Lighting, flow, or????

[Afoer499]

I had a saltwater setup a few years back and now setup a 40 gallon cube about 5 months ago. Setup is a g5 radion running at about 50% intensity on the ab+ template. I have a reef octopus classic 90 HOB protein skimmer. Tunze algae reactor with chaeto. BRS deluxe reactor currently running carbon. Running one MP10 at about 75% on the reef style setting and have one small powerhead running opposite of the MP 10 to increase some flow through dead spots. 4 clowns in the tank and a tang...yes I know too small of a tank for that. Gift from my daughter. 3 hammer frags of assorted colors, a torch, a couple duncans, assorted LPS, and some zoas. A peppermint shrimp, some assorted snails and hermit crabs. RODI setup running from my tap.
Parameters on red sea test kits:
Nitrates-0
Nitrites-0
Ammonia-0
Ph- 8.2
Alkalinity- 8.7 Meq/L 3.1
Calcium-425

Everything on my tank seems perfect but my corals rarely look great. I did a ton of research on this setup before installing anything and it should run flawless. At this point I'm not sure what to try. My torch is dwindling in size, my hammers seem to rarely look "full", I had a birds nest and an acro that both died. The birds nest bleached and the acro just faded and got covered in Coraline algae. Some zoas were doing great and now they only half open. Now I seem to have some hair algae moving in and cyano or diatoms beginning to develop on the sand bed. I am going nuts trying to figure out the issue. I am not sure if it is a flow issue, a light issue, or something that I'm missing with my tests.

Anyone with any ideas would be much appreciated. I have long stalked this site but have never posted until now.

Thanks in advance for advice. Hope I gave out enough useful info.

 

[lazycouch]

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I had a saltwater setup a few years back and now setup a 40 gallon cube about 5 months ago. Setup is a g5 radion running at about 50% intensity on the ab+ template. I have a reef octopus classic 90 HOB protein skimmer. Tunze algae reactor with chaeto. BRS deluxe reactor currently running carbon. Running one MP10 at about 75% on the reef style setting and have one small powerhead running opposite of the MP 10 to increase some flow through dead spots. 4 clowns in the tank and a tang...yes I know too small of a tank for that. Gift from my daughter. 3 hammer frags of assorted colors, a torch, a couple duncans, assorted LPS, and some zoas. A peppermint shrimp, some assorted snails and hermit crabs. RODI setup running from my tap.
Parameters on red sea test kits:
Nitrates-0
Nitrites-0
Ammonia-0
Ph- 8.2
Alkalinity- 8.7 Meq/L 3.1
Calcium-425

Everything on my tank seems perfect but my corals rarely look great. I did a ton of research on this setup before installing anything and it should run flawless. At this point I'm not sure what to try. My torch is dwindling in size, my hammers seem to rarely look "full", I had a birds nest and an acro that both died. The birds nest bleached and the acro just faded and got covered in Coraline algae. Some zoas were doing great and now they only half open. Now I seem to have some hair algae moving in and cyano or diatoms beginning to develop on the sand bed. I am going nuts trying to figure out the issue. I am not sure if it is a flow issue, a light issue, or something that I'm missing with my tests.

Anyone with any ideas would be much appreciated. I have long stalked this site but have never posted until now.

Thanks in advance for advice. Hope I gave out enough useful info.

what’s your po4 , temp , salinity?

 

[Arthacker87]

also lps (from what I hear) like some nitrates. Gentle flow and mid light. And yes on temp and salinity? 1.025 is my sweet spot

 

[lazycouch]

yup, make sure there’s no direct flow to your corals and since your nitrates are 0 i’m assuming your phosphates are fairly low as well, try to get your tank a little dirty (at least 5-10ppm) phos .02 is a good spot as well. that can explain why your birdsnest paled out, you may be stripping your tank too clean of nutrients- sps do rely on the water column for feeding rather than spot feeding (fish waste, bacteria, food particles) and your mechanical filtration may be keeping these things from them.

 

[roc1hmr]

I had a similar problem also. I found that my nitrates and phosphates were at 0 and my corals starting looking really bad. After talking to a couple reefers here I was told my phosphates and nitrates need to be detectable and not at zero. So I simply fed a little more and kept cleaning up the cyano and dyno, it’s been about 2 months now and my tank has good No3 & Po4 parameters and corals making a slow comeback. Little elbow grease and some patience.

 

[Oropher]

Reef tank needs stability. Back to basic : how stable is your salinity and temperature, light schedule and intensity. Also stability of your BIG3 parameter.
Nitrate 0 doesn't mean Phosphate 0 too. It depends on how did you lower your nitrate.
Also are there many algae in the tank (on rock, sand, glass), water a bit cloudy?
Because nitrate 0 could be the result of those algae growing in the DT --> that means nutrient is still high.

 

[fishguy242]

assuming phos is low by the coralline growth,need more nutrients,could start by dumping skimmate back into tank first,then increase feeding ,but slowly

 

[vetteguy53081]

If mixed reef, lps release toxins that will affect SPS. Run carbon in the system and foct on Ph-alk and mag levels.
High salinity will also make them sluggish. Start with moderate flow until coral is well established

 

[Afoer499]

Thanks for the replies. Forgot the temp and salinity. Temp at 78 and salinity at 1.025.

I will continue on this lighting schedule and start feeding more to see if I can get some more nutrients in the water column.