Is my GSP Dead/Dying

[Pico5]

Hello All. I am new to reefing and I recently added a GSP to my 5 gallon pico tank about a week and a half ago. It looked perfectly healthy when I bought it. Since then it has not opened and it seems like it’s peeling.. please help and give me more information ! 

[ReefGoat]

Is that piece of driftwood that coral is sitting on?

[Andreww]

We cannot help if you don't give us more information. It is dying? maybe. But why? post your water parameters. 

[Floundering_Around]

 

3 minutes ago, ReefGoat said:

Is that piece of driftwood that coral is sitting on?

it looks like a fake decoration. Although driftwood can be used in marine tanks.

 

35 minutes ago, Pico5 said:

Hello All. I am new to reefing and I recently added a GSP to my 5 gallon pico tank about a week and a half ago. It looked perfectly healthy when I bought it. Since then it has not opened and it seems like it’s peeling.. please help and give me more information ! 

Please provide us with your tank's water parameters. Was the tank cycled when you added the GSP? How much flow and light is it getting?

[Pico5]

Hello. It is sitting on a decorative piece not real driftwood. As of right now all my parameters are good except for my nitrate. My wife made the mistake of overfeeding but this is the first time my nitrate has spiked. This is a 3 week old tank. The aquarium store I purchased the GSP from told me that it should be fine. I just recently added the Fluval Sea Marine Nano LED. 

[Andreww]

3 week old tank and LFS says it should be fine.

Why isn’t this surprising at all?

So what are your nitrates at?

Did this tank cycle properly? 

Did you add the light before introducing the GSP?

How high off the water is your light mounted?...

So many variables here...

[Pico5]

My salinity is a bit low so hopefully doing a water change will help my GSP recover. I also purchase this Prime from my local PetSmart to try. I’m not sure if the nitrate is high do to the GSP possibly being dead.. 

[Pico5]

 

Sorry for the lack of information. My nitrate is at 80 ppm the light was added after the coral was introduced to the tank. And I have a clown in the tank and it’s doing great. I added a photo of how high the light is sitting on the tank. 

[Osmium]

Well I think your nitrate being 80 is probably why it's dying. I'd do a water change right now

[Pico5]

11 minutes ago, Osmium said:

Well I think your nitrate being 80 is probably why it's dying. I'd do a water change right now

I’ll get on that water change and hopefully it’s not too late. 

[kylexarbor]

How low is your salinity? Are you using tap water?

[banasophia]

Hello, welcome to nano-reef and congrats on your first reef tank. 🙂 There’s a lot to learn in the beginning, we’ll do what we can to help. 

[Pico5]

35 minutes ago, kylexarbor said:

How low is your salinity? Are you using tap water?

Kyleexarbor, My salinity is at 28 and no I’m using premixed salt water from my local acquarium store and topping off with RODI water when needed. I’m going to my local fish store to get more saltwater to level everything out and do a major water change!  

 

5 minutes ago, banasophia said:

Hello, welcome to nano-reef and congrats on your first reef tank. 🙂 There’s a lot to learn in the beginning, we’ll do what we can to help. 

Thank you banasophia I apriciate all the help given 

[banasophia]

Great that you are using premixed saltwater with RODI for top offs. Do you happen to know what your LFS uses for their salt and what salinity they mix it to? And what are you using to check your salinity, do you have a refractometer or hydrometer?

[Pico5]

6 minutes ago, banasophia said:

Great that you are using premixed saltwater with RODI for top offs. Do you happen to know what your LFS uses for their salt and what salinity they mix it to? And what are you using to check your salinity, do you have a refractometer or hydrometer?

They told me that the salt water is natural sea water. I am using the Quick Salinity/Temperature Digital Pocket Tester - Icecap to check salinity. I’m not sure how accurate it is. 

[banasophia]

2 hours ago, Pico5 said:

They told me that the salt water is natural sea water. I am using the Quick Salinity/Temperature Digital Pocket Tester - Icecap to check salinity. I’m not sure how accurate it is. 

Oh wow, do you live somewhere near the ocean where there’s access to natural sea water?

 

I’m not familiar with that salinity/temp tester to weigh in on whether they are accurate. 

 

Can you tell us more about how you set up your tank , what has happened so far, and whether you’ve tested your other parameters including your ammonia and nitrites? First it will be important to determine if your tank has finished cycling, meaning it has built up the beneficial bacteria that break down fish food and waste from ammonia to nitrites and then to nitrates. It will also be helpful to consider your filtration, feeding, and maintenance. All of that can help us better understand both your knowledge base so far and the status of your tank. 

[MrObscura]

Don't mean to sound like a dick, but it seems you just rushed into this without much research. At 3 weeks there's a good chance your tank was never fully cycled. How did you cycle it? Did you do a big water change after the cycle completed, if it ever did? If not that could be why nitrate is high. You'd have to over feed the hell out of a single fish to suddenly get Nitrate to 80. 

 

By "natural sea water" do you mean one of the brands of packaged seawater on the market? If it's actually natural sea water your salinity shouldn't be low, unless you dumped a bunch of freshwater into the tank. 28ppt is pretty low for corals and more inline with what lfs use for fish only tanks. So I'm not sure you're getting actual sea water. As for the ice cap testers, they are accurate as long as you don't have an older one with the scoop attachment and try to test using said scoop. 

 

Also how long after adding the coral did you add the light? 

 

There's so many variables going on here, I highly suggest you do a bit of research of reef tank basics before doing anything else and not take a anything an lfs says at face value going forward. 

 

Oh and prime likely isn't going to help that coral. It can bind nitrates supposedly but should just be used as a dechlorinator really. Which you shouldn't need. 

[ReefGoat]

1 hour ago, MrObscura said:

Don't mean to sound like a dick, but it seems you just rushed into this without much research. At 3 weeks there's a good chance your tank was never fully cycled. How did you cycle it? Did you do a big water change after the cycle completed, if it ever did? If not that could be why nitrate is high. You'd have to over feed the hell out of a single fish to suddenly get Nitrate to 80. 

 

By "natural sea water" do you mean one of the brands of packaged seawater on the market? If it's actually natural sea water your salinity shouldn't be low, unless you dumped a bunch of freshwater into the tank. 28ppt is pretty low for corals and more inline with what lfs use for fish only tanks. So I'm not sure you're getting actual sea water. As for the ice cap testers, they are accurate as long as you don't have an older one with the scoop attachment and try to test using said scoop. 

 

Also how long after adding the coral did you add the light? 

 

There's so many variables going on here, I highly suggest you do a bit of research of reef tank basics before doing anything else and not take a anything an lfs says at face value going forward. 

 

Oh and prime likely isn't going to help that coral. It can bind nitrates supposedly but should just be used as a dechlorinator really. Which you shouldn't need. 

+1 

[Osmium]

6 hours ago, ReefGoat said:

+1 

+2

80 is really high for nitrate. It doesn't just happen from a bit of overfeeding or one tiny coral starting to die. If your tank did cycle properly, then you may just need to do a water change. If it did not (which it probably didn't. My 5 gallon took about 6 weeks to cycle, and even then I still waited an extra month before I added anything), that GSP is probably going to keep dying.
Keeping a clown in a 5 gallon is controversial enough already, but it certainly should not be added 3 weeks in. It should be running well for months before you add any fish. I'd return the fish to the store if you can while your tank finishes cycling. If you can't, you might be able to keep cycling it with the fish, but I'm not sure. Does anyone else have more experience cycling a tank with fish?

 

 This hobby requires 2 things: Patience and diligent research. Making mistakes is part of the game too, and that's okay. But slow down and do research to try to avoid mistakes as much as possible. Everybody gets excited about new tanks and we all want to put things in them as fast as we can, but life goes at it's own pace and there isn't much you can do to speed things up

[banasophia]

19 minutes ago, Osmium said:

+2

80 is really high for nitrate. It doesn't just happen from a bit of overfeeding or one tiny coral starting to die. If your tank did cycle properly, then you may just need to do a water change. If it did not (which it probably didn't. My 5 gallon took about 6 weeks to cycle, and even then I still waited an extra month before I added anything), that GSP is probably going to keep dying.
Keeping a clown in a 5 gallon is controversial enough already, but it certainly should not be added 3 weeks in. It should be running well for months before you add any fish. I'd return the fish to the store if you can while your tank finishes cycling. If you can't, you might be able to keep cycling it with the fish, but I'm not sure. Does anyone else have more experience cycling a tank with fish?

 

 This hobby requires 2 things: Patience and diligent research. Making mistakes is part of the game too, and that's okay. But slow down and do research to try to avoid mistakes as much as possible. Everybody gets excited about new tanks and we all want to put things in them as fast as we can, but life goes at it's own pace and there isn't much you can do to speed things up

Well we don’t know if the tank is cycled or not at this point. It may be fully cycled and just have high nitrates that need to be addressed, or the nitrates could be a false reading for that matter, since the OP is new and may be inexperienced using the test kit. My tanks were cycled in 7-10 days and I had fish by 3 weeks. First things first, I think we want to determine whether the tank is cycled. 

[Pico5]

When I got the tank up and running I added Dr. Tim’s one and only about 2-3 days later. And also added some filter media that my local aquatic store sells to customers starting a new tank that comes with bacteria in it. It was taken from the sumps they have. After adding the Dr. Tims and the media. I waited 24 hrs then added the clownfish. 

[banasophia]

22 minutes ago, Pico5 said:

When I got the tank up and running I added Dr. Tim’s one and only about 2-3 days later. And also added some filter media that my local aquatic store sells to customers starting a new tank that comes with bacteria in it. It was taken from the sumps they have. After adding the Dr. Tims and the media. I waited 24 hrs then added the clownfish. 

Okay so if that’s the case, your biofilter may not be fully established in the rock yet, much of your beneficial bacteria may still be in the water, so if you do a big water change to get rid of the nitrates you may need to add more of the Dr. Tim’s to replace it so you don’t get a sudden spike in ammonia and nitrites. Did you use live rock, or dry rock?

[Tamberav]

1 hour ago, Pico5 said:

When I got the tank up and running I added Dr. Tim’s one and only about 2-3 days later. And also added some filter media that my local aquatic store sells to customers starting a new tank that comes with bacteria in it. It was taken from the sumps they have. After adding the Dr. Tims and the media. I waited 24 hrs then added the clownfish. 

Do a LARGE water change or two and get your Nitrate down to 10. Your GSP is not completly dead (it would completely melt away if it was) but it is stressed and may die if the water isn't fixed soon. Continue to monitor your Nitrate and ammonia (in case cycle isn't done). 

 

Try to take this hobby slowly, going fast just empties your wallet and grows algae. 

[Pico5]

New update on parameters. pH: 8.0 , Ammonia: 0ppm , Nitrite: 0ppm , Nitrate: 10ppm. The Salinity still needs to go up more I did the water change but it did not change only went up to 29.9. I did a 60-70% water change. Next step I’m thinking of doing is taking the fish out and draining the water until it’s about an inch left of water for better results. 

[banasophia]

15 minutes ago, Pico5 said:

New update on parameters. pH: 8.0 , Ammonia: 0ppm , Nitrite: 0ppm , Nitrate: 10ppm. The Salinity still needs to go up more I did the water change but it did not change only went up to 29.9. I did a 60-70% water change. Next step I’m thinking of doing is taking the fish out and draining the water until it’s about an inch left of water for better results. 

1) Can you switch the units from salinity to specific gravity on your pocket tester?  From what I’m seeing online it looks like you can. I would do that since most people call it salinity but actually use specific gravity.

2) Can you test the specific gravity of both your tank and a sample of the water you are using for your water changes?

3) Did you add more Dr. Tim’s after your 60-70% water change?