Iron remover, bleached coral

i need to know the best product that will quickly remove iron oxide ie. gfo dust. Poly filter work? my gfo bag leaked in my filter sock and churned dust up and it bleached my biggest acro coral and has started to discolor another acro and killed my peppermint shrimp. this seems to be the only culprit possible and the most likely so tomorrow morning i will be racing to the store to grab something.

I see that you are still online here. While waiting for your response, I'll add some thoughts.

The filter sock is a not a good place to keep any kind of media because the draining water tumbles the bag and/or media inside the bag, churning it up, making dust that spreads throughout the system. When AC gets ground into powder it can cause problems in the tank. A better alternative is to ensure the bags are securely closed and placed near the return pump strainer.

Coral produces slime and sloughs it off to remove any irritating particles and to expel waste.

If anything, newly added GFO (rusted iron) disbursing throughout the tank might cause problems by removing too much PO4 from the water too fast. The coral's symbiotic Zooxanthellae algae(which gives coral its color) need PO4 to survive.

Let's also look at other possible causes for this problem.


Edited by Mark Peterson - July 27 2014 at 8:53pm

whoops, sorry got busy, well the gfo was in the tank for about 3 weeks. i was using it to combat the usual cyano/algae outbreak with newer tanks. so i decided to rig up a cheap diy inline reactor that worked quite well except i couldnt see into the media. i added pads inside the reactor to keep the media from moving and churning but it still did a little.. eventually the pads ended up with a layer of dust on them and i only realized this when a cloud of gfo dust expelled out my return. i immediately turned it off and decided to re engineer it a bit once i find some clear tubing.. but there was still a cloud of gfo dust in the tank. i figured i would monitor it and hopefully it would be filtered out. by removing the inline filter, i increased the flow to my tank thus increasing the flow into the filter sock which i placed extra gfo media that didnt fit into the reactor. i didnt realize until tonight that the media had gotten loose and had wrecked havoc inside the filter sock and im sure was tumbling about at high speed all day. i had a small bag of AC downstream under more calm flow, no churning so my guess is this coral was sensitive to the amount of iron along with another acro and the shrimp.

I'm disappointed I didn't get a call at 12:37 am 

pilotx44 wrote: ...the gfo was in the tank for about 3 weeks. i was using it to combat the usual cyano/algae outbreak with newer tanks

....Interesting.  Not saying it shouldn't be done but I would not do that. The usual algae outbreak in a new tank is actually a good thing. Algae eats a variety of polluting compounds in a natural way, which helps balance the environment and the tank chemistry. That's why you will always see me recommending the use of lots of Macroalgae for the first 3 months of a tanks life.

I'm not so sure that stripping PO4 from a tank that may not have any extra PO4 is good for the tank - and definitely not good for the coral. As I mentioned above, coral need a low level of PO4 for their symbiotic Zooxanthellae algae.

SPS in a new tank is risky anyway. It's this 90, right? http://utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=71745 (sorry I never got back about my suggestions regarding the stand. they were very minor modifications anyway). The Alk and Ca levels may be just fine but I'm with Nikki, we need to know those numbers along with the N compound levels. Now that PO4 has been essentially stripped from this system, knowing the current parameters is very important to figuring out what to do next.

Speaking of what to do next, I would remove all GFO media and replace the AC with new AC as soon as possible. The recent SPS deaths require some water polishing.

Aloha

P.S. Like Nikki said, the media works best when it softly tumbles. The inline media device is an admirable substitute  for a media reactor but IMO is unnecessary. A media bag filled loosely with 1 cup of AC placed near the return pump intake, flipped over from time to time to redistribute the granules/pellets will do a fairly good job. This is how I get the job done and at the same time keep expenses low for my coral farm, but I guess you saw that when you were here.


Edited by Mark Peterson - July 28 2014 at 9:13am

Alk below 8 dKH in that new tank - a definite cause for concern and easily the reason for SPS issues. Sorry for your loss.

Aloha

If you're having trouble getting your alk up, check your magnesium level.