Trials and tribulations.

Well its been a bit of a struggle over the last 8 months to say the least. Just when you think you've cracked it. It all comes tumbling down around your ears. Or in this case, not so much tumbling, more like crumbling.

As you'll no doubt be aware from the previous pages and Photo's, the tank and stock were doing exceedingly well up to around June last year, and I was a very happy bunny. That was until I started noticing a slight downward turn in some of my SPS colonies. It wasn't all of them at this stage, it was just a couple of newer introductions. It basically looked as though the tips of the branches were going powdery as though they were disintegrating or going soft.

After checking various parameters that are commonly linked to struggling SPS growth like low Alkalinity/ Calcium, low pH, high organics etc etc, I was at a bit of a loss. To all intense and purposes, my parameters were absolutely perfect. This went on for some time with increasing occurrence despite weekly small volume water changes and me scouring the system to find the cause of the problems. By this stage (some 3-4 months after initial observations) I was even starting to get problems with older colonies where the tips would die back, forcing me to prune the colony. The only problem with this, was that the now exposed branch ends would algae up very quickly rather than heal because the corals in question were not laying down new tissue at a rate that could compete with the algae growth. Things got even worse from here on in, with several colonies starting to bleach across the upper surfaces of the branches and starting tissue recession at the bases. It was at this point I started looking at my lighting.

Now for some time it had been remarked to me how extremely bright my lighting was compared to other tanks running 400w bulbs compared to my own triple 250w 10k's. This made me start to look at bit closer at the control gear and ballasts / bulbs. Well to cut a very long story short. It appears that the mercury ballasts that my units came with, 'will' run a metal halide bulb. But they wont control the output properly compared to a proper Sodium/Mh ballast. What actually happens, is that the 'frequency' rather than being maintained within a certain range, is allowed to waver further away from the ideal. The net result, is that the bulb kicks out massive doses of UV that is way too powerful for the corals to handle. So I was extremely happy when Rob from Marine-Lighting.Co.Uk  sorted me out with 3 new ballast units free of charge. ( This entire situation, and all the relevant technical info is covered on 'this thread' at Ultimate Reef. com which I would strongly advise 'all' Metal halide users to read. ) By this stage in the proceedings (Christmas 03) some 6 months after the initial problems started, I had lost nearly every single colony to bleaching, my coralline algae was looking very washed out, and what corals were left had been cut down to mere stumps. Needless to say I was not a very happy bunny, but despite it all, my LPS corals and anemone seemed unaffected, the sand bed in the main tank seemed fine with a very healthy critter population, and all my fish were happy.

                                      1st initial signs that things weren't quite right.                                       

For some reason despite me changing the lighting ballasts and and seeing an initial improvement in some smaller remaining SPS stumps. There was still something obviously wrong. This was confirmed by getting a few small frags (yet again) from my good friend Simon Clark and observing how they settled. For the life of both of us, we couldn't work out what was going on. On initial introduction the frag would appear to settle and start bedding down. then within a matter of weeks (sometimes days) the frag would pale off and start suffering tissue recession or total bleaching and final collapse. As usual all water parameters read perfectly ok on test kits i.e. Alk/Ca/pH/Po4/No2/No3/temp. etc etc. there wasn't a damn thing either of us could pin it on. We started talking (as many do in this situation) about collapsing sand beds etc but this seemed improbable seeing as mine was crawling with life. I had a niggling thought in the back of my head about contamination of some sort outside the normal ranges of tests that we do and where that contamination was coming from. So in an effort to get to the bottom of it, I wrote down a list of alterations/additions I had made to the system over the last year. The reason I decided to cover a full year and not just the period after I had changed my Metal halide ballasts was that I couldn't be 100% sure that the problem hadn't started before this, and that the lighting problem had just added to it. Whichever way I looked at it, the problem was getting worse week by week and the system seemed to be on the verge of a complete collapse, unless I solved the problem quickly.

Progressively worsening even after ballasts were changed

This shot was taken just prior to me cutting back the Acro's in the background to stumps no more than a few inches high. By this stage the entire upper sections of branches had completely stripped and become infested with boring green algae.

Notice though, that the Turbinaria in the foreground as well as the hammer coral are unaffected.

I came up with the following list of options.

1. I had added a fluidised Rowaphos reactor.

2. The plumbing I was using was possibly a bad batch and was leaching contaminants into the water.

3. The DIY calcium reactor I was now using was adding impurities either through the media, or through contaminated gas, or via the pipe work due to the acidic nature of the environment inside the chamber..

4. A foreign (possibly metallic) body had entered the tank somehow and was slowly degrading releasing a poisonous chemical that was only affecting corals i.e. a screw or such that had become buried in the sand bed.

5. My source water was contaminated. seeing as I had switched from filtering my own tap water through RO, to getting it from my girlfriends lab at the university which uses an industrial RO unit with various pre/post filters. (although on initial testing this water seemed fine...)

To narrow the field a bit I shut down the Ca reactor and switched totally to Kalkwasser for all Ca/Alk supplementation. Changed the reactor media for 'Arm' media. and left it off for a few weeks. I also upped my water changes to 10gall per week in an effort to stem the worsening conditions and added polyfilters to see if that would make a difference. Despite the fact that my clams, fish, LPS, etc were still doing fine, Coralline growth had completely stopped and it was now impossible to keep just about any SPS frag alive for longer than 24-48 hrs without it bleaching out or suffering rapid tissue loss from the base upwards or from the tips of the branches downwards.

Still no change.

Its at this point the alarm bells started jangling in my head, that although I was doing water changes, whatever was 'in' the tank, was not being depleted by these changes, it was actually getting worse. This made me look very closely at the water I was getting from the labs. and I had to consider the fact that not only was I doing water changes with it, but I was also using it for evaporation and Kalkwasser addition. Whilst water changes might only replace like for like, evaporation top-up using contaminated water would cause a gradual increase of the contaminant within the system faster than water changes could ever decrease it back to acceptable levels, especially taking into consideration that my tank evaporates nearly 4gall a day. that's nearly 30 gal a week or even worse 100gall per month I was putting 'into' the system in evaporation whilst only removing on average 40 gall in water changes..........

There was something seriously wrong with this scenario which fell quite nicely into line with my problems and the fact I couldn't find a cause or cure which could keep up with it......

Along came a really nice Guy called Nigel (or 'Foxman' from Ultimate reef) who loaned me his 75gpd three stage RO/DI unit whilst he is in the stage of moving home, seeing as I had got lazy since getting my water from the labs and hadn't bothered to buy myself a new RO unit after my old one expired.

I then started a month run of extensive water changes using the newly acquired RO unit, starting off at 25g/day over 1 week, then down to 25g/week for 1 month and finally down to the stage I am at now of 20-25g/month. It might seem from this, that I was changing some of the water I had only just changed, however this was done deliberately to minimise shock to the rest of the system which is a potential risk when doing large scale single water changes in excess of 75% of the system volume. The resultant sudden drop in any one parameter (be it beneficial or otherwise) can cause just as many problems than if you'd left it where it was. Far better in my opinion to address the problem gradually, rather than rush into it in a single hit fashion. Doing it this way, is similar to taking a week or so to acclimatise your corals to a new set of parameters allowing them to keep up with the changes with as little stress as possible.

Well my god what a difference, within just a few days of the initial batch of water changes, the remaining little bits of SPS that had somehow miraculously survived all this time, started to extend polyps. The entire tank started to look brighter and healthier, with more extension on LPS corals, polyps etc and my skimmer was going absolutely ballistic, pulling out nearly a litre of thick smelly skimmate every 24-36hrs. This has continued but decreased to around 1 litre  every three days as time has gone on since the initial water changes being done in early April. Now, some three months down the line, the tank is looking better than ever 'although admittedly with a reduced number of SPS colonies and their respective sizes'. Those that had survived, have healed over completely now and all new introductions are bedded down  within a few days to a week, with polyps fully extending within minutes of being placed into the system. New tips are growing from old stumps and colours are returning fast and gloriously. Not to mention my coralline algae is making a comeback.

These are shots of the tank taken in June this year 2 months after the water changes,

You can see in the shot above that the green Acropora in the foreground has good polyp extension and the fire coral in the background of the second shot is sprouting new branches all over.

This is one of the healed stumps of Acropora that has sprouted new braches. it has also taken on a gorgeous iridescent sheen that changes from green to blue to purple/pink as you look around it. I'm hoping this one will come back strong and quickly as I'm eager to see how it progresses. The one on the right is a recently introduced piece that has already put out new growth tips and is showing excellent polyp extension

To this day. I still have no idea what type of chemical/contamination, was in the water from the labs due to its un-testable nature when conducted with the limited range of test kits available to the hobbyist. To all intense and purposes this water should have been better than the average hobbyist can obtain from budget RO units, not to mention the need for purity in its daily use for experiments etc in the biological field. Despite all this, it is obvious that there was some form of contamination that neither skimming, polyfilters, assimilation by organisms, nor sand beds could remove.......It is also obvious that this contaminant was not indiscriminate in its action. Only affecting certain photosynthetic families of organisms 'in this case SPS corals' whilst leaving all others largely unaffected.

A lesson learned.

As a summery to this page, I'll leave you with a couple of thoughts and my own conclusions.

 1. To what degree of accuracy do you 'know' for a fact is in your top up water? indeed any water you add to your system for that matter. This question is especially prevalent to those people running under a 'no water change' regime. and how the system will cope over the 'long term' with little in the way of exportation from the system of non degradable contaminants or those that cannot be assimilated by other organisms or pulled out by polyfilters. For those of us that 'Do' water changes, how can you be sure that your not adding through evaporation more than you are taking away through monthly water changes and what it is you might be adding outside your test kit capabilities..

2. How tempted would you have been to rip the sand bed out putting it down to heavy metal contamination (re: Dr. Ron Shimeck's latest revelations about tank crashes/decline being related to this type of scenario), sulphur dioxide poisoning etc etc.......

My own conclusions.

Based on this experience 'regardless of its uncommon and excessive nature' It has led me towards a certain way of thinking that falls somewhere in between Ron Shimeck's assertions that sand bed and live rock based systems will require a complete overhaul every three years due to accumulation of heavy metals etc, and the 'No water change' mentality that is aimed at not introducing further additions as a preventative/protective way of managing a closed reef system. I for one, have never been keen on a 'no water change' scenario mainly because of the possibility of accumulating other impurities etc through feeding and 'highlighted in this case' water top up containing un-testable impurities regardless of how good the source 'appears' to be.

To this end I'm going to continue with my monthly 20-25gal water changes, as a way of limiting / reducing waterborne contaminants introduced through foods, un-testable contaminants through top up, the small levels of contaminants introduced through less than 100% pure reactor media, and airborne household chemicals etc. But on top of this, I will on a yearly basis be performing a short period of 'rapid' medium volume water changes just after changing the Ro units internals i.e. Resin/carbon/ pre filter/ and membrane as mentioned earlier on this page i.e. 1 week of daily 20-30gall water changes scaling down over a two month period back to the normal 20-30 gallons every month. Why you might ask?. Well simply to combat the top-up water problem which until now id never really considered, always thinking of it as just another input of clean water. Let me explain it another way.

The amount of water we put into our system over the course of a year in top-up massively out ways what we change via water changes and its those inherent 'un-testable' impurities that are constantly being added through the 'back door' so to speak which 'may in my opinion' be linked to some peoples long term problems and eventual system collapses after a few years of what appears to be fault free reef keeping, for which the sand bed or Live rock is repeatedly blamed without any definitive proof.

In this respect the long term 'small scale' addition of unknown contaminants through the 'back door' of top-up via your RO/DI unit (remember its never 100% pure to start with no matter how good your unit, and this quality dwindles further over the lifespan of the membrane etc prior to replacement). can be addressed on an annual basis as shown by my system, by a short period of 'high quality' rapid water changes to reduce the level of these contaminants, not only in the free water volume, 'but more importantly' to 'pull' accumulations from Live rock and sand beds through diffusion.

 I believe from this experience that its the nature of these repetitive short term medium scale changes that ensures a thorough cleansing of the system. Whereas a single large volume change only addresses the waterborne part of any untested contaminant, leaving the rest still sat in the live rock and sand layers to leach back out within a few days and then start climbing again as top up resumes. It is very likely that in 'my' case I have suffered an exaggerated/speeded up version of the events highlighted by those keepers whose systems have gone into decline after a three to four year period without any discernable cause for the problem through testing which still has not been cured by a single large scale water change. In this respect, I feel its the 'sucking' nature of rapid succession medium volume water changes that restores and cleanses the system fully allowing it to recover, and start another stage of slow accumulation.

It 'may' prove to be an invaluable and yearly part of the long term requirements to keep our reefs healthy, until such time that all salts are 100% pure, and RO/DI units are of such a quality that we can be 100% sure of what is and isn't making it through it into your system....especially through your top-up water. And above all, we have the range of tests available to pick up these hidden contaminants. After all, The water board cant treat our water for 'everything' that's been chucked down the drains can they?

This is the tank as of September 2004....

Food for thought.!!

For more up to date photos and details click here to see the System Overview section