Need some help stabilizing

[Macsreefs]

If you go to this (https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/candy-cane-coral-splitting-or-dying.962664/) you can see where the problem started, then I made it worse. My candy cane started off dying the Par was way to high. I moved it to a shaded area but for some reason one night I added calcium to my tank.... IDK why or what I was thinking but I added way to much it got around the 600-700's... I know dumb. Now everything is mad in my tank... Currently every one of my hammers are splitting so they look mad and its taking them a long time to split too. My Pulsing xenia look like little pieces of chewed gum look almost dead. My torches will have there days and be happy and then ticked with only a few cm long tentacles when they were a few inches not to long ago. My rock flowers haven't really opened in a few days and I found one on the sand bed this morning which was really surprising when he was in a rock and in that spot for a few months. My alveopora haven't opened in about two days. My snails are dying/ not moving around as much as well. Its just a disaster. I have a 25 gallon tank but with sand and rocks i have about 17gallons I would estimate. I did a 35% water change about 7 days ago got the calcium lower but it was still to high. Did another water change only 2.5 gallons about 15% water change about 4 days ago then 2 days ago another 2.5 gallon or 15% water change. I now have the calcium around 450-500 which is still high but the store told me not to do anymore water changes for a few days... My Nitrate has been high due to my Candy cane coral dying as well as the snails now. The high calcium changed my P/H and alk but thats fixed now.
My current paramenters as of today are
Temp: 74
P/H: 8.3
Nitrite: 0.1
Nitrate: 15
Ammonia: 0.5
Magnesium: 1320
Phosphate: 0
Kh/Alk: 8.9
Calcium: Not to sure asked the fish store yesterday because amazon messed up the delivery but should be here tomorrow but they said that was about 500

I added a capful of Seachem's Prime to lower the No3 and No2 as well as the ammonia just now, but I just keep chasing these parameters after the candy cane coral was dying and then really messed up one night when I was alittle intoxicated.....Now everything's out of wack and not happy and this has been going on for about 2 weeks now. The Candy cane is now down to its last head which appears very healthy (Have given it some iodine dips) and even happy which is surprising when everything else seems ticked off. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Macsreefs]

Here’s some pics

 

[Idech]

A similar thing happened to me (not intoxicated though, lol) because of a faulty test. I dosed magnesium way too high and kept trying to march perfect numbers for my calcium and alk. Meanwhile, I lost a lot of corals.

This went of for a few months before I realized the problem. Once I did, I finally stabilized my numbers and stopped making changes. Some corals are now slowly recovering.

You need to find out why you have ammonia and fix it. A cycled tank will always process a little ammonia, but to almost undetectable levels. Is your test kit reliable ?

I find your temp a little low for my taste. If you raise it, go slowly, over a few days.

Other than that, just let your tank do its thing. Add pods and a little phyto here and there and not too many WC, and not too big. Change is an enemy in a reef tank.

 

[bushdoc]

I don't think Calcium overdose is causing your problem, it's ammonia if your test is reliable.
Neither Nitrate nor Nitrite are culprits too.
Idech is raising lots of valid points-reliability of the test, suboptimal temp.
I would concentrate on finding out if Ammonia is really high and if so decreasing it by water changes, not by Seachem Prime.

 

[Macsreefs]

A similar thing happened to me (not intoxicated though, lol) because of a faulty test. I dosed magnesium way too high and kept trying to march perfect numbers for my calcium and alk. Meanwhile, I lost a lot of corals.

This went of for a few months before I realized the problem. Once I did, I finally stabilized my numbers and stopped making changes. Some corals are now slowly recovering.

You need to find out why you have ammonia and fix it. A cycled tank will always process a little ammonia, but to almost undetectable levels. Is your test kit reliable ?

I find your temp a little low for my taste. If you raise it, go slowly, over a few days.

Other than that, just let your tank do its thing. Add pods and a little phyto here and there and not too many WC, and not too big. Change is an enemy in a reef tank.

I believe the ammonia is from the coral that has been dying, as well as the snails. Some of my hermits have chosen to eat them and take there shells even though there’s other empty ones for them. I recently got the heater and have been scared to raise the temp to fast I’ve been doing 1 degree about every 1 month because I had the tank for a while and never had a water heater because it was in a room that stayed at 72. I got it to 75/76 after about 3 months but then that’s when everything started going sideways so I dropped it back down a degree to 74/75 thinking that the warmer water could be a upsetting them. I wanted to get it to 77 over time.

My test kits are from Salifert and seem pretty accurate because when I got them I did a test and went into the store to confirm the results.

I’ll go get alittle more pods and phyto this week. How long do you think I should wait for another water change? The high levels of calcium scares me I was trying to get that back to normal because there’s nothing I know of that brings that down other than water changes….

 

[Macsreefs]

I don't think Calcium overdose is causing your problem, it's ammonia if your test is reliable.
Neither Nitrate nor Nitrite are culprits too.
Idech is raising lots of valid points-reliability of the test, suboptimal temp.
I would concentrate on finding out if Ammonia is really high and if so decreasing it by water changes, not by Seachem Prime.

The ammonia I believe is from the snails and corals dying… do you agree or do you think it could be something else?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

It seems like a lot of fidgeting with the tank, the more often your fingers touch the tank, the greater the chance for inadvertent error.

I would suggest to maintain the tank with out any more changes, without any dosing of anything, just weekly water changes for a couple of months, let the system stabilize and let the corals acclimate.

Its a small tank, so changing 4 or 5 gallons of water every week is not a big deal, and it will keep all nutrients in check. No need to dose anything at all in such a small tank.

And get your own test kits if you haven't already, as was suggested on the other thread. Test your water daily for a while and observe and learn how your water uses calcium/alk/mag... and how it builds up nitrate and phosphate.

Do you even have a calcium test kit or are you just eyeballing it? One of the more important rules of the hobby is "don't dose what you can't test for".

It kind of sounds like you have gone ahead quickly by skipping the basics, now its catching up to you.

 

[Macsreefs]

The ammonia I believe is from the snails and corals dying… do you agree or do you think it could be something else?

The candy cane had about 15 heads and I tried saving as many as I could and dragged it on for about 2 weeks just slowly cutting away at the dying/dead heads. So that released a lot of bad things i believe.

 

[Idech]

I recently got the heater and have been scared to raise the temp to fast I’ve been doing 1 degree about every 1 month because I had the tank for a while and never had a water heater because it was in a room that stayed at 72.

You should get an Inkbird temp controller (for aquarium) so you do ‘t have to worry about frying your tank. You could plug two smaller heaters for redundancy as well.

How long do you think I should wait for another water change? The high levels of calcium scares me I was trying to get that back to normal because there’s nothing I know of that brings that down other than water changes….

I’m a new reefer but I would think 500 ppm of calcium isn’t that much. Besides water changes, your corals will consume it and with time, it will go down.

I would stick to WC once a week or once every two weeks.

 

[bushdoc]

The ammonia I believe is from the snails and corals dying… do you agree or do you think it could be something else?

Ammonia can be from Dead snails or corals, for sure. If there's something dead, I would remove it.
High Calcium can cause slowing of coral growth, but unlikely massive and sudden demise of it. Sudden increase in Alkalinity can.
I would do partial water change.

 

[vetteguy53081]

The candy cane had about 15 heads and I tried saving as many as I could and dragged it on for about 2 weeks just slowly cutting away at the dying/dead heads. So that released a lot of bad things i believe.

High calcium was my problem child but 500 is not severe. I suspect false readings and would highly recommend an icp test.
Recently I had someone losing everything and I suggested he place his coral in a freshly assembled tank with fresh seawater and get an ICP test and do nothing with the tank until results arrived. The ICP revealed that he had Highly elevated iodine, calcium, phosphate and slightly elevated iron, tin and magnesium.
he changed 40% of the water and fast forward to today- he is selling frags from his tank

 

[Macsreefs]

It seems like a lot of fidgeting with the tank, the more often your fingers touch the tank, the greater the chance for inadvertent error.

I would suggest to maintain the tank with out any more changes, without any dosing of anything, just weekly water changes for a couple of months, let the system stabilize and let the corals acclimate.

Its a small tank, so changing 4 or 5 gallons of water every week is not a big deal, and it will keep all nutrients in check. No need to dose anything at all in such a small tank.

And get your own test kits if you haven't already, as was suggested on the other thread. Test your water daily for a while and observe and learn how your water uses calcium/alk/mag... and how it builds up nitrate and phosphate.

Do you even have a calcium test kit or are you just eyeballing it? One of the more important rules of the hobby is "don't dose what you can't test for".

It kind of sounds like you have gone ahead quickly by skipping the basics, now its catching up to you.

I had was just going to the local fish store for water test and doing what the recommended for a while and then on the previous thread they recommended getting my own so I did … Amazon messed up the calcium order so now it’s arriving tomorrow…

A similar thing happened to me (not intoxicated though, lol) because of a faulty test. I dosed magnesium way too high and kept trying to march perfect numbers for my calcium and alk. Meanwhile, I lost a lot of corals.

This went of for a few months before I realized the problem. Once I did, I finally stabilized my numbers and stopped making changes. Some corals are now slowly recovering.

You need to find out why you have ammonia and fix it. A cycled tank will always process a little ammonia, but to almost undetectable levels. Is your test kit reliable ?

I find your temp a little low for my taste. If you raise it, go slowly, over a few days.

Other than that, just let your tank do its thing. Add pods and a little phyto here and there and not too many WC, and not too big. Change is an enemy in a reef tank.

I added some pictures above the xenia at the top of the rock... Should i leave them be or do you think they are gone?

 

[Idech]

I added some pictures above the xenia at the top of the rock... Should i leave them be or do you think they are gone?

I don’t think they’re gone from what I see. In bad shape, but not gone. Give them stability and they might just come back beautifully.

 

[Macsreefs]

High calcium was my problem child but 500 is not severe. I suspect false readings and would highly recommend an icp test.
Recently I had someone losing everything and I suggested he place his coral in a freshly assembled tank with fresh seawater and get an ICP test and do nothing with the tank until results arrived. The ICP revealed that he had Highly elevated iodine, calcium, phosphate and slightly elevated iron, tin and magnesium.
he changed 40% of the water and fast forward to today- he is selling frags from his tank

You think they could still even be false if i get them double checked at the local reef store? Does the ICP test include alot more test for other parameters?

 

[Macsreefs]

You think they could still even be false if i get them double checked at the local reef store? Does the ICP test include alot more test for other parameters?

@vetteguy53081 Just looked into it. Thank you for that advice! I just ordered the ATI ICP test kit. Ill let you know about the results.