Slackers predicament

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Brandon
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Slackers predicament

Post by Brandon »

Alright, I've been pissed off, bored, dissinterested , etc in this hobby for the last 6 months or so. My reef husbandry consists of topping off the tank when it starts sucking air, and throwing some flake at the fish when I think of it. I need to play catch up on my tank a bit :)

Anyways, I noticed some of my sps were a bit brown, then I started noticing that most of my lps were dieing. My pectinia paeonia which I grew from a litle sprout was totally bleached, had a hydnophora the size of 2 softballs that was also totally bleached, a large colony of the flourescent green calustera has just a few heads alive on it, etc... some stuff is dead. None of my eupyllia was affected at all (so far). On the sps side mostly a loss of coloration tending toward brown, my green slimer is now a brown slimer with purple tips.. weird.

I think I know what the problem was/is. Before the holiday season some time, my skimmer was making a bit too much noise, it was way dirty, so I just unplugged it, figured I'd get around to it later. Heh, that was 2 weeks ago. Also twice the tank has ran low on water and looked like nothing but lots of bubbles, probably for most of the day while I was busy. I remembered the LPS being irritated a bit by this before.. So maybe a combination of these 2 took them over the edge? Just a theory, but no other ideas.

I have had a recent problem with flatworms, not bad just a few here and there , because of my total slackieness, I have flatworm exit, but just haven't done anything about it.

I've vacumned all of the flatworms up that I can see, and am running 1/2 gallon of carbon. I'm going to treat for flatworms and change approx 40-50 gallons of water tommorrow. As of tonight, PH was 8.6, and no detectable nitrates or nitrites, I didn't test ALK/CA , and didnt see a reason to test MA or PO.
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snoopdog
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Post by snoopdog »

So do you want a tank solution, or a solution to being a slacker ?

Hell I am just as guilty, other than topping off and cleaning the glass I really do nothing to the tank. I have just been bored with it and other things lately.
"When they was no meat we ate fowl, when there was no fowl we ate crawdad. And when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand."--Cellmate
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"We ate sand."--Cellmate
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Jahdiel
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Post by Jahdiel »

I hear you on the problems of dying corals, really sorry to hear it.
Everything in ours was doing great for the longest time. Then all of a sudden my ALK went up to 14, everything else was great. Well this week I noticed my purple monster died, the huge mycedium RTN, ands two health leathers have decided to start pitching. I now have hair algea growing, so I cut back on the photo time, large water change weekly. I have plenty of carbon and phosphate remover in it, and everything is testing good other than the ALK still needing to come down some. Any ideas?
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Brandon
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Post by Brandon »

Well poop... whats up with all this? Paid more attention last night and looks like I'll be losing some SPS colonies as well. I don't know whats up with mine, I'm gonna test Alk/Ca also tonight, just for kicks.

I would think you had a ph spike which caused the calcium carbonate to precipitate out.. Did you have a snow storm at some point?
You can have only so many dissolved solids, so with Alk at 14, Ca has to be low, I guess the only thing you could do would water changes and dose calcium hydroxide to get you Ca back up and your Alk will fall on its own, slowly though or it would precipitate back out.
I'm not expert on this stuff though, I know Jeff/Krazyplace posted some links in the past from Randy @ ReefCentral talking about troubleshooting Alk/Ca balances.
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Jahdiel
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Post by Jahdiel »

That's the crazy thing, our cal showed 480. Gonna have to run them again tonight to find out where I'm at now.
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Post by LoneStar »

I had a similar situation recently. I have been very busy building the new house and traveling for work that I began my slacking. Almost the same thing happened with all of my corals. All my levels were fine. For the life of me, I had no clue what was wrong. Once I converted over to the new tank, I wanted to hypo my fish. I wanted to make sure no parisites would make it to the new tank. To do this, I knew my hydrometer would not be accurate enough to drop the salinity to 1.09. I purchased a refractometer. I tested the water (which came straight from my other tank and read 1.0245 with the hydrometer) and it was a whopping 1.018 with the refractometer. I could be wrong, but I honestly think thats what lead to my problem. The salinity being low then I slacked a bit and it was all down hill from there. I have brought the salinity back up slowly to 1.023 so far and everything thats still living is recovering.

Good luck with yours,
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Post by sb1227 »

Alright, I've been pissed off, bored, dissinterested , etc in this hobby for the last 6 months or so. My reef husbandry consists of topping off the tank when it starts sucking air, and throwing some flake at the fish when I think of it. I need to play catch up on my tank a bit
Hell I am just as guilty, other than topping off and cleaning the glass I really do nothing to the tank. I have just been bored with it and other things lately.
Geez....you guys make me feel better, I feel like an ass when I go two weeks without a water change. :lol:



Happy to help if there's anything I can do..let me know.
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Post by yardboy »

After two years, I'm still relatively fastidious, but last week my purple Echinophyllia frag fell on a new Lobophyllia and after just a couple of hours the Lobo was really suffering. Lost a 1/4 of its tissue then, me bing the smart-ass reefer tha I am, put pure iodine tincture on the Lobo. Ouch!
Now it's lost over a 1/3. :x
Caused a major negative mood. Maybe not as bad as the guy who came by the other night looking for his lost cat, hhe was pathological. I thought about sneaking to the pound and getting one that looked similar, he'd have never noticed for sure, he was so depressed. It's a crazy world.
Needless to say, no sympathy at work. "But.. But.. But, it's pink and heart-shaped and given to me by my loving wife, it can't die!!!!!" BwaaaaaWaWaWaWA
Get your butts in gear and clean up your tanks, you lazy slackers, or I'll send the "catatonic cat-lover" over to whine at you too!!!
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