Help with friends tank/corals

[Thefishguy]

Hey guys I was over my friends today helping him clean his tank. He has a 225 he set up about 8 months ago I'd guess. Low fish bioload and 1 frag so his tank is very low stocked for now. He's still having algae issues because he tends to skip water changes often, but all his parameters looked good to me, so I'm not sure where its coming from. He's also having issues with his corals, and I believe feather dusters or sporidworms I'm not sure which I'll post a pic with the problems along with his parameters. Oh he also is having ALOT of detritus. He has 10 snails, 2 turbos 8 trochus and he says around 12 hermits though we couldn't find any crawling around.
I'm thinking none of them are helping the detritus and if he starts doing a wc every week he could resolve the issues on his own, let me know what you think and what some of these things are.

Not sure if this is where I should post or pest ID. I figured here since its more of a tank issue.

Parameters are as follows:

Kh 9
Calcium 500
Nitrate 0
Phosphate 0
Ph 8
Salinity 1.025

They look like the feather dusters I have, and I thought mine were bad till I saw his. His LR is litterally covered in them. Is there a fish I can reccomended that will eat them?

I have no idea what happened to his frag plug and frag.... He thought it was still alive because it still showed color, but I explained to him if algae and things start covering your frag it means its dead and just to remove it.

If anyone has any advice I can get him so he can start keeping corals alive and lower his featherduster infection and detritus/algae problems I'd really appreciate learning myself.

Thanks

 

[Dancingmad]

I like those feather dusters - cool looking IMO. I've never heard of a bad feather duster!

What kind of fish are in the tank? (Oh! This wont help w/ the problem. Just being nosey!!)

 

[Thefishguy]

I just feel we both have way to many of them. Sure a few here and there are nice but when its litterally 1000s of them it feels more like a pest than a treasure. But hey ones man trash is another mans treasure!

Haha no problem, he has 3 anthias, a bird wrasse, 3 yellow tangs. Very light stocked for now were both mainly focused on getting corals stacked up and growing, but neither of us are having success....I'm about to start a new thread with my problem lol.

 

[Tahoe61]

Image #2 is bubble algae with some vermetid snails. Emerald crabs might take care of the bubble algae. There are also products available that combat bubble algae, like Vibrance.
Image#3 are vermetid snails. In tanks with higher nutrients the population will increase, as a tank ages the population typically declines as long as the tank is not over feed. Vermetids will irritate corals.
With regard to the feather dusters, again their population will increase if there is an abundance of available food. They are beneficial in my opinion.

He can remove the detritus from the display and sump by blowing off the rock and siphoning it out.
An Algae Turf Scrubber might assist in combating the algae issue.

 

[HB AL]

Sounds like he's really lost interest in the tank and the basic maintenance involved. Helping him out might help in the short term but if he's over it, it's just not gonna do much for the long term. I wouldn't add any more livestock like fish or corals unless he's ready to put in the time necessary to stay on top of things. Maybe significantly downsizing might be a better option.

 

[playapixie]

I like the tiny feather dusters. They are filter feeding and doing their part to aid in cleaning. They don’t hurt anything. Seriously harmless. I’d just ignore them and let them stay. When the nutrient load goes away, so will they.