Bacterial bloom?

[Tyler Bullock]

Is this a bacterial bloom? Starting to get worried due to my corals looking so poorly. This has been going on for 4 days now. Tank has been set up a little over a month. Everything is stock that came with the fulval evo 13.5. I tested my water a day after I did my water change, 2 days ago.

Salinity = 1.025
PH = 8.1
Ammonia = 0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 0

I am using the API test kit.

A little back story. Started this tank with a fish less cycle for 1 week using bio spira. Tested water almost every day to watch the progress due to me never using bottled bacteria before. Tank cycled in 4 days. Water parameters were pretty much the same as what I posted above. So I got some fish.

The downfall....

The 2 clowns I got looked good at the LFS. 2 days later it looked like ich was on one. That one was not eating. Shame on me, I did not set up a QT. A week later I got 4 frags of corals. 2 zoa's, small frog spawn, and an acan. Picked up 5 crabs and 3 snails. Back to the fish. Thought it was ich, it was brook. Killed the 2 fish a week later. Got on r2r and was told to let the tank go fallow for 6-10 weeks. I have not added anything to the tank since the death of the 2 clowns. All I have been doing is hand feeding my corals reef roids.

Came home from work 4 days ago and noticed the tank was slightly cloudy. Didn't think anything of it. The next day, I started to worry and watched my tank at night. I saw thousands of little white spots that look like bugs all over my tank. They are pods. I have not added anything. Only thing I can think of is my corals had the pods on them.

Yesterday my corals started to look not as plump, today they look worse. Zoa's look fine. Frog and Acan looks brutal.

What is going on? What can I do to help these corals?

 

[Tyler Bullock]

Forgot to mention when I did my water change, the water I took out was pretty dark and had an odor.

 

[40B Knasty]

Pods are most likely what you have and that is good thing. Kind of bad thing is having a young tank for corals. Most people will say at least 3 months. You are probably just going through one of the ugly phases and that is diatoms. Usually first to hit the system after a tank cycles. Nothing to worry about. It will work its way out in a month. We all go through it. So you don't have to go running to the store for something to cure it. Just ride that part out. As far as the cloudy water. It could be a few things. First thing you will be asked is if you are using RO/DI and a water conditioner like Prime to remove chlorine or chloramine. That is what your water treatment plant uses to clean the water you use. If you have not used a conditioner. You can add it right to your tank. No harm in it. Just follow the instructions. The pods probably came from a live substrate or live rock.
You could be getting something released from the live rock causing the cloudiness. Maybe someone else will know the reason for cloudiness if it isn't your sand being kicked up, but for the most part I wanted to set you at a little ease with the other things. Run a good carbon like BRS ROX.08 to get that smell and water cleaned up crystal clear.

 

[Tyler Bullock]

I do use RO/DI water. I also test it before I put it in. TDS meter is always 0 or 1-2 every time I have done a water change. I got dry sand. My rock was the rock I had in my 55 gallon tank 10 years ago. It has been sitting in a bin in the garage. I bleached the rock and few months before I set up the tank. Let it dry and made sure it had no odor.

 

[40B Knasty]

Pods probably came in on the frag plugs. Crazy how they reproduced that much from just those little chances to have them all over your glass.

 

[Tyler Bullock]

I'm going to do a 4 gallon water change tomorrow. See if that helps out any. I had my wife send me a picture of my corals at lunch and they looked slightly better. They also looked better when I got home. 30 minutes left on the lights and they are looking quite bad again. I will post an update tomorrow after the water change.