I am just confused about what is going on with my newest tank. This is going to be info heavy but I am at a loss & hoping for good advice.
For reference, I have 4 successful nano tanks with corals that are happy & grow well.
The "new tank" is a ProClear ProStar 150 - 120g DT & 25g-ish sump - 4'x2'x2'. The system was started up on April 4, so the tank is about 3 1/2 months old. I used 120 lbs CaribSea Fiji Pink and Bahamas Oolite mixed (100 lbs FP & 20 lbs BO) and probably 130-140 lbs of CaribSea LifeRock. There are also a few large pieces of real live rock which were added maybe 3 weeks after initial setup. I used two bottles of Bio-Spira bottled bad and IO Reef Crystals to make the first batch of water. I've since switched to the blue bucket Red Sea salt. I would have preferred Tropic Marin Pro-Reef but it was back ordered when I needed it - I have a bucket now but haven't made any water with it yet. The cycle went great & fairly quickly.
Corals were all doing pretty well in the beginning - I still haven't added many. Everything was dipped in CoralRx before adding, even the ones which I moved from my other tanks. I lost a plate coral only a week or so after adding it - the flesh just kind of peeled away. My long tentacle plate coral is seemingly doing fine and extending it's tentacles just fine. All of the can frags I've added have withered away as well. Interestingly, they had sort of gaping mouths and then shrunk away from the inside out, instead of just receding from the skeleton or bailing out.
A 3"x3" orange leptastrea colony that I had in another tank just kind of bleached out also - doing fine for the last 3 months until a few days ago and today, looks terrible. The Euphyllias have been just okay, I have a torch and a frogspawn which have been big & fluffy. The hammers don't extend their polyps as much as my others in other tanks do. They're all in the same general area so I don't think it's a flow issue.
I moved a large yellow finger leather coral into this tank and it did well for a few weeks but now it's a much darker color & it does not puff up or extend polyps as it used to anymore. Most of the zoas are okay, some seem to be closed more than open. I have a few single mushrooms and they don't really seem to be having any trouble. I have a double headed Trachy that seems to be doing fine.
I moved a large, long polyp Goniopora that I've had for more than a year into this tank because it has outgrown the other space I have for it and it's not extending the way it used to either.
I moved a Cynarina that I have had for 1 year from another tank with lower flow so I put it in a lower flow area on the sandbed. It used to extend to 7-8" in the nano and in the big tank, it was looking very unhappy on most days, some days were okay and it would get to maybe 5-6". I left it in the 150 for over a month and finally just moved it back to the original tank since it's my favorite coral and it took a few days, but it's back to looking normal again. It is showing it's skeleton in one small area around the rim of it's feeding tentacles but this bare spot has not grown. I'm hoping it will heal.
Another, new Cynarina just receded until it completely disappeared - within days, basically.
I have a hand-me-down light on the tank right now - JBJ Orion SL-165 that is probably 5 or 6 years old. It only has blue & white channels and I cannot stand the way it functions. The lights essentially never fully turn off - they ramp up and down all day, with it getting no lower than 4% blue, 0% white in the middle of the night before going back up again. White ramps up to 50% during the day & Blue gets up to 80%. There's never full darkness and the custom settings never work for a full 24 hour period. It drives me nuts and the controls are all manual - troubleshooting is a pain.
I'm upgrading that light this weekend to two 90w Zetlight UFOs. I'm not sure how I feel about those lights, but my LFS recommended them & I can't spend $1600 on the Orpheks I really want right now. I will use the acclimation mode once I set them up though.
I have a Bubble Magus z8 protein skimmer that I have not turned on yet because it throws out crazy amounts of micro bubbles. I know I really need to get that going but the bubbles are frustrating. I do 20% water changes every two weeks - due for one tomorrow.
I also know my KH is low. I started dosing Brightwell Alkalin8.3 this week, every other day until it comes up. The low was at 7.1 on Sunday, 1 week after water change.
I have some chaeto in the sump with a refugium light. Wondering if that would be part of the issue... the light is not on a timer and there have been times I either forget to turn it on or forget to turn it off for a day or two.
I had a MarinePure plate in the sump as well but threw it out on Tuesday after noticing how much it was crumbling and kind of making a mess. It was new for this tank, so not an old piece of media transferred over.
Parameters:
Temp: 76.1 Hanna
Salinity: 1.024 Hanna
Nitrate: 25 Nyos
Phosphate: 0.1-0.25 Salifert
Mag: 1320 Salifert
Cal: 430 Salifert
KH/Alk: 7.3 Salifert
pH: 8.0 Red Sea
I have 13 fish (mostly young) & various CUC:
1 - 3" Blue Tang
1 - 2 1/2" Tomini Tang
1 - 3-4" Black Capped Jawfish
1 - 4" Purple Scale Fairy Wrasse
1 - Yellow Tail Cleaner Wrasse
1 - 2" White Belly Yellow Coris Wrasse (H. leucoxanthus)
1 - 1 1/2" Long Nose Hawkfish
2 - Mocha Storm Clowns
2 - Blue Green Chromis
1 - 3/4" Royal Gramma
1 - Yellow Watchman Goby - I forget him a lot because he hides with the Pistol Shrimp most of the time.
2 - Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
1 - Sand Sifting Starfish
2 - Tiger Conch
2 very large Babylonian snails - had them for a year or so, always well behaved, I never see them
1 - Pencil Urchin
12 or so Keys Red Leg hermit crabs
Nassarius Snails, Banded Trochus snails, Astrea snails, Orange Chestnut Turbo snails
A couple of the fish look like their fins are a little picked at but I have not witnessed any agression between them. Actually, my husband & I often comment about how much they all seem to like each other. They all love food & eat like crazy.
TL;DR: My fish are very happy, eating like pigs. Corals are looking awful and dying left and right. What do I do?
For reference, I have 4 successful nano tanks with corals that are happy & grow well.
The "new tank" is a ProClear ProStar 150 - 120g DT & 25g-ish sump - 4'x2'x2'. The system was started up on April 4, so the tank is about 3 1/2 months old. I used 120 lbs CaribSea Fiji Pink and Bahamas Oolite mixed (100 lbs FP & 20 lbs BO) and probably 130-140 lbs of CaribSea LifeRock. There are also a few large pieces of real live rock which were added maybe 3 weeks after initial setup. I used two bottles of Bio-Spira bottled bad and IO Reef Crystals to make the first batch of water. I've since switched to the blue bucket Red Sea salt. I would have preferred Tropic Marin Pro-Reef but it was back ordered when I needed it - I have a bucket now but haven't made any water with it yet. The cycle went great & fairly quickly.
Corals were all doing pretty well in the beginning - I still haven't added many. Everything was dipped in CoralRx before adding, even the ones which I moved from my other tanks. I lost a plate coral only a week or so after adding it - the flesh just kind of peeled away. My long tentacle plate coral is seemingly doing fine and extending it's tentacles just fine. All of the can frags I've added have withered away as well. Interestingly, they had sort of gaping mouths and then shrunk away from the inside out, instead of just receding from the skeleton or bailing out.
A 3"x3" orange leptastrea colony that I had in another tank just kind of bleached out also - doing fine for the last 3 months until a few days ago and today, looks terrible. The Euphyllias have been just okay, I have a torch and a frogspawn which have been big & fluffy. The hammers don't extend their polyps as much as my others in other tanks do. They're all in the same general area so I don't think it's a flow issue.
I moved a large yellow finger leather coral into this tank and it did well for a few weeks but now it's a much darker color & it does not puff up or extend polyps as it used to anymore. Most of the zoas are okay, some seem to be closed more than open. I have a few single mushrooms and they don't really seem to be having any trouble. I have a double headed Trachy that seems to be doing fine.
I moved a large, long polyp Goniopora that I've had for more than a year into this tank because it has outgrown the other space I have for it and it's not extending the way it used to either.
I moved a Cynarina that I have had for 1 year from another tank with lower flow so I put it in a lower flow area on the sandbed. It used to extend to 7-8" in the nano and in the big tank, it was looking very unhappy on most days, some days were okay and it would get to maybe 5-6". I left it in the 150 for over a month and finally just moved it back to the original tank since it's my favorite coral and it took a few days, but it's back to looking normal again. It is showing it's skeleton in one small area around the rim of it's feeding tentacles but this bare spot has not grown. I'm hoping it will heal.
Another, new Cynarina just receded until it completely disappeared - within days, basically.
I have a hand-me-down light on the tank right now - JBJ Orion SL-165 that is probably 5 or 6 years old. It only has blue & white channels and I cannot stand the way it functions. The lights essentially never fully turn off - they ramp up and down all day, with it getting no lower than 4% blue, 0% white in the middle of the night before going back up again. White ramps up to 50% during the day & Blue gets up to 80%. There's never full darkness and the custom settings never work for a full 24 hour period. It drives me nuts and the controls are all manual - troubleshooting is a pain.
I'm upgrading that light this weekend to two 90w Zetlight UFOs. I'm not sure how I feel about those lights, but my LFS recommended them & I can't spend $1600 on the Orpheks I really want right now. I will use the acclimation mode once I set them up though.
I have a Bubble Magus z8 protein skimmer that I have not turned on yet because it throws out crazy amounts of micro bubbles. I know I really need to get that going but the bubbles are frustrating. I do 20% water changes every two weeks - due for one tomorrow.
I also know my KH is low. I started dosing Brightwell Alkalin8.3 this week, every other day until it comes up. The low was at 7.1 on Sunday, 1 week after water change.
I have some chaeto in the sump with a refugium light. Wondering if that would be part of the issue... the light is not on a timer and there have been times I either forget to turn it on or forget to turn it off for a day or two.
I had a MarinePure plate in the sump as well but threw it out on Tuesday after noticing how much it was crumbling and kind of making a mess. It was new for this tank, so not an old piece of media transferred over.
Parameters:
Temp: 76.1 Hanna
Salinity: 1.024 Hanna
Nitrate: 25 Nyos
Phosphate: 0.1-0.25 Salifert
Mag: 1320 Salifert
Cal: 430 Salifert
KH/Alk: 7.3 Salifert
pH: 8.0 Red Sea
I have 13 fish (mostly young) & various CUC:
1 - 3" Blue Tang
1 - 2 1/2" Tomini Tang
1 - 3-4" Black Capped Jawfish
1 - 4" Purple Scale Fairy Wrasse
1 - Yellow Tail Cleaner Wrasse
1 - 2" White Belly Yellow Coris Wrasse (H. leucoxanthus)
1 - 1 1/2" Long Nose Hawkfish
2 - Mocha Storm Clowns
2 - Blue Green Chromis
1 - 3/4" Royal Gramma
1 - Yellow Watchman Goby - I forget him a lot because he hides with the Pistol Shrimp most of the time.
2 - Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
1 - Sand Sifting Starfish
2 - Tiger Conch
2 very large Babylonian snails - had them for a year or so, always well behaved, I never see them
1 - Pencil Urchin
12 or so Keys Red Leg hermit crabs
Nassarius Snails, Banded Trochus snails, Astrea snails, Orange Chestnut Turbo snails
A couple of the fish look like their fins are a little picked at but I have not witnessed any agression between them. Actually, my husband & I often comment about how much they all seem to like each other. They all love food & eat like crazy.
TL;DR: My fish are very happy, eating like pigs. Corals are looking awful and dying left and right. What do I do?