HELP I CANT KEEP CORALS ALIVEE

[CommanderInReef]

So i set up a 24g jbj cube and i'm at my wits end. I started with all the essentials excluding a protein skimmer and refugiam. packet of chemipure blue, filter floss, and filter sponge. 2 clowns living happy and hermits and snails doing just fine. But I can't keep corals to save my life. every zoa colony, opens first day and closes and dies every time. I had a gsp that never opened and slowly fell apart. tried two hammers. once i got the first it lost all polyps over night. second same deal. at first i suspected light and upgraded to ai prime. then wondered about tank parameters after zoa and gsp died so i waited about a month for the tank to cycle. now it's 2 months old. has cool neon orange coralline. and i've has to deal with a bit of a hair algae outbreak. realized refractormer was decalbrated after 1st hammer died and face palmed for days. then i added a phosphate absorber to help with hair algae. now i added second hammer and new zoa. opened about halfway the first afternoon/night. next day closed. next day, this morning. gsp lost polyps. as in half of the polyps. what is causing this. what am i missing. i have about 800gph of flow, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10 nitrate, salinity 1.025, and since the phosphate absorber my phosphates at 0. i removed it tho this morning to add more nutritents. why is everything dying overnight while fish are happy. alk 8.5, calcium weirdly high 550 and unknown magnesium but i've heard it's not a tank killer for starting out. so the long story is i had an unstable bio system when adding first zoa and gsp and had ammonia rise and nitrite which i think killed them. then i added a hammer suspecting that a recently dead brittle starfish and hermit had caused the spike. so unkowinglt added another coral, my first hammer when some nitrite were present and maybe small ammonia idk api tests suck. and it lost all polyps overnight. 3 weeks later tank has been left alone besides adding phosphate pack the same day as hammer and zoa. both closed and hammer lost polyps. flow doesn't seem too high but something has to be catastrophic killing coral overnight. Please help me!

 

[Bfragale]

Hello. Sounds like your on the right track. Your tank is so young and it seems you have a bit of instability. You will need some po4 and no3-
0/0 is not good in my opinion.
I would start with good test kits - Salifert makes decent inexpensive ones.
Corals like consistency more then anything. Major swings will cause most corals to suffer. Young tanks seem also to have trouble with corals. Took me the first year before things did well.
I would working on testing regularly and try to keep things stable and within acceptable ranges. - and as the tank matures things should improve. Sorry for no direct answer but I hope this helps some.

 

[jeffchapok]

Just be patient. I couldn't keep any zoas alive until my tank was past 9 months old. GSP just survived, but didn't spread. Then all of a sudden, everything took off.

I don't know what it is, but corals in new tanks struggle even if the things we test for all seem to be in range. Try some leather corals or mushrooms. Those seemed to do best for me early on.

Even now, I don't have great luck with euphyllia. They aren't the easiest to keep.

 

[LardLad]

Get rid of the Hermit Crabs! They are coral murderers. I dont care what anyone says. I was losing corals left and right. Then my prized Tubipora started dying.

One night I snuk up on the tank in the dark. Flipped on the flashlight.
There they were. MURDERERS!

The next day the found a "new home".

Voila! Suddenly I can keep corals. Now I have a strict no crab policy.