1 year old 75 reef tank failure to thrive.

Hello everyone! I'm at my wits end with what is going on with my tank. It's been up and running for a year, and I've had consistent problems with corals thriving. My sps corals eventually lose color and die, my leather corals look good but have not grown in a year, my mushroom corals will not spread and inflate fully. Xenia and gsp are the only things that really grow and they are still not growing fast. My 7 fish have always been good.I use rodi water that has 0 tds. I have two 165 watt Mars Aqua black boxes on the tank. I'm running a aqua c remora skimmer.

Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
Phosphate undetectable
Temp 80
Calcium 490
Alk 8.5
Ph 7.8

I have been through a huge algae problem which was mainly due to a lack of cleanup crew and lack of blowing off rocks all algae is gone thanks to a yellow tang and gfo combo. What am I missing why are things not growing?



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I dont want this to sound like I'm being a butt, but what test kits are you using? Too low of nutrients can starve coral even sps that require ultra low nutrients. That said, your pH is really low. For better growth 8.2 to 8.3 is usually recommended. Depending on the types of coral you have I'd still raise it slowly with kalk in my honest opinion slowly over a couple of weeks to keep from melting your corals. Let's see what others say.

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what test kits are you using?
Mg levels?
filtration system (sump, carbon, etc) and flow (powerheads, return, etc)
dosing?
feeding habits?
water change frequency?

what size tank are these 7 fishes housed in and what fish are they...

see if we can narrow down the problem....

how does the bleaching occur? spread out throughout the coral? from tip to base? or from base to tip? how fast?

 

Ya what he said..let's figure this out

 

Yellow tang two clowns coral beauty Cardinal and royal gramma and firefish. The tank has a rw 8 wave maker and a sicce voyager 4 for circulation and a mag 9.5 running water back to the display I feed frozen emerald entree 1/5 cube every day. I don't know my mag levels but when the store checked them they were fine. I'm using api and salifert test kits. It blows my mind I had better luck with growth in my first reef tank with 400 tds tap water than with 0 tds rodi water. I am using reef crystals and have just bought a 200 gallon batch of instant ocean to try to reduce the calcium levels a little bit since I have no high calcium demand corals.


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unless youre getting false readings from your tests the only thing I can think of is your lights...your Ph and ca. are not at dangerous levels in my opinion, as long as they dont largely fluctuate from there.....

what size system and how does the bleaching happen? do you have any coralline growth?

 

you also mention algae issues while youre readings are at 0, now your readings may well be at zero since the algae are essentially filtering the water but this means you may have a nutrient problem... "healthy" systems strip the water column from nutrients BEFORE nuisance algae have a chance to pick it up...or a dedicated space in the sump is given to culture said algae and are regularly cut back (by so doing exporting the nutrients picked up by the plant)...

I would double check your results with the LFS or better yet a trusted fellow reefer...

 

I did have an algae issue but not have none thanks to the gfo and tang. I had coraline growing at the initial setup, but it all died and I have not had any since I feel like solving the coraline mystery would probably solve the coral growth issue. Any thoughts on that?


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If my lights are possibly to bright screening the top might show if that's the case


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The bleaching happens by the corals just slowly going pale. All over time


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