Coral dying I need help!

[Lizbeth90]

I bought some coral on 2/28. I have had these coral doing so good. This past weekend I did a normal water change like I normally do every weekend. I thought to myself why aren’t my corals opening up seems like they have been like that for a couple of days and I said to myself maybe they are stressed because of the water change and also because I had moved my powerheads a bit. A few hours passed and they were still closed I happened to move my hammer coral and saw that my star fish was disintegrating. I immediately check my water and everything was the same as below except phosphates were at .02. I haven’t had a chance to do a water change since i have no salt!  I worked today and just got home. I Just tested again and my temp is 78, 

ammonia 0 

nitrite 0 

nitrates 5

phosphates now reads .09 yesterday it was 0.02.

Calcium 480

alk 8 

my calibrated my refractometer and my salinity is on the lower side 1.22 could that be the problem? Could two days be enough to kill my coral with that salitny?  Or was it the starfish?Other than that everything else looks like the readings I see everyone else has. Ugh I’m so so disappointed I can’t keep anything alive. 

[Clown79]

Salinity is low. For corals it should be 1.025 or 1.026 and stable.

 

You will need to slowly increase it.

 

Are you topping up daily to the same level?

 

It may have irritated the coral. Depends on how stable salinity normally is or is this a frequent problem?

 

How stable is alk?

 

It's possible changing the powerhead has shriveled the hammer. They don't like heavy flow or direct flow.

 

A picture would help us.

[Lizbeth90]

20 hours ago, Clown79 said:

Salinity is low. For corals it should be 1.025 or 1.026 and stable.

 

You will need to slowly increase it.

 

Are you topping up daily to the same level?

 

It may have irritated the coral. Depends on how stable salinity normally is or is this a frequent problem?

 

How stable is alk?

 

It's possible changing the powerhead has shriveled the hammer. They don't like heavy flow or direct flow.

 

A picture would help us.

I don’t think it’s was the power head. They were fine for about two weeks with the power head in the front of the tank. someone had mentioned I might have been running too much gfo which I didn’t know. I followed brs directions 1 tablespoon for 4 gallons so essiently I was running 5tablespoons for my 20 gallon at first. I noticed I still kept getting detritus so after a month I upped it to 7 tablespoons and then I finally started seeing my tank clearer. I took his advice and took out all the gfo. The next day I noticed my water was cloudy. Of course with my luck my anemone got sucked up by the power head I’m assuming because I took my rock out to look for it and I couldn’t find it anywhere. I’ve read that you can notice by the smell of the water but to be honest I didn’t smell anything very foul. So I’m so confused. The anemone is still missing so that’s why I think it got sucked up I looked throughly and didn’t see it. I’ve increased my water slowly up to 1.24 currently. Would dipping my coral in rx help? I hear revive sometimes helps. 

[HarryPotter]

Detritus doesn’t have to do with GFO. 

 

You mean 1.024, right? 

 

What tank and lighting? 

[Lizbeth90]

Yes sorry 1.024. And about gfo and detritus I had no clue, wow how did I miss that. My tank is a nuvo 20 and kessil 160 lighting 

[HarryPotter]

GFO is for phosphate, which is not visible. It’s chemical filtration.

 

Detritus (visible) laying around has to do with flow and mechanical filtration

[Lizbeth90]

1 minute ago, HarryPotter said:

GFO is for phosphate, which is not visible. It’s chemical filtration.

 

Detritus (visible) laying around has to do with flow and mechanical filtration

I used to get a lot of detritus on my rock not much on my sand. I know gfo is for phosphates but I thought if you have phosphates you’ll get detritus and green hair algae. 

[HarryPotter]

3 minutes ago, Lizbeth90 said:

I used to get a lot of detritus on my rock not much on my sand. I know gfo is for phosphates but I thought if you have phosphates you’ll get detritus and green hair algae. 

 

Detritus= Waste or Debris laying about. Usually brown. 

 

Algae is very different from detritus, it is alive and growing.

[Lizbeth90]

1 minute ago, HarryPotter said:

 

Detritus= Waste or Debris laying about. Usually brown. 

 

Algae is very different from detritus, it is alive and growing.

Okay thank you 

[Tamberav]

1 hour ago, Lizbeth90 said:

I used to get a lot of detritus on my rock not much on my sand. I know gfo is for phosphates but I thought if you have phosphates you’ll get detritus and green hair algae. 

 

Other way around, you have detritus which breaks down into phosphates and nitrates. I just take a turkey baster and shoot water at the rocks to stir it up before a water change and let the filter floss catch the rest. 

[Clown79]

Ya detritus gets removed by us hobbiests manually via vacuuming, blaster rocks with turkey baster, and stirring sand through the week.

 

Cuc help with this as well and if course powerheads help move particles from sand into water column and floss catches it.

 

Gfo and phosguard are very strong products. They should be used with testing and small quantities or they strip the tank of nutrients.

 

 

[Lizbeth90]

I removed all gfo and everything seems to be doing better. Unfortunately the next day After i removed the gfo my water was super cloudy. I couldn’t find my anemone. Later in the day I pulled out my rock and it was no where to be found so he got sucked up by my power head. I lost some coral. My torch seems to be doing fine except his tips look a little bleached, my wall hammer is still not opening up not sure what’s going on. I did a big water change. My water parameters are

alk 10-11

calcium 480

0 ammonia

0 nitrite

5 nitrates 

I haven’t tested for phosphates but I do not see any algae

tmep 78-79

[Lizbeth90]

I have two media chambers. I run filter floss a little of puirgen, nano packs of carbon and matrix

[lobster876]

how about a picture?

[Lizbeth90]

7 hours ago, lobster876 said:

how about a picture?

Yes I’ll insert pic here . the 425 and 240 power heads alternate on and off and the return pump runs a little lower than the 251gph rate. i just started getting detritus again today. I’m thinking maybe these are just the “uglies” of my tank and it will correct itself when my tank is more stable/mature. Other than I’m free to suggestions on placement of power heads or any suggestions in general with my tank.

[Lizbeth90]

The whole time I was talking about detritus I actually meant diatoms. I keep getting diatoms.

[Subsea]

With a 4 month old tank, you would still be going thru some algae cycles.  What do you have for a CUC?

[burtbollinger]

On 3/27/2018 at 11:52 PM, Lizbeth90 said:

The whole time I was talking about detritus I actually meant diatoms. I keep getting diatoms.

that will be normal until the tank hits 10 months PLUS.   In another thread, we discover you running blue at 100 and whites at 60...to me this is a smoking gun...Lower your whites....60% is absurd.  I'd dial it back to 70 blues, 30 whites....Get a few cerith snails...keep up with your basics...but you, in particular...the most important thing you can do...

 

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