Coral r closing up plzz help...

[brianle0612]

Hi all,
My tank is running almost 7 months now, my coral were doing good so far. 3 weeks ago I took out all my live rock scape and replaced by all new dry rock scape wich I thought i would look better than old one. Then the problem begin, all my coral started to closing up and look not happy like before. Is new landscape effect to them ? Or my tank re cycle again ? Will they coming back after cycle time again ? Or what would I do now ?
tank numbers: Calcium 490, Alk 9, NH3: 0.10, NO3:0; NO2: 0. Magnesium will not be the problem because I do water change every week 10%. Any advice would help me alot. Thanks reefer

 

[AnotherReefHobbyist]

Your tank is re-cycling due to the new rock with a lack of bacteria. Ammonia ( nh3 ) should be zero in a healthy tank, as it will be converted into nitrites ( no2 ) and then nitrates ( no3 ) . I would add seachem prime for temporary ammonia neutralization, and then add something like fritz turbo start to rapidly cycle the tank.

 

[noobster]

i don't think you're supposed to put brand new dry rock into an established tank. it was supposed to be "cured" first, but looks like you're beyond that point now

 

[A Young Reefer]

Of course your tank is gonna run through problems when you switch all of your live rock to dry rock. You have caused an imbalance in your beneficial bacteria and microorganism population. You already are reading some ammonia levels. I wouldn’t suggest you putting the old rock back since it should’ve dried out by now after 3 weeks and it will add more ammonia ti the tank.like others suggested add seachem prime and stability.

 

[muzikalmatt]

By removing all of your live rock you essentially removed most of your biological filtration and likely caused your tank to cycle again. (Hence the presence of ammonia) Typically when you want to replace rock in an established tank, you want to do so very gradually by adding new rock and removing the old rock one piece at time over weeks or even months, depending on the tank size.

As @AnotherReefHobbyist indicated, you need to do something to get rid of the ammonia in the tank by either adding Prime or doing large, consistent water changes. You should also add some more bottled bacteria to try and beef up your biological filtration again. You're likely going to lose some corals in this process, but if you act fast you may save some of them.

 

[brianle0612]

Your tank is re-cycling due to the new rock with a lack of bacteria. Ammonia ( nh3 ) should be zero in a healthy tank, as it will be converted into nitrites ( no3 ) and then nitrates ( no2 ) . I would add seachem prime for temporary ammonia neutralization, and then add something like fritz turbo start to rapidly cycle the tank.

Im adding Prime every water change now. Im thinking what else can I do ? Or will my coral coming back ?

 

[muzikalmatt]

Im adding Prime every water change now. Im thinking what else can I do ? Or will my coral coming back ?

How often are you doing water changes now? You can't stick to weekly water changes when you have ammonia in your tank now. You likely need to be doing daily large water changes to keep the ammonia levels in check until your biological filtration can catch up. Otherwise you're probably going to lose everything (you may still lose everything unfortunately).

I'm not sure there's much else you can do short of removing the corals and placing them in another tank that is properly cycled. Could your LFS or maybe a local reefer friend hang onto your corals until your tank is finished recycling?

 

[AnotherReefHobbyist]

Im adding Prime every water change now. Im thinking what else can I do ? Or will my coral coming back ?

Prime only affects ammonia for 24 hours, after that it does nothing ( other than treat tap water )

as I stated earlier, there are rapid cycling chemicals that add established bacteria into your tank, I would get one of those, and that should balance your levels out fairly quickly.

I have had tanks re-cycle due to moving them, and did not loose any livestock in the process, though none of them were happy.

just do yourself a favor and don’t freak out, as long as you are keeping softies and lps, and you fix the problem in the near future, everything is going to be okay.