general decline question

[bamastunter]

ok I have a good friend that has gotten in our hobby he just upgraded to a 92 bow its been up for 5 weeks now we used all of the rock,sand,and water from his 55 so it had about 45-50 gals of cycled water and 60 or so of new water including the sump I keep his corals in my tank for him to let the 92 mini cycle all levels are 0 and cal is 400 we put his corals in about 2 weeks ago everything was great but the last 3 days things are not opening fully and he has the following corals frogspawn branching hammer several different zoas and some mushrooms the only thing I can think thats wrong is the fact that he is skimmerless right now but he will be using a kent nataulis te the mag 9.5 just came in and fish are 3 chromis, small salin tang,scooter blenny,and a star fish lighting is the 250watt de 14k and some pc actinics so any thoughts I'm stumped

 

[Ike]

5 week old tank, no skimmer, everything disturbed from a move... I'd say it's pretty obvious what's going on and it's just general stress from the water quality being a little off and move related stresses. Also, what are the alkalinity levels? Are there new lights on the tank?

 

[gparr]

When you say things were great for two weeks, but things aren't opening in the past three days, by "great" do you mean corals were fully opened and showing good color? Or were they just hanging in there? What, if anything, changed in the past four or five days?

One thing that concerns me, assuming all water parameters are in order, is the sand. Things rarely go well in a tank switch if you keep old sand. Disturbing it tends to release things into the water that shouldn't be released. The sand should either be washed thoroughly or simply replaced.

What to do now? I would probably do daily 25% water changes; run plenty of carbon, changing it out twice a week for a month; and make sure you have plenty of flow. You also might consider siphoning out the old sand and replacing it.

Gary

 

[bamastunter]

yes corals are fully opened and color was good no real decline in color now just not opening fully lights are the same just moved them from the 55 to the 92 and the sand is mixed in with 60lbs of new live sand I to was concerned about him reusing the old sand but he called me after he had done it guess I should have been a little clearer about what to reuse and what not to we weir suppose to move rock and water over the next day but he wanted to help. stress is prolly whats wrong just wanting to make sure I'm not overlooking anything

 

[cloakerpoked]

I'd guess stress, or possibly Nitrate/phosphate issues. If they aren't showing up, and the test kits are relatively new (less than a year and a half old), then most of what I'd be concerned about would be the stress. The PAR readings at their new locations in the tank are inevitably different than they were in the old one, so it's just a new environment for them that way for sure.