Acro blues

[addboy]

Wow....times like these, a fellow could really use some advise.
So,...I decided to go stony....got rid of 5 of my 10 fish,..did water changes galore....got some cheap frags..(birdsnest...little cactus looking things and some fuzzy acros).. The cheap frags and montipora cap are doing great...I spend 50 bucks on a full purple-brown acro...5 days later when I think it's about to color out,...I unravels overnight...by the end of the day I have a skeleton....tried it again with a hunter greed acro....it was feathering out of its little holes and then one morning....PLLFLSLDPSPDPDPDPDPffffff.....half way gone....Anyone have similar experience???????.....I have no nitrate or nitrite....but I do have a bit of a phosphate prob.

[xtrstangx]

How big is your phosphate problem?

How is your flow, lighting, water change schedule, and all the other equipment on your tank?

[addboy]

Uhhh....Okay....I have a 90gal reef ready.....2 Seio 820s blowing up and down from one side and roughly 400gph return from the other side....I have a refugium that is fairly new (taken from my old refugium) tuned it into a combo mech. filter/refugium/bubble trap/ and Euroreef skimmer and mag5 on the other side. My phos. was at .25 I am on top of that with some Kent Phos Sponge in the sump and the over flow....2 days and then take it out.(Didn't know you were supposed to take it out before). I am hanging 2 PFO Metal halides (250Watts ea.) 500wats. One side is a really blue Reeflux 10k full spectrum....the other is a Ushio 10k...The verdict is still out on which one I like better. I was doing watter changes of 10 to 20 gal. a week with Oceanic salt and supermarket RO (wich is where I probably picked up the Phosphate....Of course I was using a lot of purple up,....and that just turned everything brown and green. The bubbles are already dissappearing with the addition of the Kent Phos sponge

[xtrstangx]

Have you tried posting in the SPS forum? I don't see anything.

What are the rest of your levels running at? Salinity, pH, ammona, nitrite, nitrate, calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium?

[CeeGee]

Are the new acros that you are adding wild or are they established frags? Wild colonies are notoriously hard to keep. It also sounds like your tank isn't in the best of shape either. Is your Alk and/or salinity fluctuating? Both of those need to be stable.

I would not depend on supermarket RO if I were keeping SPS. You need your own RO/DI and TDS meter. If you want to go the cheap I would keep less finicky corals.

It sounds like you have some good equipment why ruin things by not having your own RO/DI?

Also most people don't add products like purple up. Water Changes (with high quality water) and keeping calcium, alk, and Mag in check are all that are needed. With SPS I would recommend weekly water changes over monthly. SPS like stability and smaller more frequent water changes provide that better than larger less infrequent ones.

Also phosphate removers can strip the water of stuff to quickly and wipe out SPS in the process. As stated SPS like things stable and removing stuff too quickly is just as bad as adding things too quickly.

Hopefully some of this was helpful and good luck.

[addboy]

Thanks guys....I had no idea how difficult stonys could be....I think I will just try to get better water and stabilize my tank...but I don't want to have just stonys and a fish...think I will stick to the hardier stonys.

[iCam]

How long has this tank been set up?

[addboy]

Tank is about a year old.

[CeeGee]

To me it is not that they are hard to keep alive, it is hard to make them thrive. Plus this is my first reef tank and I have apparently made some mistakes that I am trying to correct. I am trying my best to get good color and growth and neither seem to be happening quickly

seriously you need to get a RO/DI and a TDS meter in that order. You can get a good RO/DI unit from airwaterice and get the refillable DI cartridge from them as well.