Coral issues

[mikeb5479]

Good morning all, long time reader first time poster, I'd first like to say thank you for all the help so far just from reading a ton it has already helped me out. But now I am having a new issue with some of my corals and I could really use some help!

I recently started having issues with some of my corals the past few days, mostly my hammers they were all looking great then when I added the larger orange one everything changed. I also started adding Red Sea trace colors and NO3 PO4-X (I have since stopped that) my calcium was a bit high and I’m working on brining that down (was above 500). I also read that I might need to soak them in hydrogen peroxide and a cup of tank water. One of my orange mushrooms is closing up, and now my SPS is really starting to bleach out, I did just adjust it because I didn't think it was getting enough light.

Here are my levels:
Salinity: 32.4ppt (slowly raining it as it was low 31ppt)
Temperature: 79 (I have read that's high so I lowed it back to 78, it use to be 77 for the longest time)
Calcium: 485 (tested yesterday after it being above 500 for a few weeks)
Magnesium: 1500
Alkalinity: 11.5
Nitrate: 5
Nitrite: 0.05
PH: 8.15
Phosphate: 0
Ammonia: 0.25 (been feeding a lot because I had an ick scare I will be doing another water change tomorrow)

Here are some pics of the effected corals, I did move the orange hemmer up to the middle of the tank from the sand to get a bit more light, and the others are still a bit closed up. I thought something was crawling on them or even potentially nibbling at them but I have witnessed none of that so far. The tank is the Red Sea reefer 625 G2+ (165 gallons including sump) I dose Red Sea AB+, Magnesium, Calcium, and KH. I did have the skimmer off for about a week after I dosed with Dr. Tim's First defense (Fish look great now). Any help would be greatly appreciated, tank has been up for about 9 months now and I'm now worried what might be happening.

Thanks a lot
Mike

 

[glb]

The ammonia in your tank is the problem. If the tank is established, something might have died unnoticed. If it’s new, sounds like you’re not done cycling. Either way, you need to look for the source of the ammonia. I’d pull out the corals and fish if you can until you have no ammonia or nitrites. You can neutralize the ammonia with Prime on an emergency basis, but that’s only treating the symptom. Good luck!

 

[Troylee]

What kind of test kit you using? Ammonia won’t hurt corals in fact they love it! It hurts fish… if your po4 truly is zero that’s your problem right there.. temp, calcium etc is fine.. my tank runs hot as I use metal halides and my calcium is up there also for some odd reason lol.. but I can say my corals have never looked better.. I’m Sps dominated.

 

[yanetterer]

A couple questions that I think will be helpful for anyone trying to diagnose:

What test kits do you use? API is known to almost always show .25.

What were your nitrates and phosphates at before you started using NO3 PO4-X, and when did you start/stop using it? A sudden change can be worse than having too high of nutrients.

Is there something growing on your sand and rocks? It is hard to tell, but it looks like cyano. A picture under white lights may help.

 

[pgroth1]

Agreed, phosphate at 0 is not good. Either feed more or stop using filter socks for awhile.