Rtn

[ro_nicu]

what causes RTN in your experience?
I've lost a large blue digi colony in less than 24 hours. was showing signs of white at the base of the plug that it was on, this morning there was significantly more, came home from work to a completely white colony with no sign of polips. same happened to a frag I got as a "grow out frag" at one of the meetings.


The only thing I changed is to up the vinegar dose in the kalwasser topoff 2 days ago.
I switched it back to the previous dose.

water parameters.

salinity 1.025
p.h. - 8.4
alk 11-12
calk 480
phosphate - 0 according to a "consumer test"
nitrate - 0 according to the same test.
mag has not beet tested but I dose a little here and there and the tank received a massive (80-90%) water change with reef crystals less than a month ago.


P.S. there's no skimmer on the tank, there's an algae scrubber that is still maturing (growing a mix of green and brown algae), there are no signs of any algae in the tank or sump.

the topoff is with kalkwasser
there's a yellow tank, a couple of perculas, 2 cardinals and 4 chromies in the tank, ~150 gal of water in between tank and sump.
I feed not too generously, flakes once a day and a good "storm" of fish / coral goop once or twice a week.

 

[panayiote73]

When I was dosing kalkwasser I didn't monitor very closely and my ALK peaked out at 12. That day I lost several digi's and 1 birdsnest. I don't think they like such a high alk. I did a 10gallon Petco water and 10 gallon Reef Crystals water change in a 120, all returned to normal.

I no longer dose kalkwasser.

 

[ro_nicu]

a 5 gal bucket at 10 teas spoons per bucket lasts me about a week currently. Is that too much?

 

[JasonandSarah]

+1 to some things taking high alk badly especially if they're not slowly acclimated.
Are these newer colonies and frags your putting in? Or things that have been in your tank for awhile?
If you don't mind me asking, what's your acclamation procedure?

 

[22engine]

My kalk mix is half that. Teaspoon per gallon in my ATO.

 

[ro_nicu]

everything has been in the tank for at least 1.5 months when I moved all of this to the 150 cube, it was all in the previous tank for at least 3-4 months as well.

some of the kalk precipitates and I do not mind that I use just the clear solution which I assume is saturated.

So maybe it was a combination between the increased vinnegar dose and the extra kalk carried by the stronget solution of vinnegar.
bottom line is I lost 1 colony and a nice frag, nothing else shows ANY signs of stress.

 

[ro_nicu]

funny thing, NOTHING else shows ANY sign of stress (knock on wood), neither the softies, the lps, the zoas, palies, muchrooms or even the SPS. The acropora that I thought would be the first to go in case I mess up something is in fact looking better than ever.

 

[wdebenedettojr]

It's funny I was having an issue with a few sps mini colonies myself a month or so back. I had a tricolor acro and green milli (both of which were growing and doing great) completely RTN over night. Then I noticed my red planet having issues also. Come to find out I had a huge outbreak of asternia starfish and they were going after my sps at night. I literally saw them on my red planet and Tierra del Fuego one morning just munching away. Lucky enough the Fuego and planet are still around but the milli and tricolor prob got to irritated by them and bleached. Not saying you have the same issue but you sure you don't have any pests in the system?? All my others Lps and zoas were also doing perfectly fine during this.

 

[ro_nicu]

there's some other sps in the tank and none show any issue