Corals won’t open

[Dane87]

so I’m having trouble with my corals opening all of a sudden. Duncan and hammer, parameters are as follows
PH 8.0
Salinity 1.023
Nitrates 0
Phosphates .50
Calcium 540
I know the calcium is high and working on lowering it but could that be the issue? T.I.A

 

[Ishaithecoralguy]

Is your salinity always that low, and whats the temp? Im not totally sure but it could have something to do with the ratio of nitrate to phosphate. Also what test are you using? The api ones are almost worthless. Also did you change any lighting or flow or introduce any organisms recently?

 

[Ishaithecoralguy]

And your calcium is a bit high, probably not the issue though. Maybe do a little water change to see if that helps the calcium and and other random thing going on. Then if it doesnt stop maybe retest and add carbon media bags or a reactor.

 

[Dane87]

My salinity is always 1.023. And I had a cube the exploded so had to transfer from there but that was almost a month or a little longer ago. They were all fine before that

 

[Dane87]

And yes using API which I’ve heard good and bad about. I just have no idea what is going on lol

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

API ammonia is good, the rest...not so much.

when in doubt, change some water out.

 

[Cory]

What is your alkalinity? This is the most important besides calcium and magnesium for corals.

 

[Dane87]

What is your alkalinity? This is the most important besides calcium and magnesium for corals.

9dkh when I tested couple days ago

 

[Dane87]

I just added a t8 act light as I know the fluval lights aren’t very good so am hoping that helps as well. Also just did 20gal water change and started using reef crystals. Was just using regular salt before

 

[DanielJameS]

2 things (because I’ve been dealing with this as well.) if you are using API dKh go get it triple checked. I’ve been using API for this for a while as I’ve done some baseline tests to go off of. Just got a Hanna and it turns out my Alk was 6.7 [emoji15] I was getting 9 on API, LFS told me 10-11 finally got it figured out and stuff is rebounding. Also if your PO4 is really .5 that’s an issue unless you meant
.05 id get a more accurate number on that because if your NO3 is zero and PO4 is .
5 you’re out of balance in favor of PO4.

Low Alk and high PO4 are two of the worst things to have going on especially simultaneously.

Also if you’re doing larger WC’s make sure you are not swinging your Alk around, RC is a little “juiced” on the alkalinity.