Reefercorey
Community Member
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2016
- Messages
- 73
- Reaction score
- 46
- What state or country do you live in
- Massachusetts
Pretty new to this forum, so hi! I'm Corey. My tank is 24 gallons and I have had it running about 6 months. I filled it with zoas. I have maybe 25 zoa frags and 2 decent sized colonies. Also have 3 acans, 2 birdsnest and an encrusting montipora. All of these looked absolutely stunning in my tank and growth was great. But, in the last month or so things have gone downhill. Some zoas died, some shriveled up or look small and solid, some are doing that inverted umbrella thing that zoas do and a couple look good as ever. The acans and birds nest are doing great still so no change.
Stocking list: 1 six line, ~5 snails, ~5 hermit crabs, 2-3 emerald crabs. I also had 2 clownfish but one took a leap onto the floor and the other died while I wasn't home. My mom said he was in the surface skimmer but was still alive and then later died. He looked healthy and I saw no obvious signs of disease.
Parameters:
temp: 79-80
sg: 1.025
Am: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 5-10
alk: 8.5
Ca: 400
Mag: 1300ish
Phos: 0.03
Other relevant info: I had a hair algae and bryopsis outbreak about a month ago where it was covering the rocks and was between the zoas on some frags. I declared war on the bryopsis algae! picked out and siphoned out as much as possible several times a week and several small water changes a week. This helped with the hair algae but the bryopsis laughed at me. I added a giant emerald crab that my cousin didn't want anymore and he ate all the remaining hair algae and picks at bryopsis occasionally. Solved my hair algae problem, its gone going on about a month with none. To get the bryopsis off the zoa plugs i dipped the plug part in 3% h2o2 and the entire plug in 50% h2o2, 50% tank water. Repeated the process a few times for some of them over a couple weeks. Some zoas were ticked off and some were unphased but they all looked good after about a week.
Bryopsis, while reduced a little, was still on the plugs. I added some gfo. Maybe too much, too quickly so I removed it after running it for 1-2 weeks. It helped with the algae but bugged some corals (I don't think the gfo was the culprit because corals I've added weeks after removing it are still not looking too hot and phosphate is 0.03).
The bryopsis is under control. Still around but a lot less. Then, i stopped doing anything. Just left the tank alone for a couple weeks aside from water changes. Even my established colonies that were growing like crazy are mostly closed and look very angry. Been trying everything. My alk was at 7 so I slowly brought it up to 8.5, Ca was at 320 (IO is so inconsistent, always mixes low for me) so i slowly raised that to 400 and Mag up to 1300 and started added 1/2 tb spoon of kalk per gallon to my ATO. Its kept these 3 params stable but still no improvement.
At this point I'm just lost. I don't know what it could be. Even newly added frags (added after all my algae removal efforts) look just okay or are clinging to life. Any ideas or tips would be greatly appreciated. I went from having a beautiful reef to dying tank and it seems the more I learn about reef keeping the worse it looks. Help!
Stocking list: 1 six line, ~5 snails, ~5 hermit crabs, 2-3 emerald crabs. I also had 2 clownfish but one took a leap onto the floor and the other died while I wasn't home. My mom said he was in the surface skimmer but was still alive and then later died. He looked healthy and I saw no obvious signs of disease.
Parameters:
temp: 79-80
sg: 1.025
Am: 0
nitrite: 0
nitrate: 5-10
alk: 8.5
Ca: 400
Mag: 1300ish
Phos: 0.03
Other relevant info: I had a hair algae and bryopsis outbreak about a month ago where it was covering the rocks and was between the zoas on some frags. I declared war on the bryopsis algae! picked out and siphoned out as much as possible several times a week and several small water changes a week. This helped with the hair algae but the bryopsis laughed at me. I added a giant emerald crab that my cousin didn't want anymore and he ate all the remaining hair algae and picks at bryopsis occasionally. Solved my hair algae problem, its gone going on about a month with none. To get the bryopsis off the zoa plugs i dipped the plug part in 3% h2o2 and the entire plug in 50% h2o2, 50% tank water. Repeated the process a few times for some of them over a couple weeks. Some zoas were ticked off and some were unphased but they all looked good after about a week.
Bryopsis, while reduced a little, was still on the plugs. I added some gfo. Maybe too much, too quickly so I removed it after running it for 1-2 weeks. It helped with the algae but bugged some corals (I don't think the gfo was the culprit because corals I've added weeks after removing it are still not looking too hot and phosphate is 0.03).
The bryopsis is under control. Still around but a lot less. Then, i stopped doing anything. Just left the tank alone for a couple weeks aside from water changes. Even my established colonies that were growing like crazy are mostly closed and look very angry. Been trying everything. My alk was at 7 so I slowly brought it up to 8.5, Ca was at 320 (IO is so inconsistent, always mixes low for me) so i slowly raised that to 400 and Mag up to 1300 and started added 1/2 tb spoon of kalk per gallon to my ATO. Its kept these 3 params stable but still no improvement.
At this point I'm just lost. I don't know what it could be. Even newly added frags (added after all my algae removal efforts) look just okay or are clinging to life. Any ideas or tips would be greatly appreciated. I went from having a beautiful reef to dying tank and it seems the more I learn about reef keeping the worse it looks. Help!
