careful with anything like chemi-clean or kick-ich. These products kill micro-organisms; that is their purpose. The health of your tank is built on the presence of a diverse population of micro organisms remarkably similar to the ones that are killed by algaecides or other such products. I'm getting the feeling you might want to read some articles and/or books by current leading aquarists and marine biologists; Ron Shimek, Eric Borneman, Anthony Calfo, etc. You're going to find a common theme in all these writings; stay away from "additives"

Good luck!

[eleyan]

Thanks for all the feedback. my problem seems to be under control after I removed the powerheads. I will also cut back on the suppliments and see what happens.

[RobertG]

Matt has some valid points, water changes is going to be the best supplements you can do. A Calcium reactor is nice piece of equip. to have. Automation is the best thing you can do for a tank. IMO. Keep the additives to a minimum. If you dont want to do a reactor you dont have to. Drip Kalk & do water changes. You should be able to keep it right this way. Check that sand.

[BA]

maybe it was stray voltage, if your tank got better after the removal of powerheads