20G help

[nkollross]

Hello,

New to the hobby and I am having a bit of trouble. I have a 20G hex aquarium currently, I am running a Seachem HOB filter and a Small protein skimmer, 1 small power head as well. In the tank I have a a combo of dry rock and real reef rock, sand bottom and some small stones. For the light i have a AI Prime reef using a profile from their website. I have a small peacock mantis shrimp, a few emerald crabs, 2 clear shrimp, some snails, a few hermit crabs, 2 red star fish and 2 clown fish.

I have 6 soft corals in the tank and all of them appear to be in a really bad way. About 3 weeks ago I got overzealous and bought 7 fish. 2 clowns and 5 green chromis. about a week later i did a parameter check and everything was awful. PH, Ammonia, Nitrate and Nitrites were all off the chart bad. I quickly realized that I had to many fish in to small of a tank. I removed the chromis and did a 50% water change. Fast forward to now and my parameters are all in the "good range", i do weekly water changes of about 20%. The water is clear and nothing i can tell is off with the parameters but all of the coral is dying. Should I expect this from the "poisoning" from a couple weeks ago? If i just leave it alone should I expect it to come back?

My Zoas are open again but they are thinning. My hammers look ok, and are starting to open up again. I have some coral growing on the rocks that i didn't t even buy. I fear that I have killed all the coral... Any suggestions? Thoughts?

 

[wiggitywade]

Sounds like a good call to reduce the amount of fish. It looks like your zoas are reaching for light. Could be a culprit for them and potentially others. Mine looked like that after a 3day blackout and went to normal after a couple days of proper lighting. I have an AI prime as well but use a light profile from BRS that has been great. Not sure how the two would compare. If the tank is newer then adding 7 fish likely overwhelmed your healthy bacteria and will take some time to (hopefully) balance itself out with the water changes and reduced bioload. I added some coral too early in my tank and lost one to algae too. Patience wins

 

[nkollross]

I try not to change my lighting to often, but i will say im not sure, being new to the hobby if my lighting is correct or ideal for growth. Can you shre where you got your profile from on BRS?

 

[Sharkbait19]

I should add that a lot of your corals are known to have temper tantrums and close up for a while after getting annoyed. Getting all the params back in check should help them open back up.
Side note, that mantis is going to kill all of your inverts and quite possibly the clowns.

 

[nkollross]

I was planning on him killing the inverts. He hasn't touched anything in the tank, no snails, crabs or fish. He absolutely may 1 day, i totally agree. Right now he eats clams and shrimp from the grocery store (not frozen) He lost his smashers before i received him and has not molted since that time.

 

[wiggitywade]

I try not to change my lighting to often, but i will say im not sure, being new to the hobby if my lighting is correct or ideal for growth. Can you shre where you got your profile from on BRS?

At 7:40 they go into the light settings. The whole video and series of videos they have on lighting are super reliable resources.

 

[Hadla]

Not all mantises will kill your other animals! The small ones don’t usually take over inverts or fish much bigger than themselves… depends entirely on their personalities. If it’s even a peacock, lots of them get labeled that cause sellers don’t bother to check

 

[Sharkbait19]

Not all mantises will kill your other animals! The small ones don’t usually take over inverts or fish much bigger than themselves… depends entirely on their personalities. If it’s even a peacock, lots of them get labeled that cause sellers don’t bother to check

Agree. Small guys like Wenerrae are generally safe. Peacocks do get big enough where they can if there is no escape room.
Typically fish eating happens more with spearers than smashers, but mantises are mantises…
Most smashers will remove prey size inverts though.