Please help me!!!

[Natescorals]

Hey everyone I have a 20 gallon long reef tank and i have a few soft corals like GSP and mushrooms and zoanthids. And the tank is about 3 months old now the soft corals are doing great. My plans for this tank is to add a nice euphillia garden with hammers and frogspawn and then I want to add some torch corals in a separate part away from the other euphillias. Can someone with experience please help me with this setup. So far I’ve added a 3 head hammer coral and it’s been receding quite a bit. It doesn’t seem like it’s growing at all and just looks really unhappy. I’m really confused with the flow and the lighting for my hammers and frogspawns as well as placement. Right now I am running 2 hydor korallias 240.

 

[Uncle99]

What are your parameters and how long have they remained stable.
What type of reef lighting are you using?

 

[jformani]

Need to post parameters. Lighting, flow, position in tank?

 

[Natescorals]

I keep temp at 79.
PH is 8.2
Ammonia 0
Nitrates 5ppm
Alk 196.9
Haven’t tested calcium or magnesium but I do weekly 15% water changes.
0 phosphates. Salinity is 1.024 for some reason it keeps dropping

 

[Natescorals]

When I change water the new water is at 1.026 how does it drop to 1.024?

 

[Backreefing]

Protein skimming tends to lower salt levels

 

[GabeM]

Hi Nate - how long ago did you add the hammer and is your alkalinity 11dkh? Can you post pictures in whites?

 

[Natescorals]

I added the hammer on December 14. Alkalinity is at 196.9

 

[Natescorals]

I’m not home now but when I get home I’ll show a pic. I’m running ocean revive lights. About 6 inches above the surface at 17%
blues and 2% whites

 

[vetteguy53081]

Moderate light and water flow as well as feedings 2X/week in an environment with 8.1 PH and temp of 78 deg and salinity of 1.026 provide ideal conditions.
How old is this tank ?

 

[Natescorals]

I don’t know what settings to put my ocean revives

 

[ReefReadyYouTube]

Could we see a picture so we see what you see? So we can get an idea of your rock work

 

[Natescorals]

Here it is

 

[GabeM]

Here it is

white light, close up of hammer please

 

[ReefReadyYouTube]

From that picture it looks like you have a lot of room for placement. Lots of corals can alway adjust to light and flow and be fine if the water parameters are good and constant.

 

[Fourstars]

You need to buy a couple more test kits.

 

[Natescorals]

I’m not home yet but this of a picture of when it was healthy. Now it looks a lot worse I’ll show when I’m home

 

[Natescorals]

I’m having a very hard time figuring out the lighting intensity on these ocean revive lights? Any advice? I’m currently running blues at only 16% from 10:30am to11pm and I’m running whites at only 2% from 11:30am to 5pm. The lights are about 6inches above the surface. Any advice or changes I should make to this? I’m at a loss

 

[Natescorals]

This is the hammer

 

[Natescorals]

It used to look like this until I started moving it around and changed up the flow