Blasto trouble

[57Medic]

Hello all, I am having an issue with my blastomussa. I lost my mind and brought my old 8 gallon biocube up as a reef.

Started with live rock, live sand, tank has been up only 9 weeks. Current paramaters s.g. 1.026, pH 8, nitrite 0 nitrate 0, Ca 420, NH3 trace (API test kit). The blastos were open, happy on the lower 1/3 of the rock. I thought they were getting blasted by a 420gph power head, so I moved them away from direct high flow. still opening and appeared ok.

Then I noticed one closed up tight, while the other remained healthy looking, now both are clamped shut, this happened around the time when I replaced the old stock
T5s (which were over 2 years old) with a Kessil a80. So I am thinking it might be too much light.

Any thoughts?

 

[GoVols]

You have an trace amount of ammonia with no nitrates, kinda stands out to me.
Hope your tank has been fully cycled.

I'd re-test ammonia, nitrites and nitrates with Salifert kits and keeping using the Salifert nitrate kit down the road. Your corals need nitrates, and a tad amount of phosphates too.

If all are well, dim down your a80's "intensity" setting, to see if they open back up.
LPS love Kessils, but those a80s have more power than most reefer's think.

Feeding Red Sea Reef Energy can be a good thing to do as well.

But, verify those three parameters first and start testing phosphates with something like the Hanna ULR phos. checker.

The Big 3 testing:
For testing cal and alk "API"... is right in there, but that's about it.
Use Salifert for testing mag

 

[57Medic]

Ok, will do. I did read that the API kits can have false positives. Will have the LFS double check the parameters.