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**Marc Daniels** · 10-28-2005, 03:12 PM

VM-

Some caulerpa species can exude nasty chemicals to keep things from encroaching into their growing space. But I would think that regularly changed carbon would prevent this as it also occurs in corals.

Marc

**VegasMike** · 10-28-2005, 04:36 PM

That's what I thought as well, but you never know since you can't test for it. Anyway, I have wanted to get rid of it for a long time anyway. It is the only thing I can think of that might attribute to my problem as everything has tested out fine.

**G.Alexander** · 10-28-2005, 10:32 PM

Mike, this sounds frustrating & I feel with you. Some questions:

Which skimmer are you running ?
Which salt brand do you use ?
Can you post some pictures of the Montipora and Acropora corals which are affected ?

Thanks, G.Alexander

**VegasMike** · 10-28-2005, 11:17 PM

George,

I use a Deltec Ap1003.

I use Coralife Salt - switching to Seachem as soon as it arrives.

The pics would be skeletons now as I am just about through the cycle of death. The Frogspawn is branching and losing it branch by branch. This coral is almost five years old. With the acros it would start by a brownish algae film, usually at the tips and the coral would look almost dead, but if you looked closely, some of the tissue was obviously alive. It could take almost two or three weeks for an entire piece to die. The Poci was the same way, somewhere between life and death, with obvious dead patches sprinkled with some life/color. The Montis were essentially the same, looked dead with that brown diatomacious algae, but after looking more carefully, actually alive. They would eventually die. The weird thing is that I have a Copiosa, Sarmentosa, Eleysi(sp) and Nobilis that are doing fine. The Echinos also seem unafected as do the clams. The Favia died at the ridges around the top before the whole top died off. It now resembles my own head, bald on thetop with live around the rim.

I just figured I would take away anything that might be causing it, changing lights(wanted to anyway), getting rid of the DSb, no caulerpa, and changing salt. I am hoping somewhere along the way, this problem goes away. I probably won't add much in the way of new pieces for a couple months.

Bob seems to thing it's related to a K deficiency related to salt mix, hence the change to Seachem once it arrives next week. Then, I will do daily 50 gallon water changes for about a week before going back to my weekly schedule.

Any help will be appreciated.

Sorry to put this into theis thread, maybe you should open a new thread with any response or maybe the higher powers can move just this reply to a new thread.

Mike

**G.Alexander** · 10-29-2005, 01:02 AM

Mike as I have no personal experience with the Coralife salt, I can not tell you if this is causing the problem. I am with Bob and the K-leak and IMO it would be worth a try.

I see two things which can cause this problem: Toxins are leached in the system or a main element leak.

Please take a look at my post, what I have observed how a K-leak can be identified:

http://www.zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4027

Maybe some Seachem users can jump in if they have ever observed problems with the salt.

G.Alexander

**ldrhawke** · 10-29-2005, 10:05 AM

Originally posted by VegasMike

Now, that really bites. I feel for your losses. I have been slowly losing just about every coral in my tank and have isolated the cause to the caulerpa in my refugium, I hope. The corals have been dieing at a very slow rate, the Montis went quickly, but the Acros would take three weeks or more to die. It has been very depressing. The refugium has been completely emptied cleaned out and set back up with just 50 pounds of rock/rubble elevated on a shelf 4" above the bottom of the tank with about 1800gph of flow beneath the shelf to sweep away any detritus. This has been the only thing I can think of as everything has tested out perfectly and consistently. We will see. The funny thing is that I lost no fish during this span.

Good luck on the new project, though.

Have you considered the Lake Mead water quality. It is one of the highest in the nation contaminated with perclorates. Perclorates are a by product from rocket fuel. I am not sure if it has any negative affect on marine life.

This is not meant to scare...just give some insight as to the possible problem.
http://www.ewg.org/reports/rocketsci...rint_version=1
http://www.komex.com/solutions/perchlorate.pdf

Also, many cities have changed over from chlorine gas to cloramines to treat water. Cloramines remain in the water and are much more difficult to remove. Cities often make this change not notifiying the public. Cloramines are deadly to marine life.

Do you have any friends with reef tanks having problems?

**o2manyfish** · 10-29-2005, 11:34 AM

Mike,

I have pounds and pounds of Cheatomorph for your refugium.

I can't kill the stuff. At this time of year it only grows about 50% a week in the sunlight. Summertime it gets up to 300% - With no sexual issues.

Dave B

**ldrhawke** · 10-29-2005, 11:44 AM

An easy check;....I would stop doing water changes for the next three or four weeks, and I would use an activated carbon filter and change it out once a week. If things appear to improve it is telling you the water changes may be doing more harm than good and you have a water qaulity problem.

**Heinz** · 10-29-2005, 01:01 PM

Mike, your problems reminded me on this thread,
magdrive problems
jackson's problem P.4
the question of course is, do you have mags in your system ?

**VegasMike** · 10-30-2005, 12:35 AM

Heinz, Thanks for the link, but they are inaccessible to me because of the

fiasco they went through months ago. I have never really pursued getting back on so I don't know about the Mag issues, and, yes, I ahve two Mag 3's running my two Zeo reactors - What's up?

As for the water changes, I wasn't doing anything excessive when this started so I don't think they will do more harm than good. I can only really change out about 50 gallons at a time anyway on a 600 gallon net system.

As far as water quality, first off my water is softened and then it goes through the RO/DI. I would think that would solve most of the issues especially since I don't go through DI cartridges that fast. AND, contrary to what most people think about where Las Vegas water comes from, most of it comes from aquafers (much of it from east-central nevada (middle of nowhere)) as opposed to Lake Mead. Actually, more water from Lake Mead goes to Southern California along with the electricity from the Dam. I have a good friend that works for the Water Authority and there is a lot that people really don't know or just assume about the water, not to mention one of my fraternity brothers from Ga Tech who helped install much of the treatment facilities here in town. I am not worried that much about the local water quality for those reasons. In five years, this is the first issue I have had like this.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes over the next 30-60 days with these chnges.

But heinz, fill me in on the Mag issues.

**G.Alexander** · 10-30-2005, 01:10 AM

Heinz, excellent links

Mike some had problems with this pumps while they have observed rust at the screws of the pump. Here are some comments:

From this thread: http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...5&pagenumber=1

Posted by Solbby: WOW, I am flaggergasted, what a mostly unsympthetic group of reefers!

I don't understand, rusting metal is "good" or no problem to the proper husbandry of sensitive corals/SPS???? Rusting plyers and screws present in the tank present no long term problems? This is the first time that I have experienced such a large loss of SPS corals in my system. Nothing has changed in my system in more than 2 years. I tried/tested everything to figure out the problem with my SPS (only SPS were affected). Only after removing the pumps has my tank since recovered. If I listen to the aquarists here the pumps would be still in my tank, with what I believe a continuation of my problems.

Posted by jthnhale: I've seen solbbys tank before and after the SPS started dying. It is very sad to look at compared to what it used to be. I know while the SPS were dying he was doing large water changes and trying to figure out what the problem was. He did mention that after each large water change the problem would subside for a few days and the corals would look healthier, then they would begin declining in health. This makes me believe the problem was not stray voltage as some suggested. I would think as JohnHenry stated that there could be all kinds of metals found in screws. What if the screws in solbbys pumps happened to contain copper or other harmful metals? I know it does not sound like four rusting screws would cause such damage, but the evidence does point to that.

The fact that once the pumps were removed from the tank, and the coral stopped dying is an important observation. The same thing happened to jackson6745, he was experiencing large colonies dying and could not figure out what was happening. After solbby posted pics of the rusted screws jackson checked his mag pumps and found the same problem. once he took them off the tank his coral also stopped dying. I agree this is not conclusive proof, but these are two experienced reefers who had well established tanks that had been growing well. We might never know, or be able to prove, what the exact cause was, but I believe the rusting screws in a closed system have to be suspect.

As for comparing things in the ocean to what goes on in our tanks, that's difficult for me to see. You have to admit were dealing with slightly different water volumes Perhaps the coral growing on the ships has a natural tolerance to whatever rust may be in the water column around them? who knows? In our small tanks the addition of certain metals may be enough to cause coral to die.

Posted by jackson6745: A few months later I added a chiller to the tank (late spring) and I used a mag 5 feed pump. This is when i noticed the problems. Many SPS began to STN over the next 2 months. I actually lost about 1/2 the the tank. I checked for everything.....stray voltage, nitrates, phosphates, nitrites, ammonia, cal, alk, mag, ph etc... I performed many water changes adding up to about 100% tank volume every 2 weeks. I ran carbon, polyfilter etc...and even after all this I still was losing corals! I found a thread on ManhattanReefs.com from Solbby stating his problem with his mag pump. When I checked my pump I also saw rusted screws and rust all over the front of the pump. So I replaced it with an eheim. Within 2 days i saw better polyp extension and after a week I saw better colors and new growth.

Posted by masterswimmer: I've got lots of SPS in my tank (acros, monti's, birdsnests, efflo's, etc). I've also got 4 Mag Drives running that system. I've got rusted screws too. I see no negative effects on anything. My system is just closing in on two years now. Unfortunately your system and the couple of others that have corraborated with your assessment seem to be the major exception here. With so many success stories, why would you think that you were singled out to crash? Your thread title bashes Mag Drive pumps across the board. It seems you want everyone else to jump on your bandwagon and you leave no room in your thinking (as unscientific as your findings are) for you to be misguided in your judgement. Like I said, I've got rusted screws on my Mags, SPS galore and knock on wood, no issues. Your stepped up husbandry practices definitely would promote increased health for your critters. With so many people refutting your allegations, maybe you should rethink your position. The same way you say, "isn't it possible that..........", maybe you need to take a step back and say the same thing, "isn't it possible that it wasn't the rusted screws".

Posted by Solbby: Your absolutely right. I am just posting a warning, most definately my situation may be unique to my pumps and my tank. I am not avocating throwing out your Magdrive pumps, but am just offering my experience to the RC/reefer community. Take it or leave it, but I do have a right to post my warning, you never know if my "unique problem" may be somebody else's problem in the future.

G.Alexander

**CAReefer** · 10-30-2005, 01:12 AM

Here is a peek Mike

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width="100%"><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" align=center bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=4 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width="100%" bgColor=#f3f3f3>Beware of Magdrives, I'm so mad and sad! For sometime my tank just hasn't been doing so hot, with me losing slowing one SPS after another. During that time I have been racking my brain, systematically trying to figure out what was wrong. Well I figured it out!

Check these pictures out!

This is a Mag5 that was in my sump running my skimmer. See the rust.

This is what the rust was coming from.

Hobby Experience: 8 years
Current Tanks: 120g SPS, 30g seahorse tank, 30g soft coral with a mantis ruler.
Interests: Reef tanks and biology

Open this post in a new window | Report this post to a moderator | IP: Logged

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD><TD width=10></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=10></TD><TD width="100%"><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" align=center bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=4 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD noWrap width=175 bgColor=#ebebeb height=16> 10/06/2005 09:15 AM</TD><TD vAlign=center width="100%" bgColor=#ebebeb height=16><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=bottom><TD>  </TD><TD noWrap align=right></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR><TR><TD vAlign=top noWrap width=175 bgColor=#ebebeb>solbby
Registered Member
Registered: Jul 2003
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Occupation: Microbiology PhD
Posts: 193

</TD><TD vAlign=top width="100%" bgColor=#ebebeb>Here you can see the inner chamber rust covered.

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

**Heinz** · 10-30-2005, 08:20 AM

thanx Alexander and Marshal, saved me some work

IMO jackson's post says it all, i would remove the mags and use Eheims instead,

Originally posted by Posted by jackson6745

A few months later I added a chiller to the tank (late spring) and I used a mag 5 feed pump. This is when i noticed the problems. Many SPS began to STN over the next 2 months. I actually lost about 1/2 the the tank. I checked for everything.....stray voltage, nitrates, phosphates, nitrites, ammonia, cal, alk, mag, ph etc... I performed many water changes adding up to about 100% tank volume every 2 weeks. I ran carbon, polyfilter etc...and even after all this I still was losing corals! I found a thread on ManhattanReefs.com from Solbby stating his problem with his mag pump. When I checked my pump I also saw rusted screws and rust all over the front of the pump. So I replaced it with an eheim. Within 2 days i saw better polyp extension and after a week I saw better colors and new growth.

**VegasMike** · 10-30-2005, 10:36 AM

Mags will be inspected and removed tonight if I have replacement pumps. In other cases, I will be ordering new ones tomorrow. After thinking about it, I have a Mag9 feeding my skimmer, two Mag3's for my Zeo reactors and one mixing water in my salt water make-up resevior. I have two Mag1250's on hand that probably won't fit my applications, but will rectify this quickly if rust is evident.

Thanks guys.

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