Green star polyps turning purple, help

[DOJOLOACH]

11 hours ago, Garf said:

 

How big is the tank? You said you had a 50w heater, so I can't imagine it is big. 50 or so snails, and not sure how many are left? All those inverts are nutrient batteries just waiting to release when they die. I'd be damned sure to know within a few how many were left. Most likely they starved and your nitrates shot up. I'd tend to believe the high number from the salifert nitrate test, though I would try and confirm it with another type of test, or LFS store test. 

Ive got a 40 breeder with 10gallon sump with skimmer. Wow yeah i feel foolish to let the snails go unchecked. May do some damage control and pick out empty shells. I will ask the lfs but doubt theyre open today so ill go in tuesday

[mcarroll]

On 4/29/2019 at 8:10 PM, DOJOLOACH said:

I have absolutely zero algae of ANY kind

It still looks from your photo like you have very little or no algae growth.  Scraping the glass is a good sign, but not quite the same as the presence of green algae growth.

 

Why did you add the monster-sized batch of snails you mentioned if you had no nutrients and close to zero algae?  Did you have a bloom of a non-green algae?  (tan, red, etc)

 

I'm starting to believe that the current "high" nutrient levels may be caused by snail die off as someone else mentioned....so a new phenomena for the tank.

 

If so, that would seem to confirm the earlier hypothesis that the coral problems you were seeing were related to starvation of phosphate (and maybe nitrate).

 

This also means that any of those symptoms should begin to clear up for your corals and you should start to see some green algae growth. 

 

Stay on top of phosphate and nitrate testing for a while (weeks at least) to make sure what the norms and trends for these nutrients really are.

[DOJOLOACH]

18 hours ago, mcarroll said:

It still looks from your photo like you have very little or no algae growth.  Scraping the glass is a good sign, but not quite the same as the presence of green algae growth.

 

Why did you add the monster-sized batch of snails you mentioned if you had no nutrients and close to zero algae?  Did you have a bloom of a non-green algae?  (tan, red, etc)

 

I'm starting to believe that the current "high" nutrient levels may be caused by snail die off as someone else mentioned....so a new phenomena for the tank.

 

If so, that would seem to confirm the earlier hypothesis that the coral problems you were seeing were related to starvation of phosphate (and maybe nitrate).

 

This also means that any of those symptoms should begin to clear up for your corals and you should start to see some green algae growth. 

 

Stay on top of phosphate and nitrate testing for a while (weeks at least) to make sure what the norms and trends for these nutrients really are.

Well i went with a 20 gallon sized clean up crew from the internet ( forget the site name)... Rookie mistakes lol. So ill keep on monitoring my levels for a few weeks. Ive been doing small 10% water changes to get them down to 10ppm gradually... Hopefully that helps some too.

 

Ill report back in a couple weeks with water test records and all... I appreciate your help!

[mcarroll]

50 minutes ago, DOJOLOACH said:

Well i went with a 20 gallon sized clean up crew from the internet ( forget the site name)... Rookie mistakes lol. So ill keep on monitoring my levels for a few weeks. Ive been doing small 10% water changes to get them down to 10ppm gradually... Hopefully that helps some too.

 

Ill report back in a couple weeks with water test records and all... I appreciate your help!

At least you didn't go with a 40 Gallon size!!  🙂

 

Now you know to match your cleanup crew with your algae growth.

 

(I'm not sure what they base those CUC package sizes on, but I assume that it is a tank of the size named that has a totally out of control green algae bloom. It's definitely not a general recommendation for all tanks that size, even though you can't really tell that from the marketing.)

[DOJOLOACH]

11 hours ago, mcarroll said:

At least you didn't go with a 40 Gallon size!!  🙂

 

Now you know to match your cleanup crew with your algae growth.

 

(I'm not sure what they base those CUC package sizes on, but I assume that it is a tank of the size named that has a totally out of control green algae bloom. It's definitely not a general recommendation for all tanks that size, even though you can't really tell that from the marketing.)

No joke! At the time i did have a diatom algae bloom so i thought it may still work out... I had no idea how efficient 40 tiny snails would be!

[mcarroll]

It was partly their efficiency and partly the fact that diatoms

 are a self-limiting kind of bloom.  Once they exhaust available silicates in the water, the bloom is over.

 

So I think if there is/was a problem with your corals it's that the tank was nutrient starved up to the point that the cleanup crew died off.

 

The nutrient spike from the die off may have caused some minor issues, but the main issue that is caused by that is usually an algae bloom not coral problems.

 

I bet if you just keep things stable from here and don't let nutrients crash back to zero that everything will turn around within a few months. 

[DOJOLOACH]

On 5/30/2019 at 1:10 PM, mcarroll said:

It was partly their efficiency and partly the fact that diatoms

 are a self-limiting kind of bloom.  Once they exhaust available silicates in the water, the bloom is over.

 

So I think if there is/was a problem with your corals it's that the tank was nutrient starved up to the point that the cleanup crew died off.

 

The nutrient spike from the die off may have caused some minor issues, but the main issue that is caused by that is usually an algae bloom not coral problems.

 

I bet if you just keep things stable from here and don't let nutrients crash back to zero that everything will turn around within a few months. 

Just an update. Nitrate and Phosphate levels are more stable and have decreased. I believe phosphates are spot on .03 and are barely undetectable on my salifert test. Nitrates have hovered around 2.5-5ppm. 

 

Now by stable that is hard because lets say I keep a 10ppm nitrate level, if I watch it for the whole week start to finish (Start being last water change) it goes from 10-15ppm... Is that 5ppm jump, a 50%, considered stable? If I watch nitrate go from 10-15ppm in a week that would put me at performing a 66% water change weekly to get back to a 5ppm reading. 

[mcarroll]

You'd have to consider more data to say what constitutes stable.

 

These numbers won't vary like in your example randomly...there'll be a reason for the variance.

 

For example, if the numbers tend to stay at 5-10ppm until you do a water change and cut the level in half, then don't do a water change and keep it stable.  See how the tank does like that vs "forcing" the water change schedule.  If the tank does better like that, it's a win/win because you have less maintenance now.

 

Another solution is to do water changes that are only have as big so they have only half the effect.

 

Or another I've seen people do is to dose nitrates (and/or phosphates) into their water change water so that it matches the tank levels.

 

If you see levels rising, then you have to watch over the course of a few water change periods to see if the variance itself is consistent.

 

It's also possible that a nutrient issue needs to be handed on the front end by using frozen or live foods instead of prepared foods, or reducing overfeeding if that's going on (eg coral feeding), or reduce the number of animals you you don't have to feed the tank as much.

 

There aren't really any absolute numbers to "stable"....it's the overall condition of the tank, so individual numbers could be very high, very low, somewhere in the middle, or mixed.  And there are definitely "stable variances" in numbers....you aren't really looking to create static conditions in the tank...just balance and stability.  🙂