FISH AND CORAL PROBLEMS!! please help

[Markus_met]

hi everyone,

Im having a bit of a problem with my tank and cant figure out what else to do.

Its a 20 litre, 3 and a half month old reef aquarium.

To sum up... I bought a citrinus which arrived friday last week along with a clavularia, a lobophylia and a candy coral. All good on friday. Since then things have started to go wrong. The citrinuss came very skinny so im trying to feed him properly. Hes proving to be hard to feed... I give him brime shrimp which is basically the only thing he accepts... And even so he spits out most of it after taking it. On the other hand, my clown is stuffing himself with all the food the other one spits out. All of this is creating a roller coaster on my water parameters aswell. Yesterday i had the cloudiest water i've ever had so i had to change 6 liters of water, clean the filter, put bacteria in... Today the water was cleaner when i got back from work, but suddenly my sinularia (which has been doing great for almost 2 months now) looks like its dying... Plus my new clavularia still hasnt opened up and polyps are starting to die and fall out from the colony. Ive placed it in different locations but still no luck.

Does anyone know what is going on and what can i do to make things go the way they should? Is there a chemical war going on between my corals???

Please help!!

FYI: I also have a kenya tree, zoas, xenia and a euphylia. Maybe knowing this mighmoment. These corals are doing fine at the moment

 

[CastAway]

Can you share your current parameters? Can you clarify, what kind of filtration?

 

[ReefMadScientist]

^ As he said.

Also, I am sure you are overfeeding trying to get the other fish to eat. Sounds like that is causing some of your water issues. And to note, you said 3.5 month old tank? You should still be cycling at that time. Try adding some bacteria to your tank to help stabilize things such as Microbacter7. Your bacteria levels may be too low which is causing your tank to cloud due to over feeding.

Ima take a guess and say you do not have a skimmer?

 

[Markus_met]

My parameters at the moment are:

Ph: 8
Ammonia: 0.25 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 5.0 ppm

Yes I am giving more food than I should and even so the citrinus wont eat much as I said. Ive had the tank running since the end of april. After 1 month of cycling I added my clownfish and 2 of the soft corals and they have always been healthy. I add 1 ml of bacteria every two weeks as reefer friends sugested... I use synthetic fiber for my filter, and no I dont have a skimmer

 

[CastAway]

If your reefer friends have larger, established and stable tanks, you might consider having them house the Citron, and possibly the other fish as well, while the ammonia is consumed and things stabilize. I suspect that you've simply out paced the bacteria in your system by over feeding. I'm new to the hobby myself, but in my opinion, it's a very small volume of water with a lot of change going on. Some additional rock to increase biological surface area may help, but, I'm not sure it would help given the displacement/reduction of water. If it were mine, I'd consider a small remote refugium with macro algae, both to increase the total volume, and to help reduce nutrients. I wish you and the goby the best.

 

[ebushrow]

As stated above, the bacteria is probably going through a catch up phase. The fact that you have any ammonia reading is usually the culprit that tells you the tank may be going through a mini-cycle. You may also have rotting food and waste in the filter media and it's also trapping nitrates. Also, are you using RODI water in your tank? Nutrient overload can happen with tap water...
Also, a skimmer is very needed for a softy tank IMHO. Chemical warfare between softies is legendary and well documented.
Make sure you are rinsing the frozen food with rodi as well...depending on the source, it may be full of added nasties that are not helping your parameters.

 

[Markus_met]

Yes I use RODI water in my tank, but i didnt know that I should rinse the frozen food with it as well. Good to know that!! I have changed the fiber both yesterday and today to ensure a clean filtering. Tje water now looks much cleaner since I did the change yesterday and i can barely see it cloudy anymore. Anyway I will keep testing the water parameters to see how it goes. I will have to research more on the skimmer idea aswell...

Thanks for your help guys!!