new tank. scrubber only setup.

[Wopadobop]

So lately I h ave been losing corals left and right. I Can't put my finger on why. All of my tank params are what I would consider excellent.

salinity 1.025 (tunze osmilator ato so this stays very stable)
nitrates 0
po4 0.04 (hanah checker)
calcium 500
mag 1500 (3 times calcium level) elos tests kit tested.
kh 10

The only thing I have done differently in the following photos was changing out from 2x 175w metal halide to a radion led unit. I took precautions when acclimating the corals to the new lighting. Could this fixture be too strong?

metal halides


leds


youll notice that a lot of the corals are missing. well thats because they basically melted. They colored up under the leds but then just withered and died.

I am using distilled water. could there be copper in it? I dont dose anything as far as buffers trace elements. i do use kalk in my ato but it is mixed at 1 teaspoon per 5 gallons and is completely dissolved before going into reservoir. I am seriously at a loss here. All my experience tells me there is something very off but I cant seem to find it. My scrubber grow aquamarine slime and some hair algae. 4x 660nm cree 3w leds per side run at 8 on 16 off. screen is 7 by 4 and im feeding about 1.5 cubes a day.

Idunno what else to do .

[Garf]

Close ups of the corals would be good. From what I can see, the corals are losing tissue from the base first, is this correct ? I can also see a pink coloration on the sand, have you got a cyano outbreak ?

[kotlec]

Sad to hear that.
Do you still run skimmer ? May be corals are starved ?

[Garf]

From what I see of the frags, they have not encrusted onto the substrate before you bought them. I would always ensure that basal growth is evident before purchasing, this rules out poorly conditioned frags that can have you chasing your butt in circles trying to find a problem that you may not have. It is also evident that you've been seriously moving your sand around, I think you may want to remove this issue from the equation also.

[SantaMonica]

Could also go back to the other lighting.

[Floyd R Turbo]

It might have been acclimation to the light. LEDs are much more intense, I read about this happening when you switch from MH to LED a lot.

[Garf]

If you zoom in onto the corals when the metal halide pic was taken, it looks as if things were not well even then. Starvation may be the ultimate cause but if you have bought poorly conditioned / starved frags then you stand little chance of improving them after tissue loss starts.

[kerry]

Try cutting back the blue's if you can. These to us do not look bright but to the coral they are BLASTING!!! The blues need to be ramped up very slow over many weeks time for some coral. I made this same mistake and took out some of mine when I added my DIY Led's.

[Wopadobop]

Try cutting back the blue's if you can. These to us do not look bright but to the coral they are BLASTING!!! The blues need to be ramped up very slow over many weeks time for some coral. I made this same mistake and took out some of mine when I added my DIY Led's.

I did go from a 10k 8 hour period to a 14k 8 hour period. and my mh were very old and running at about 8k with no actinic supplementation. This could be a factor. Some of the sps i lost were still under mh but the scrubber was just starting out so It could have been a high nutrient death.

I did have a large cyano out break after i changed to a wave maker with larger power heads. This is mostly back under control after the major sand disturbance.
I also increased my slot width so that a lot of the water from my overflow wasnt having to bypass the scrubber . way better growth over the last few days. I agree that starved frags are basically doomed from the start, but they were free so I took them. But, the slimers and green stag were encrusted and they died as well. birdsnest as far as i know dont encrust?

I am still running a skimmer and it is pulling a lot of very green skimmate at this point. That is what i was waiting for so I will remove it slowly over the next week. This tells me I have healthy phyto populations in the water. Or is this wrong?

[SantaMonica]

Yes the green is probably phyto, unless you have algae detaching from your screen.