No reply on RC, Poor Polyp extensions. Help please

any brand in particular little fish? Would like a good one, and a reputable one at that. I just emptied the reactor and cleaned it out. It was rather filthy and was full of filter feeders on the inside, scraped them off and am now making more saltwater for a water change tomorrow. I will add a small amount of pellets to keep it running to see how it goes. Its going to have to rebuild its bacteria but this time the numbers may not be so excessive. All signs point to that so we shall see.
 
buddy08 said:
I have dipped a select few frags but most of them have encrusted to the rocks and will be nearly impossible to dip.... so anything harmful to the corals being dipped will be re exposed to them again once theyre back in the main display. I got a reply on RC that mentioned my bio pellet reactor could be starving the tank of its nutrients, and if thats the case.. like little fish said, more frequent water changes should help... But is there another method of supplementing these nutrients?
Click to expand...

If the bio-pellets are starving the tank of phosphates and nitrates then you want to be supplementing with a coral food of some sort. I like the Red Sea Coral Pro Energy A&B supplements, but haven't really used them much since I haven't yet achieved a ULNS (ultra low nutrient system). Water changes are going to replenish minerals and such, but you need food. AquaVitro Fuel, coral frenzy, reef bugs, or phytoplankton/rotifiers/Oyster meat are good choices.

If you have algae growing in your tank then you aren't really at ULNS yet, but lack of nutrients for the corals (especially the softies) could still be an issue.

One caution though, if you do decide to remove the bio-pellets from the system do not re-integrate the same pellets back in if they've sat without flow for more than 4 hours else you risk putting hydrogen sulfide into your tank. I've read about folks who turned off the pump to the pellets for a day or two, saw improvement, turned the pellets back on and crashed the tank.
 
buddy08 said:
any brand in particular little fish? Would like a good one, and a reputable one at that. I just emptied the reactor and cleaned it out. It was rather filthy and was full of filter feeders on the inside, scraped them off and am now making more saltwater for a water change tomorrow. I will add a small amount of pellets to keep it running to see how it goes. Its going to have to rebuild its bacteria but this time the numbers may not be so excessive. All signs point to that so we shall see.
Click to expand...

I got the JBJ titanium heater with external controller and external probe. It was expensive but I love it and feel very confident with it in my tank! Here's what I have: JBJ TRUE TEMP 300W Digital Titanium Heater System When I was looking for heaters, someone here suggested that getting one with an external controller and probe was the way to go :)
 
There very well could be several issues at play here.

1) How big is your Toadstool? You said it looks a mess. Leathers are toxic and can kill other corals. I lost 10 different chalices due to a large Toadstool that is now evicted from my tank.

2) What amount of bio pellets are you running? What is your bio load, and what brand are you using?

3) When running bio pellets you need to feed more! You system appears clean, but your nutrient level is low.

4) What food do you use to feed both tank and fish?
 
fast, the toadstool was roughly the size of a half dollar coin, it was doing fine but slowly started to deteriorate. It started happening once I installed LED's so I blamed myself for not acclimating it to the new light. Moved it down and it began showing green again but the polyps looked like little nubs and wouldnt expand like it used to (the fuzzy look). The Leds came a month later after installing the reactor so its hard to blame who was at fault

I had roughly 1 cup of biopellets in there, Its the brs brand.

Ive been feeding rather heavily lately as iv added 3 anthias to the tank. Im feeding roughly 3 cubes of mysis/ rods a day plus algae sheets. I havent fed the tank any food, I do however feed reef snow to my softies occasionally
 
* Are you running Carbon or GFO? I would recommend running carbon. May help with polyp extension.

*The some corals may not have taken the transition to LEDs very well.. Some corals just don't do well under certain LEDs. Do you have a controller for your LEDs? So that you can adjust the output%? If they are 100%on/0%off that could affect it.

*Also if you are really low nutrient what you want to do is dose Amino Acids to feed the SPS. They are kinda pricey, which is the downside to running an ultra low nutrient tank. (Idk if I would consider this your immediate problem however, with a lower coral load.) Mainly tho, gotta figure out polyp extension.
 
I'm actually wondering if your lighting is too much, given that you only have your tank with all lights off for 1 hour each day. I'm pretty new to all of this, so someone else can speak better to this, but it did jump out at me that your lights are pretty much running all the time.
 
Im skimming, but i wouldnt call it heavy as its not the best skimmer on the market. Its an eshopps psk-100

edit: I am running carbon in a carbon filter sock
 
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results of stray voltage - positive. tested the water with the multimeter and my readings were 10.0 volts. I unplugged the heater and the volts dropped down to 5.7-6.3. I unplugged and replugged everything else and still saw loose voltage in the tank so I decided to unplug it all then plug it all back in. my mag drives and skimmer leak anywhere from .6 to 1.3 volts and the 3x power heads were .3. With that being said, it was never anything that was noticeable and never was i shocked by reaching my arm into the tank. Ive read a few articles and have gathered that majority of our tanks leak voltage into the water... as we are putting an electrical device into it; its bound to happen. Most sites and informtion lead me to purchasing a grounding probe mainly for my protection. Another site stated that it would make sense if most LFS told consumers they need to ground their tank. Tanks that are not grounded show signs mentioned earlier in my post so Im going to purchase a grounding probe and see.

this is the link i found
http://www.farmertodd.com/library/rkessentials/electricity.asp
 
I made a makeshift one like that website suggested. Used a stainless steel carriage bolt and wrapped some 20gauge wiring around the head which was leftover from building the leds, hung it from my stand center brace so only the bolt was in the water (not the copper wiring) and ran the other end to the wall socket, wrapped that around the ground to the power strip. tested the water again and 0.00 loose volts so thats a temporary fix for now. Ordering a titanium probe from marine depot tonight. With that handled, and the removal of the bio pellets (temporary, will add back in small portions), and water changes... hopefully everything will pull through and be as good as new. Im currently testing the heater to see if its still working. I removed it from the tank and put it in a bucket with water. Its set to 84 degrees and the bucket water is now warm. I dropped a thermometer into the bucket to take its temp.. If its around 84, the heater is going back in the tank until I upgrade to the 180; I will replace the heater then.
 
Glad the question about stray voltage panned out! Hopefully that helps get things sorted out with your tank, along with the bio-pellets. Grounding probes are pretty inexpensive so at least that's an easy fix, and awesome that you were able to rig up a temporary one! And thanks for clarifying that your lights are on 12hrs a day :) Keep us posted on if things start improving!
 
bad news....need more help. Started feeding my tank amino acids (corals loooove it), also been feeding reef snow and phyto as well as the heavy doses of food for the anthias. Removed 3/4 of the bio pellets and restarted the reactor with 1/4 the amount recommended. installed a titanium grounding probe on the tank to fix what little stray voltage i had; and yet still havent had much success with the sps. My pearl berry frag that is roughly 1 inch has started to encrust onto its frag plug which is great.... but its showing signs of AEFW now.... little oval bite marks are visible but i dont see any eggs. This could be the reasoning for my RTN/STN.... and also 3 more acros are showing signs of the bleaching from base up like before. What do I need to do?
 
not sure, I'm no electrician. Just found many articles with stray voltage leading to RTN in sps corals and other harmful effects. Thought it would be a quick fix and make everything better but unfortunately, I have bigger issues to worry about :[
 

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