Jacko85
Community Member
Hey All,
Would appreciate some advice. I've got a ~80G tank that i've had up and running for a few months. Couple of clowns, some snails, an urchin, and in terms of coral a hammer, an acan, and a mushroom leather. Chaeto in the sump (about baseball size). Feeding is liquid mysis + pellets.
As far as history, tank cycled fine before any of that was added, but very sterile early. Once lights came on diatoms etc but that subsided. Current params are nitrites 0, nitrates 0 phosphates 0, ph 7.8, dissolved oxygen 8.1/8.2. Salinity 1.026. Current monitoring with a seneye as well as API testing manually, hanna for salinity. Daily water changes of ~1-2% and ATO in place.
The problem, over the last couple of weeks had a decent GHA outbreak. Around the time the CUC came in so guessing came from that. Noticed larger ph swings (0.2) over a number of days with lighting and increasing day by day, so backed that off back down to ~50% and back into acclimation mode. At this point corals were still happy and had been for a few weeks prior.
*but* what then started to happen was the acan started looking unhappy and no longer puffy etc. And over the next few days the hammer and mushroom have now retracted also. Did a 10% water change which seemed to help *slightly* so backed that up with another 10% a day later. That was this weekend. Everything still unfortunately looks not great. I was thinking maybe flow, however now my urchin has decided to drop all it's spines. So im now back to thinking water.
But everything i'm testing for is coming up nothing. I was thinking maybe the GHA was stripping out too much and that was the issue, but I can't imagine 0 nitrates would cause the urchin to become unhappy. Note the clowns are still 100% fine.
Bit of a ramble, but honestly I'm just a bit at a loss. Is it just a matter of doing a bunch more large water changes (salt is tropic marin pro btw)?? Or is there something else I should be testing for.
Cheers,
Jack
Would appreciate some advice. I've got a ~80G tank that i've had up and running for a few months. Couple of clowns, some snails, an urchin, and in terms of coral a hammer, an acan, and a mushroom leather. Chaeto in the sump (about baseball size). Feeding is liquid mysis + pellets.
As far as history, tank cycled fine before any of that was added, but very sterile early. Once lights came on diatoms etc but that subsided. Current params are nitrites 0, nitrates 0 phosphates 0, ph 7.8, dissolved oxygen 8.1/8.2. Salinity 1.026. Current monitoring with a seneye as well as API testing manually, hanna for salinity. Daily water changes of ~1-2% and ATO in place.
The problem, over the last couple of weeks had a decent GHA outbreak. Around the time the CUC came in so guessing came from that. Noticed larger ph swings (0.2) over a number of days with lighting and increasing day by day, so backed that off back down to ~50% and back into acclimation mode. At this point corals were still happy and had been for a few weeks prior.
*but* what then started to happen was the acan started looking unhappy and no longer puffy etc. And over the next few days the hammer and mushroom have now retracted also. Did a 10% water change which seemed to help *slightly* so backed that up with another 10% a day later. That was this weekend. Everything still unfortunately looks not great. I was thinking maybe flow, however now my urchin has decided to drop all it's spines. So im now back to thinking water.
But everything i'm testing for is coming up nothing. I was thinking maybe the GHA was stripping out too much and that was the issue, but I can't imagine 0 nitrates would cause the urchin to become unhappy. Note the clowns are still 100% fine.
Bit of a ramble, but honestly I'm just a bit at a loss. Is it just a matter of doing a bunch more large water changes (salt is tropic marin pro btw)?? Or is there something else I should be testing for.
Cheers,
Jack
. I did actually get some phyto in on Sat. The LFS didn't have any pods though but that is definitely the plan!
