Failure to thrive

[PMc]

You would want some surface agitation for sure for adequate O2. I simply have a powerhead placed at the top 1/3 of the aquarium height and it ripples across the surface quite nicely and ensures O2 is pulled into the the system. Not sure if water trickling into the tank from overflows etc is sufficient enough and cannot judge without seeing. It might very well be just fine. Just a thought.

My return is a "three way" elbow placed about an inch below the surface. One outlet shoots across the short end of the tank and the other is directed the length of the tank with the overflow at the other end. I get a good ripple. I am still struggling with an independent way to verify oxygen levels. It's a good thought that hadn't occurred to me

Mc

 

[PMc]

Do you have any fish to provide nutrients?
What is your water change schedule and how much volume do you replace?
Are you regularly doing these water changes?
Do you use any mechanical filtration or vacuum the sediment of detritus with water changes?
What supplements do you use to maintain Ca and Alk?
What do you use for top off? Just RODI?

I am trying to get at your system parameters but think you may need to keep regular with water changes, thus keeping water stable and go easy on supplements with testing and get some nutrient producers to fertilize your invert garden...

The only fish is a Tracey's Damsel. He start with two others but despite my best attempts I can keep groups of fish. Even Green Chromis turn on each other until only one remains. there are several fish I would be happy to get but I think i have to dismiss the idea of keeping groups. Looks like one of each species is the practical limit.

I do about a 7% water change on the first Sunday of each month religiously.

I have never vacuumed. Instead, every two or three weeks I hook a piece of flexible tubing to the return, turn the volume all the way up, and use the water jet created to blast any accumulated sediment off the rocks and complete agitate the sand bed. I place a filter sock on the bottom end of the Bean Animal siphon. I have two MP10s placed side by side on the short end below the overflow box about two thirds of the way down to the sand bed. Normally they are turned way down but for this operation they are turned up to full. That keeps the sediment dislodged by the water jet suspended in the water column until it is swept into the overflow box and drained down through the filter sock. The system is not entirely effecient but, on the other hand, I may be eliminating a lot of micro fauna this way. A significant amount of detritus is captured each time I do this and I do it every 2-3 weeks.

Ca and Alk are maintained with BRS supplements poured in once or twice a week as testing dictates.

Top off is run through a BRS six stage RODI with a resulting TDS of 0 per the TDS meter mounted on the final output. Water quality is usually pretty stable per testing with the widest swings in Alk.

Someone has suggested that the system mey be "too clean" for mushrooms. More fish is an enticing solution.

Thanks for the interest.

Mc

 

[Tastee]

The only fish is a Tracey's Damsel. He start with two others but despite my best attempts I can keep groups of fish. Even Green Chromis turn on each other until only one remains. there are several fish I would be happy to get but I think i have to dismiss the idea of keeping groups. Looks like one of each species is the practical limit.

I have 7 fish in my 65G tank, and only one species > 1 - pair of Occ clowns. I originally had 2 Fire Gobys but after 6 months "˜then there was 1'. I'm taking the same approach as you and apart from my Clownfish pair are sticking to individuals.



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[on the spot]

I would disregard the older mushrooms entirely - you added new ones yes? drop the light dramatically, and adjust up as needed to suit the new ones. Let the old ones respond in time.

 

[on the spot]

and add a blenny.

 

[PMc]

I would disregard the older mushrooms entirely - you added new ones yes? drop the light dramatically, and adjust up as needed to suit the new ones. Let the old ones respond in time.

Seems like good advice and it would not have occurred to me. The new purple frilly looks happy as a clam four days in. The green discosoma is not expanding as well as I would like. I am unsure if it is still irritated about the move or if something else is not right at this point. I will give it a full week before I make another change.

Thanks for the tip.

Mc

 

[PMc]

and add a blenny.

Do you have a species in mind? If I could find something that liked foraminifera, he would be in hog heaven in this tank. Some species are listed as eating small crustaceans but I am not sure what I have qualifies. Canary Blennies have an attractive color. Some of the others have an attractive behavior. I had great success with a Rainford's Goby years ago so I have a soft spot for them. The LFS had Ruby Red Dragonets last time I was in. Very attractive but I am not sure I could care for one. I favor smaller species and things that will stay in the open water column but Rainford's was always shy - still a great fish. I have been looking at captive bred more intently recently but nothing in particular has caught my eye.

Suggestions welcome. Thanks for the interest.

Mc

 

[cody6766]

The LFS had Ruby Red Dragonets last time I was in. Very attractive but I am not sure I could care for one

That's a responsible fear for a "small" reef tank. I was very concerned with adding a mandarin to my 120 that I used to run. I aquascaped with two main structures and then filled the gaps with crushed coral. This created a pretty large safe haven for pod growth that kept my Mandarin fat and happy. Through my tanks across the years (first in 2007), I've found that those with the most microfauna were the most successful. Pods, worms, CLEAR planaria, astreaea stars, micro brittle stars, were all present in my most successful tanks.
While snorkeling in Curacao, I noticed that there are multiple layers of life in a real reef. The surface has the coral and cool stuff. Flip a rock over and you'll find some starfish and large worms. Dig through the rubble below that rock and you'll find smaller starfish. In the gravel below that rubble you'll find amphipods and other 'bugs' thriving.
I think we try to make our tanks too sterile and don't pay enough attention to biodiversity. Many corals need nutrients in the water that come from fish and heavy feeding. They also suffer when we don't have a way to export the excess. Having a healthy microfauana population will ensure that the food not eaten by the fish will be eaten by something. They'll also take care of die-off and other waste. I recommend you get a few scoops of sand or sump mess from local reefers or LFSs with pest-free systems. Hope you catch some bristle worms and other critters. If not, ask locals if they can spare some.

Also, with a shroom tank, you need some "dirtier" water. Add some fish and feed heavy...but not so heavy that you grow algae. You don't want to avoid caring for your tank, and always use RO/DI for your waterchanges, but maybe you should up your bioload.

 

[Johnic]

PMc,
I have a very similar tank in size and age and being OCD Ive always kept my levels at 0 in fear of algae. What I learned and still figuring the balance is the tank needs Phos and Nitrates. It’s the fine balance of not having too much and having too little.
I’ve have always had too little and my SPS and LPS live but look terrible (bleached but barely living). When the tank is what I think over feed due to my 4 fish the coral darken up and look much better but it the science of knowing when to stop over feeding is my problem.
Having said that, I’ve added a ATS and the new theory is heavy in - heavy out. Changing filter socks more often, and having a good water turn over...since doing this my corals have been looking better. My lights are Ecotech XR15 Pro setup on SPS AB+ but at a very low setting - 40% of the program.
My Alk is also been a science in that I want to keep it stable at 8.5 and my Calc at 450 with Mag at 1290-1450.

 

[dkeller_nc]

Based on your comment about having two Vortech MP10s in your tank, it's highly unlikely that you're suffering a gas exchange problem (not enough O2, too much CO2). About the only way that would be a concern is if you have a well-sealed top on the tank and/or the particular room the tank's in has a high CO2 level. That's fairly unlikely unless there's a furnace/hot water heater in the same room, and something's wrong with the venting.

Overall, my best guess would be that your tank is extremely nutrient poor. Your test results would back that up, though there's a caveat - if there's a lot of actively growing algae, there's a possibility that there's plenty of nutrients, and the algae is taking it out of the water column so fast that it doesn't show up on your test results.

There's a number of ways to increase the two main inorganic nutrients (nitrate and phosphate). The most direct way is to actually dose them. The necessary chemicals are inexpensive and readily available (in this case, sodium nitrate and sodium phosphate). However, if you aren't good at chemistry calculations, I'd avoid this route. A mistake in calculations could lead to vastly overdosing the tank.

Instead, you can "ghost feed" the tank. Actinodiscus mushrooms don't directly feed on plankton as far as is known, though rhodactis and ricordea do. I called it "ghost feeding", since one of the easiest ways to bump your nutrient levels is to feed a suspension of plankton, such as reef roids, but your particular animals may not directly consume it. Nevertheless, feeding a freeze-dried plankton or a liquid phytoplankton mixture like Reef Nutrition's PhytoFeast will definitely boost your phosphate and nitrate concentrations over time.

About the lighting. Actinodiscus and other mushrooms are fairly forgiving critters, though they definitely can be over illuminated. Older LED reef fixtures were often missing a good bit of the spectrum that was present in fluorescent or metal halide light sources. It is possible that this is contributing to your issues, but I would not replace anything yet - increasing your nutrient levels is probably a much better bet. Long term, a lot of folks that keep mushrooms and LPS that are highly colored (such as Acans), tend to prefer T5HO for their color rendition and growth promotion characteristics. An alternative is a modern full-spectrum LED fixture such as Radions, AI Hydras, Orpheks, or similar fixtures with a lot of different (controllable) LED colors.

 

[PMc]

PMc,

Having said that, I've added a ATS and the new theory is heavy in - heavy out.

I had a small ATS and ditched it because it never produced much to speak of.
I think the emerging consensus is the tank is simply nutrient starved. But I think you are right, feeding just enough without overshooting the mark is going to be the challenge

Mc

 

[PMc]

Based on your comment about having two Vortech MP10s in your tank, it's highly unlikely that you're suffering a gas exchange problem (not enough O2, too much CO2). About the only way that would be a concern is if you have a well-sealed top on the tank and/or the particular room the tank's in has a high CO2 level. That's fairly unlikely unless there's a furnace/hot water heater in the same room, and something's wrong with the venting.

Overall, my best guess would be that your tank is extremely nutrient poor. Your test results would back that up, though there's a caveat - if there's a lot of actively growing algae, there's a possibility that there's plenty of nutrients, and the algae is taking it out of the water column so fast that it doesn't show up on your test results.

About the lighting. Actinodiscus and other mushrooms are fairly forgiving critters, though they definitely can be over illuminated. Older LED reef fixtures were often missing a good bit of the spectrum that was present in fluorescent or metal halide light sources. It is possible that this is contributing to your issues, but I would not replace anything yet - increasing your nutrient levels is probably a much better bet. Long term, a lot of folks that keep mushrooms and LPS that are highly colored (such as Acans), tend to prefer T5HO for their color rendition and growth promotion characteristics. An alternative is a modern full-spectrum LED fixture such as Radions, AI Hydras, Orpheks, or similar fixtures with a lot of different (controllable) LED colors.

Thanks for the interest. I had come to the same conclusion that the tank is not oxygen starved even though I can't really prove it.

There is not a lot of algae in the tank and the clump of chaeto in the sump may actually be slowly regressing. It is certainly possible that the tank is just nutrient poor but it also has me thinking about trace elements now. For no more livestock than I have, I had assumed that not much would be utilized to depletion and monthly water changes would replace anything I needed. Maybe that is not the case.

Lighting was where I was when I started the thread. It has been reduced as far as I think prudent. Spectrum is the challenge. It has occurred to me that it may not be achievable with this fixture but I think you are correct in feeding heavily while playing with spectrum before replacing the fixture.

Thanks.

Mc

 

[PMc]

Weekly update for 2-11-19

Temp 78.7
S.G. 1.025
pH 8.1
Nitrate 0-2 (trace)
Alk 9.0
Ca 375

No phosphate reading this week. I botched the test and was too lazy to repeat it. It has been 0.00 for months to a year.

I didn't reduce the lighting this week. It is still at 50% Channel A (white)and 60% Channel B (blue). The purple frillys seem about the same after 1 week. The green discosomas are not opening as well as they were at the LFS. The older mushrooms may be trying to trumpet a tiny amount but it is not obvious by any means.

The emerging consensus is that the tank is just nutrient starved. I am not getting any nuisance algae at this point. (I don't get any coralline algae either). My plan is to continue to feed heavily, maintain lights where they are for another week, and observe. Thanks to everyone for the kind advice and interest.

Mc

 

[dkeller_nc]

Let us know how it goes, always nice to hear whether our speculations (and that's exactly what they are!) were right or wrong.

Given what you've posted, and assuming that you're using one of the Hanna checkers to measure phosphate, it certainly sounds like your tank's very nutrient poor.

With respect to replacing trace elements, generally speaking that's not necessary with reasonable water changes. The exception, of course, is alkalinity and calcium, but those don't technically count as "trace elements". For those with soft corals (e.g., mushrooms), the most often-dosed trace element is iodine, typically in the form of potassium iodate.

But if you're not used to doing this, I'd be extremely cautious about adding such a supplement - it can be quite toxic in overdosed amounts.

 

[blasterman789]

About the lighting. Actinodiscus and other mushrooms are fairly forgiving critters, though they definitely can be over illuminated. Older LED reef fixtures were often missing a good bit of the spectrum that was present in fluorescent or metal halide light sources. It is possible that this is contributing to your issues, but I would not replace anything yet - increasing your nutrient levels is probably a much better bet. Long term, a lot of folks that keep mushrooms and LPS that are highly colored (such as Acans), tend to prefer T5HO for their color rendition and growth promotion characteristics. An alternative is a modern full-spectrum LED fixture such as Radions, AI Hydras, Orpheks, or similar fixtures with a lot of different (controllable) LED colors.

Over the years we get to hear a lot of snake oil about LEDs from people who don't understand lighting science, and we can add this response to the list.

The action spectrum for coral growth is 440-470nm in artificial lighting fixtures (blue). This is true for all types of artificial light regardless of if they are tubes, metal halide or LED.

Because LED makers are adding superfluous colors to try and differentiate their products from basic chinese black bloxes running just cool whites and royals doesn't change biology. The newer fixtures Dkeller is mentioning don't grow corals better than cheaper, older fixtures and this has been established in countless SPS threads on the topic. The added colors along with blue tooth capability and being able to program a sunset in Beirut won't grow corals better, but it helps you sell a $600 light over a chinese black box that costs 1/5 the price but grows coral just as well.

I've yet to see an established SPS tank grow better coral because they have a couple LEDs of mint, 395nm, teal, orange, or any of those other boutique colors invented by marketing depts and not coral growers. There is also no such thing as a 'full spectrum' artificial light source over a reef tank other than maybe plasma sulfur. If you look at the spectrum of a thriving reef tank under an artificial light with my spectrometer it's all blue light with just some smidges of other colors.

Again, what dkeller seems to be saying is LED fixtures with more colors grow coral better, and that has been smashed to death, buried and burned in SPS lighting discussions. Been building reef lights for 10 years and don't appreciate this disinformation. Might as well be making flux capacitor jokes.

If you've ever been snorkling in the ocean shrooms and softies tends to thrive around runoffs and less than pristine areas of the beach and reef. That's because they love less than pristine water. A high light tanks with low nutrients will cause softies to melt in short order, and if you're killing rhodactis it's a really bad tank for softies.

The problem is if you've been running a low nutrient tank for a long time increasing nutrient levels suddenly is almost certainly going to cause other issues like sudden nuisance algae explosions or cyano blooms. It's easy enough to add potassium nitrate (stump remover) or just dose ammonia to beef up nitrate levels to 5-10ppm, but it needs to be done slowly.

Low pH levels, likely induced by low alk levels don't help softie growth much other.

 

[dkeller_nc]

Say what you will, but this statement "Older LED reef fixtures were often missing a good bit of the spectrum that was present in fluorescent or metal halide light sources." is correct and not subjective.

This part - "Long term, a lot of folks that keep mushrooms and LPS that are highly colored (such as Acans), tend to prefer T5HO for their color rendition and growth promotion characteristics." is also correct, and isn't debatable.

But as you'll note, I am not suggesting that PMc change his lights. In fact, quite the opposite. It was simply a note, and that's all.

 

[PMc]

I am an idiot. Let's get that out there right up front. It is the lights.

Blasterman789 and dkeller nc sent me back to The Reef Aquairium by Deelbeck and Sprung. I have long suspected that my lighting was really the issue and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I have spent a lot of time playing with photoperiod, spectrum, and intensity. I would make a change, wait, make another change. I would kid myself that I was making progress only to realize weeks later that I wasn't. Deelbeck makes a good argument for ramping up to a few hours of maximum intensity with a slight change in spectrum through the cycle. A dark period is just as important.

Dkeller makes the point that early LED fixtures were limited in spectrum and controllability. Blasterman points out that if you have the right spectrum, mushrooms are very forgiving so I should be able to get there with what I have. I went to the fixture and started playing not only with my normal custom programming but also with the preset programs and the "œmanual" mode. That is when I discovered the B channel on this fixture is no longer lighting. And I don't know when it failed. The B channel is the critical blue (400-465nm) region. There is just enough blue in the A channel to fool me into thinking the B channel was functional, but I never stuck my head under the fixture and looked up into the arrays. I have been dinking around (patiently) for far too long without realizing that my fixture had failed.

This is a Maxspect Razor in an early iteration. I was having trouble viewing the LED screen on the end as I was putting it through its programs so I lifted that end toward my face which is what brought the arrays into direct view. Once I discovered a problem, I pulled the fixture off the tank and found a distortion in the housing at the driver/power cord end "“ the end I never look at. I contacted Chris at Coralvue and he has begun to help me diagnose the problem. I hope it is fixable, but I have disassembled the fixture and there is no obvious issue beyond the distortion of the housing near where the inductors are located. I suppose one of them can be bad, but it is odd that only one channel is affected if that is the case. Perhaps one of the two inductors is bad and each inductor drives a separate channel?

No test results tonight. I will keep this thread updated as I work through this. These threads are of the greatest value in retrospect when someone else can read through them later and save himself some time and trouble. I appreciate everyone's interest and generous advice. It will be interesting to see if the lights were the only problem or just the first problem. Thanks all.

Mc

 

[dkeller_nc]

I am an idiot.

No you're not. Anyone that's been in this hobby for any length of time that tells you that they have it all figured out is either a true idiot, or a liar (or both). Ask me about the time that I added dry calcium chloride to a mixing solution of magnesium sulfate (thinking the calcium chloride was magnesium chloride) - instant concrete, had to throw a relatively pricey volumetric flask away.

EVERYONE does something like that at some point or another!

I suppose one of them can be bad, but it is odd that only one channel is affected if that is the case. Perhaps one of the two inductors is bad and each inductor drives a separate channel?

I think what you might be referring to are power supplies. Since all LEDs are direct current devices, the light must have a way to convert AC wall power to the low-voltage DC that drives the LEDs. And typically, one has a separate power supply for each "channel" of the light that can be independently dimmed. I'm afraid your description strongly suggests the power supply for the blue channel "let the magic smoke out" and overheated, warping your fixture's housing.

Glad you got it figured out!

 

[dkeller_nc]

By the way, if you find that your Maxspect is not salvageable, or you simply want another fixture, I just watched this BRS video all the way through. If you're thinking about replacing your lighting, it's well worth watching the whole 45 minutes. But failing that, you might definitely want to watch from about 33 minutes on.

The specific subject is SPS tanks, but the same principles and options apply, just at slightly lower PAR levels. One of the big emphasis points in the video is that one really wants an even spread of light in the tank, and an even blending of spectrum. That last 12 minutes or so gives options to achieve that go from anywhere between about $400 to a jaw-dropping $4500 for a 4 foot long, 2 foot wide tank.

 

[reefgeezer]

... That last 12 minutes or so gives options to achieve that go from anywhere between about $400 to a jaw-dropping $4500 for a 4 foot long, 2 foot wide tank.

$400 is jaw-dropping for some of us! $4500 is heart-stopping or divorce- making.