Corals half way opened for weeks

[ecm.fishing]

I’m new to the hobby and I set up my first saltwater aquarium in January it was going well and my corals were doing good till one day I went to school and came back home around 4pm and saw that nothing was on inside and out of the tank. The filter the heater and the lights etc were all off for the time I was in school. Hint since 7 am. That day I did a water change just in case because the water did look very dirty and I didn’t know much to do. Everything started going well again untill my Corals didn’t opened up fully and I thought it was just from the shock and they were gonna be good in a week or so I thought. But it never happened then I noticed a a lot of algae growing in my tank and I did nothing of it because it thought it was just diatoms, I didn’t know any better or have any knowledge of other algae. It got to a point where I started to notice it taking a toll on my corals and it killed my snails I didn’t research and realized it was an aggressive Dino algae so I did a 3 day black out and dosed 1mm of hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons daily for those 3 days. And it removed some and ever since I have seen it hasn’t continued to grow but there is some left. But my corals seem to not open still and it’s been weeks. I’ve tried to over feed a little just to bring my nutrients up also because I’ve heard that Dino’s come when nitrates and phosphates bottom out. But I wasn’t so sure how much phosphate was present in the tank because I don’t have a test kit for it which I’ll get soon but I can test for nitrates and it’s around 3ppm. I need help getting my corals healthy again. What should I do? Is there anything I should dose or do different? But all my parameters are good I keep my salinity around 1.025 and my temp around 77 degrees. I don’t have a alkalinity, magnesium, calcium, or phosphate test kit yet but I’ll be getting them soon.

 

[edsbeaker]

Hi,
Welcome to Reef 2 Reef,
Sorry about all of your issues!

Unfortunately, without being able to test your parameters, there is no way to know if your parameters are “good”. Knowing your levels of Phosphates, alkalinity, and calcium are very important when keeping corals. What you are really doing is just trying to treat your tank without knowing what’s wrong with it.

Did you start the tank with live rock or dry rock? If you used dry, then what you have been seeing in this 3 month old tank is probably just the normal progression of algae’s that appear as your rock matures. Nothing needs to be done in this case, just let it run its course. It takes time for things to balance out.

If you started with live rock, that’s a bit different. Could you get a picture posted of your tank under white lights please? That would be helpful for identifying the algae issues.

You need to get some GOOD test kits, Hanna checkers, Sailfert, (not API, and not test strips) to give us the complete picture to help you.

You should be testing for and know the values of all of these

Phosphate
Nitrate
Alkalinity
Calcium
Salinity



With the combination of your power failure, 3 day lights out, adding hydrogen peroxide, your corals are probably really stressed. Also an algae issues is not going to kill snails, so we need more information to help you figure this out.

It’s never good to just act without knowing ALL of the facts. Asking questions here is probably your best bet before randomly choosing ways to solve a problem. I find that everything we do to our tanks has an effect on it, and too much of it is very detrimental to that precious balance.

So see if you can get a photo under white lights posted as a start. Then get yourself some good testing kits. Whatever algae issue it is might not have any relationship to the coral problem.

 

[ecm.fishing]

This is the only amount that’s left in the tank really it’s not as bad but once it covered all the rocks and sand with tall slimy long hair looks algae with bubble tips. And I bought around 30 pounds of live rock and live sand for the tank.