Corals closed up for the past 1-2 weeks! Photos attached!

[DesignNerd]

so I’ll try to answer, there are others who know more to these questions but I’ll try from my point of view:

everything using nitrate including coral and cyano, just need it

nitrate may rise a little if you choose to increase phos via feeding. I think the rise will be small or might even reduce if you increase phos significantly (which consistent roid feeding will do). Eventually both nitrate and phos should increase with “over feeding” your system.

I wouldn’t worry about the cyano. Siphon what you can out off the sand bed, make sure it’s not on any coral. Get your phosphate and nitrate at levels you want/coral like, eventually i bet that cyano dies out or moves to the sump. Microbial-ly I think the cyano is occupying a niche left by bacteria or others that aren’t getting their populations up bc of phosphate limitation. Cyano can use other sources of food (light, nitrate, etc) so will outcompete the starved bacs. Just give those bacteria the food they need and they should repopulate. Help them out by siphoning the cyano when you can.

don’t water change too much. It lowers nutrient (phos and nitrate). Water change after you get your tank “dirtier”

This is all very helpful thank you so much!

 

[Uncle99]

I'll retest Phosphates again to make sure. It just has always read 0.0 and I follow the instructions. I'm just so surprised it hasn't read any higher.

The bacterial bloom cleared up on its own!

Mine did same.
Was zero.
Dosed upwards to .1ppm and difference in extension in 3 days.
Dinos gone in 3 weeks.

 

[Uncle99]

Thank you so much. I feed my corals poly lab reef roids. Would increasing those feedings help bring it up some as well?

Increasing of course will work but takes much time.
I found it easier to dose up with neo-nitro and neo-phos as these become available to organisms right away.

 

[DesignNerd]

Increasing of course will work but takes much time.
I found it easier to dose up with neo-nitro and neo-phos as these become available to organisms right away.

Dosing neophos. Curious I dose the calculated amount and retest like an hour later and it still reads 0. Do I keep dosing until it reads .02ppm? How spaced out should dosing be? Seems like instructions say dose until you hit that amount then wait 24 hours to retest to see if it goes down from there.

 

[DesignNerd]

Raised my phosphates and not seeing much improvement. 1 acan head out of the lot of them looks a little better. Sand bed still looks red even after a dose of chemiclean that did nothing. Very discouraged and don't see most of these corals bouncing back. My fish are fine though so that's positive.