Fast PH drop, everything mad

When I left for the frag swap my PH was 8.2 and everything was very happy.  This reading coming from my APEX

Edited by Laird - July 01 2010 at 11:47pm

Hard to tell right off the bat, stir up your sand at all? 

Aquavitro, the expensive stuff for my salt.  It was teh first time i've ever used it.   I had mixed the salt two days before, and then had it in my house.  The temp couldn't have been more then a couple degrees off.  

CapnMorgan wrote: Hard to tell right off the bat, stir up your sand at all?

Laird wrote: I don't understand why my calcium was so low either.  I test and dose a lot.  Yesterday I tested and it was a about 350 and I dosed enough that it should have brought it up to a lot.  Could my water change have affected it that much?

Did you experience any cloudy water? First thing I think of is a snow storm, which is caused by calcium being raised too fast and precipitating in the water, which in turn lowers the calcium drastically. This may be the case.

Hmmm...well I am kindof stumped as to why your calcium would drop off so quickly like that. Maybe someone else can help brainstorm here.

Wow, I dont know what to tell you. It sounds like something happened with the water change. I would double check your salinity, and also check/crosscheck your temp. Stick your hand in the tank and see if it feels warm or cool.

could have been a temperature spike like they say it stresses everything out. This happend once in my nano tank really stressed everything and killed some of my soft corals. Even this was a 1 hour event

Please excuse my bluntness in this post. I'm just telling it like I see it.
Downhill biker and snoyce are hitting the nail on the head. You were right to come here after noticing the reaction of the coral. They are the indicator of problems with the tank.

The salt mix can be expensive but may not be better. There could also be a problem with that batch. More likely it is the shock of giving your tank that much new saltwater of a type it is not used to. Salt mixes are formulated differently and the organisms can tell the difference.

The AC is also suspect. If it is a new brand or from a new "bottle" it could be adding in something deleterious or taking out something good of which there already was too little. How often is AC used in this tank? How old is the tank? I use AC only 1-2 weeks/month. That's all it needs because AC sucks out bad (and good) chemicals very fast. The newer the tank, the less populated the tank, the less often AC is needed.

A pH of 8.0 is not a big deal by itself. Most tanks reache near that at night anyway. I don't test pH. I find very little value in it, almost no value at all. On the other hand, I definitely know the Alk and Ca numbers at least monthly, preferably biweekly. I make sure they are always within range. Your Ca was very low. This one bad parameter sets the tank up for a reaction when one or more other stresses happen to it. I would forget pH and keep up on the Alk and Ca.

Look first to the salt and AC. When I am using a new brand of salt, I always acclimate the tank to the new salt by mixing old and new salt mixes together accordingly for a few water changes.

Have you ever read my recommendation for 10% water changes only every 1-3 months? Last night at the meeting I was hob-nobbing with a member of the club presidency. He confided to me that he has never done a water change in his 7 year old reef. To look at it you would never suspect anything but the best conditions. Because it has the best conditions.


Edited by Mark Peterson - July 02 2010 at 10:40am

Everything looks way better this morning.  Id say 15-20% of the coral still looks bad tho.  Its not just once type of coral either, its about 10-15% of every coral, sps, lps.  Fish still look great.  From what I can tell the only thing that died is a couple acan frags.  My closed brain, and a couple lobos still arent happy.  My large torch, frog and hammer is are still pretty much closed up.  I don't think any fish, or inverts are missing or dead.  I have lots of shrimp and are hard to find but i've seen some of my cleaners, and peppermint so I assume they are ok.