Need a little help….

Derrick0580 · Feb 6, 2022

I have a 13.5 evo that I am using as an anemone tank. Currently houses 3 rbta, 1 super nova bta, and 1 mini maxi carpet nem. Fish are 2 platinum storm clowns, 1 bangaii cardinal, 1 orange banded prawn goby with tiger pistol shrimp, 1 peppermint shrimp, and 1 skunk cleaner shrimp. I got carried away with feeding the tank about a month ago and my phosphates shot up to over 0.90 on my hanna ulr kit. Ended up with a large turf algae outbreak and all of the bta shrinking up, turning dark and began moving around like crazy. The mini maxi looks great and hasn’t moved! I began using seachems phosbond as directed on the bottle and got the phosphates down to 0.22 as of today. Full test results are:
Ammonia -0 api
Nitrate - 10 api & salifert kit
Nitrite - 0 api
PH - 7.8-8.0 api
Salinity - 1.025
Phosphate - 0.22 hanna checker
Alkalinity - 7.1 hanna checker
Calcium - 450 red sea kit
Magnesium - 1140 aqua forest kit

filtration is intank media chamber with phosbond, filter floss, carbon, purigen, and seachem matrix. Small amount of rubble in second chamber with heater and an ato. Lighting is an ai prime 16hd running saxby at a little over 50% and a nero 3 opposite end of the returns. I have all for reef on hand, but I’m not sure what is causing the nems to be soo angry at this point or do I just need to wait it out? Any and all advice will be appreciated!!

polyppal · Feb 6, 2022

How old is the tank? Anemones long-term in a tank that small is going to be a difficult ask because of the water chemistry fluctuations.

Derrick0580 · Feb 6, 2022

Tank is roughly a year old. They were looking great until the phosphate spike which was 100% my fault. Now I’m worried the alk, cal, and mag being low might be the culprit. Are my current parameters good enough that just giving it time will remedy the problem?

AnotherReefHobbyist · Feb 6, 2022

Derrick0580 said:
Tank is roughly a year old. They were looking great until the phosphate spike which was 100% my fault. Now I’m worried the alk, cal, and mag being low might be the culprit. Are my current parameters good enough that just giving it time will remedy the problem?

It is possible that the anemones are having a hard time recovering because of the other parameters, but they weren’t so out of wack that it caused any problems themselves? It may be worth raising the alk and mag to see if they like that better.

I should say that I have never owned an anemone so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt.

MNFish · Feb 6, 2022

Derrick0580 said:
Tank is roughly a year old. They were looking great until the phosphate spike which was 100% my fault. Now I’m worried the alk, cal, and mag being low might be the culprit. Are my current parameters good enough that just giving it time will remedy the problem?

Alk, cal are fine Mag little low but I do not think it would affect Nems. How often do you do water changes I am wondering if your nitrate was much higher before the algae outbreak. I would say keep an eye on it as none of your parms seem out of line for nems to me.