No Luck with LPS corals.

I can't seems to keep LPS coral.
My Frogspawn, Bubble, and Flower Pot/Goniporia all did great and were beautiful for about 6 months and then each one of them slowly retracted and died.
This did not happen all at once. I lost the bubble about 3 months ago, the frogspawn and goniporia started going about a month ago.

On the frogspawn I lost one complete head, cut it off and the other 2 seemed to be fine for a bit, but then started retracting.

My sofites (finger and toadstool leather) are doing fabulous.
My zoanthid is doing great.
My mushrooms have multiplied.
My branching and encrusting star polyps are doing excellent and spreading.
My branching Candy Cane Coral has been doing really well.
I just added a Montiporia Cup last week and it seems to be doing fine.


Tank info and thread

It's a 55 Gallon tank with a Pro Clear Pro 75 Wet/Dry filter.
Coralife Lunar Aquatic compact Fluorescent lights
A NatureReef Denitrification chamber, a Quite One 3000 return pump and a JBJ Oceanstream Circulation Pump/Powerhead + Duo Wavemaker Kit 1600 gph

Fish include 2 false Clownfish, a bicolor psudochromis, Flame angle and a YellowTang.

1 Pencil Urchin and a Coral Banded Shrimp.

Several Tubro Snails and Mexican Turbo's along with Nassarius snails, Red Led Crabs and Blue Knuckle Crabs.

Corals include a Goniporia (Flower Pot) Toadstool Leather, Finger Leather, Duncan, encursting star polyps and several other that I can't remember the names of.
I'm adding 7.5 ml of Kent Marine Essential Elements, Liquid calcium, Iodine, and Stronium and Molybdenum weekly.

The lighting is a Coral Life Lunar Aquatic with 2 Coralife 65W 10K and 2 Coralife 65W Actinic.

The actinics come on at noon and stay on until 10pm (10 Hrs) the 10K's come on at 2pm and go off at 8pm (6).

Can anyone help and tell me why I'm having some much trouble keeping these.

 

Thank you for providing such a detailed description of your tank.

Can you please list your parameters for Ca/ALK/Mag/SG.

I have kept the corals listed under PC lighting and all did well. How far away from the light are they?

 

Boosting the 10000K to 8 hours and feeding your LPS might help. Flower pots are difficult corals and need to be fed a lot yet kept clean.

You will need to make sure you are keeping your CA, Mg and alk in line for the Euphyllias.

 

Why are dosing Iodine, and Stronium and Molybdenum? Stop that immediately. Water changes will handle all lower elements. Also what are you alk and cal levels? IF you aren't testing those parameters, stop dosing that too. Most likely given the tank size and inhabitants all you need is regular partial water changes. The stuff you are dosing to help your tank is hurting it. And because you have been dosing it you need to do some large water changes to bring the parameters back to natural levels.


This may or may not fix your current problems. But it will definitely keep you from crashing your tank, which I'm nearly positive you will do if you keep putting all that junk in your tank.

 

Yeah I missed that part.

These are products we are sold under the guise that we need them, when if fact they usually do more harm than good.
Water changes with a decent saltmix will replenish the trace elements.
Unless you can test for and do test for it you should not add it to your tank.

 

I'm dosing those elements because I don't do regular water changes since I have a NatureReef Denitrification chamber to take care of the Nitrates.

Since I don't do regular water changes those elements need to be replaced some how therefore the dosing.

I wrote this post early this morning when I couldn't sleep. I'm going to run my water this evening and I'll post the levels of everything.

I don't dose Magnesium or even have a test for it right now.

I'm cautious about boosting the time of the 10K to 8 hrs because I've had problems with red slim.

 

You need to stop dosing and start water changing. I am now certain it's going to get worse as you continue with this method. Water changes do much more than just reduce nitrate. There is no way your parameters are at natural levels.

There are a lot of minor elements that are replaced by water changes outside of the 3 you are dosing, and keeping them from getting to high and poisoning your tank is extremely difficult with any method other than water changes

 

It would probably cost the same to do w/c as it does for the elements you are dosing anyhow

 

+1000 Nitrates are not toxic, they just help grow nuisance algae. There are lots and lots of things we do not test for that potentially are. I keep seeing post from people who think nitrates are the only thing to worry about. Reality is reefers tend to worry about things we can test for, but tests are only developed for things that are practical to test for, not necessarily what is actually important. Synthetic saltwater is manufactured to a consistent chemical composition, that has been proven to grow corals and contains lots of elements, in specific rations that can not be tested for at home. Doing water changes, helps maintain these ratios without testing. Just blindly adding, the ratios can go anywhere. Many of these elements are good at certain levels and bad at higher and lower levels, even quite toxic. Blindly adding doesn't maintain them at optimal levels and make it really tough to keep things alive IME.

 

If youve had problems with ref slime than your nitrate and phosphate levels may be out of check. Remember, algae needs 3 major things to flourish; light, phosphates, and nitrates. If you are having a problem with algae than the answer is not in limiting just one of those things. Whichever is the lowest will be the limiting factor but if you have 1 low factor and the other 2 high you will see hardly any algae but still have an unhealthy system. Basically you are limiting light to control algae but can still have high phosphates and nitrates. Your system looks clean because algae does not get enough light to grow, and unfortunately theres a good chance neither are the corals.

I can only suspect that all those trace elements you are dosing are completely out of whack. YOu say you do not need to do WC so you need to dose but if you dont measure you have no clue what your levels are. Also you say you dont need to do WC because you have a NatureReef Denitrification to care for the nitrates. While that is great there is NO natural means in are reef aquarium to reduce phosphates besides removing them with WC or using something like GFO.

My suggestion, post levels of nitrate, phos, alk ca and mag. Increase lighting for the corals and feed the lps from time to time to help them grow. Also so water changes!!!! As much as we want to slack and look for high tech means of eliminating a WC there is NOTHING more importance and beneficial to your reef than regular scheduled water changes.