Corals fading away, can't ID problem, HELP!

Hi there,

I'm relatively new to aquarium keeping, I bought a JBJ 45 gallon tank 8 months ago and have never been able to keep corals alive more than 4 months. I started with 3 Euphillias, thought everything was cool for 3 months, then had 2 peter away into nothingness. I realized I had a problem and assumed it was my water temps hitting 81.5 at times. I bought a fan and thought the issue was resolved. Then I bought a mushroom, a torch, and a small plate of assorted corals. I just this week had my last remaining original Euphillia die and realized its probably not the temperature messing this all up. Please help me fix this so nothing else dies!

JBJ RL-45
Current USA Orbit LED Light https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GFTNG3S
1 Jebao OW-25 set to medium high
Temperature controller, heater fan
Protein skimmer, filter socks, filter floss, IM media reactor with Dr Tim's NP-Active Pearls, everything cleaned regularly
RODI water and Instant Ocean salt

8 small clownfish and small assortment of snails and crabs. 5 gallon water changes approx 3 times a month.

Measured water parameters today and these are typical number I see:

Temp 78.2
Salinity 1.024??
dKH 8
Calcium 380
Ammonia 0.125
pH 8.3
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5
Phosphate 0

I question the salinity because the hydrometer I use never seems to agree on what the salinity actually is. I ordered a real refractometer today... Maybe this is all because I can't read the salinity correctly idk..

The test tubes picture is me trying to read Ph. I actually tested 5 vials out of frustration. Two were yellow, three purple. Yellow = 7.4 pH purple being ~8.2-8.4.

There was a few weeks when the temperature got around 81.5 before I could get a fan. Tank is always between 77-78.5 now.

Does anybody have any opinions on what is going wrong here? I'm leaning my API test kit is awful and screwing me over, but idk it could be my moderately weak lighting, I really have no clue. Please help me out here guys I really want to do this right and figure out what's going wrong. Thank you thank you.

I would invest in something else to check salinity just to check. I had a few coral dye on me due to it. Thinking my hydrometer was right and it wasn't

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Thanks Sorin, I'll get the refractometer on Saturday. The internet is telling me that if my salinity was a lot lower my alk and cal would be quite a bit lower as well... Since alk and cal are kind of a little low but not crazy I'm not sure if salinity is the problem. I just dont know at this point.

Do you make your own rodi or do you buy it from your local fish store? I would invest in some different test kits. I use Hanna for alkalinity and phosphates. For nitrate, calcium and magnesium I use Salifert.

I make my own RODI with this guy.
https://liquagen.com/products/4-sta...i-water-filter-system/?variant=19794030821438

50$ each on those Hanna checkers makes me go yikes... if I only got two should i get phosphate and alkalinity?

I agree on getting a refracometer. Assuming the hydrometer is close though, salinity is not the problem if it is steady.

My first concern would be the ammonia. It should be at 0. Clownfish are “messy” and I wonder if 8 in that tank are creating more waste than your system can keep up with? Did you ever see zero levels before the fish were added? Where are you getting the .125 result? I don’t remember that as an option on the API card?

Waste has never been a problem for me, I’m keeping on top of the protein skimmer and changing out the filter floss every week and cleaning the filter socks. .125 is not on the API kits, there’s 0 and there’s .25 but the color was inbetween the two so I said it was inbetween. It’s a bit of a guessing game with the color strips..

I would start with the ammonia. Hopefully someone else will hop in that can confirm or correct me but if you have ammonia then I think you have a “waste” problem. Your biological filtration is not keeping up with the ammonia being produced by your tank. I have always understood that ammonia, even in the smallest amounts is deadly to livestock.

I don’t know if that’s the only problem but I would start there. It also seems odd to have any nitrates if you are running bio pellets? Have you changed them out? They can leach back into the system at some point. My initial thought is that you don’t have a fully established cycle and the system isn’t keeping up with the livestock?

P.S. - you could definitely find a better lighting option for a reasonable price but I would solve the other issues first. Maybe you could take your water to an LFS and get it tested?

Yup Ammonia is a no no for the aquarium. Even for fish, Ammonia will harm them. So your fish are OK?

I believe corals can withstand ammonia much more than fish. Test kits/good equipment are expensive, but necessary. How much $ are you losing in coral? This does not even include the stress, and all other bad feelings that come with losing animals you have invested in.

You might not believe this but just leave the tank alone and do NOT anything for a month and the problem will go away by itself. Maybe water chy a bit here and there but your tank is empty so that should be ok

The fish are all totally fine. I want to stress that the ammonia is approx 0.125ppm (super small). This is an approximation based off the crappy color swatches being difficult to read. It could very well be 0.25 or effectively 0. I’ll run the test again tonight and see if I can get more clarity on that. I’ve lost like $130 of coral so far with another $200 worth in there currently that I really want to live and thrive.

I just changed out the bio pellets in the media reactor last week...

I could buy and use API Ammo lock.. thoughts?

I’m leaning buying an Ai Hydra 26 for the tank. Could this be a lighting issue?

Why did you change out the bio pellets? At this point, I believe water quality is much higher priority than lights

By changed out I mean replaced old pellets with new ones cause they had been in the tank for 7 months

I would do less right now, not more. Any ammonia is bad...even the smallest amount. Scr’s advice above sounds good to me. Get a good test kit, get a refractometer and let things stabilize, the bacteria on the live rock and sand will eventually catch up and your tank will cycle. I also agree with Jose, the lights are much less of an issue than the water quality. Worth replacing but not the main problem.

I would personally remove the bio pellets until you have a handle on the rest but I don’t know as much about them as others.

Agree agree and agree. I don't see you need bio pellets yet. And the lights would be the last thing in this case

Yes, I agree with everyone in this post, let the tank season a little. You might be over stocked on fish. If you don’t want to spend that much on kits, at least consider salifert CA, AlK, MaG, and ammonia, you should be able to find them on eBay for a good price, probably all for around $100.
I’d almost say run the pellets, just As insurance for all the fish you have in that little 45, and pick up a bottle of microbacter 7 from brightwell, start dosing it once a week for the first couple of months, and up to twice a week once you start seeing growth in your coral. Also lay off the water changes for a couple of weeks.
You should also be able to get the microbacter for a good price on eBay, just look for a vendor in your state.

Alrighty I’ve purchased a refractometer, all the salifert test kits, and the brightwell microbacter. Hopefully by Sunday night I should have a clearer picture of where my tank parameters actually are.

I agree on everything mentioned on all replies. My personal suggestions would be to reduce the amount of pellets in the reactor to 2/3 from what is currently being used, just to allow a bit more nutrients to float freely & feed any biological filtration. It will help in colonizing any biomedia with healthy nutrient consuming organics & promote the growth of all types of pods. Another would be to use carbon to help pull out that suspicious ammonia. Maybe even run some media like purigen from seachem, it helps pull out unwanted silicates from the water column. Good luck.

See, now there’s your problem right there LOL

First off, I don’t know which hydrometer you are using but they are just fine. Hydrometers, refractometers and salinity probes all approximate salinity with a different approach and none is prefect but they are all good enough for our needs if calibrated properly. That said standard IO salt mixes up at about 10.5 DKH, you really don’t have any consumption so if you are reading 8 dkh, you may be running a bit of hypo salinity

Ammonia is really a base necessity of life but in an aquarium, it becomes lethally toxic at very low levels. In my experience, most corals tolerate much more ammonia than most fishes but clowns are damsels and damsels tolerate ammonia better than most all other fish.

I know you cringed at the thought of buying test kits, I get my Salifert on ebay for about $16 each shipped (Jeff Bezos and amazon can take a long walk on a short pier for all I care) It might be not a bad idea to pony up $35 for ICP testing. I do an ATI ICP test pretty much quarterly, there are other ICP tests, even some locally that will get your results quicker. ICP is not a cure all but it does give you a nice snapshot of what the hell is going on with your tank. ATI also tests your RODI in a separate sample no extra cost. I like to use all my current test kits on the sane time I take my ICP test to get a baseline on the precision and accuracy of my kits and my methodology.

My first suspicion is that you are actually starving your coral and that your 5 nitrates is just a testing discrepancy. That’s just a guess, I really can’t say for sure. LPS don’t really require that much light. 150-200PAR should be plenty.