Corals Looking Rough - Possible Tank Crash?

[ReefSoup]

My tank is a little over a year old and is a mix of LPS and soft corals. I've lost a couple frags here and there but overall have had pretty good success and growth. Over the last few days, most of my corals have started to look pretty bad - zoas not opening all the way or curled skirts, acan looking "deflated", hammer coral polyps looking thinner, torch polyps not fully extending, etc. A few corals look unbothered, like my mushrooms, a few zoas, candy cane and favia. All parameters look reasonable:

Temp - 78
PH - 8.2
Alk - 8.1
Ca - 420
Mg - 1360
NO3 - 5
PO4 - 0.1

These parameters were before I did a 20% water change and replaced my carbon yesterday. This morning, things don't look any better. I plan on doing another 20% water change today or tomorrow, but given that my parameters seem reasonable, I'm trying to figure out what could cause this sudden widespread down turn.

I will note that this did seem to start after I added a new shipment of pods and added some chaeto and red pom pom macroalgae to the tank. The macro were from reputable sites and appeared clean and I haven't seen any new pests in the tank. The chaeto still looks healthy, but unfortunately the pom pom turned white and I removed it from the tank. Is it possible the die off of the pom pom could've caused an undetected nutrient spike? It was a very small amount, so it doesn't seem likely, but this is my first go at growing macroalgae in my refugium.

Other than what I mentioned, I haven't made any other recent changes to my tank. Thoughts?

 

[Sharkbait19]

Pics would help identify the issue better. Sounds like what is going on could get turned around quite easily through water changes, but pics would help me see how bad it is.

 

[ReefSoup]

Pics would help identify the issue better. Sounds like what is going on could get turned around quite easily through water changes, but pics would help me see how bad it is.

Sorry for the poor quality, it's the best I could get in short notice. The worst are the pink zippers, they've never looked like this. The duncan is looking "plumper" than usual, the tentacles are usually extended pretty long. GSP won't open, acans usually look much more full than this. I know I have some GHA growing around some of the other zoas, but that's an ongoing battle and it hasn't affected them when it looked worse so I don't think that's the current issue with those. Also, there's a brown spot growing over one of the duncans mouths (circled). Maybe I'm making this out to be worse than it is, but I was just shocked to see everything looking worse at the same time with really no recent changes.

 

[Uncle99]

Seems to happen out of the blue and subsequent to a water change.

You tested before, but also important is testing after, especially when something goes south.

Id also test a freshly made batch before deployment.

This would rule out some imbalance in your salt.

 

[Betex]

For kicks do an ammonia test just to make sure thats at 0 and check your salinity too

 

[redeyejedi]

Sorry for the poor quality, it's the best I could get in short notice. The worst are the pink zippers, they've never looked like this. The duncan is looking "plumper" than usual, the tentacles are usually extended pretty long. GSP won't open, acans usually look much more full than this. I know I have some GHA growing around some of the other zoas, but that's an ongoing battle and it hasn't affected them when it looked worse so I don't think that's the current issue with those. Also, there's a brown spot growing over one of the duncans mouths (circled). Maybe I'm making this out to be worse than it is, but I was just shocked to see everything looking worse at the same time with really no recent changes.

From the pics i would say its algae bothering the coral.

 

[ReefSoup]

Seems to happen out of the blue and subsequent to a water change.

You tested before, but also important is testing after, especially when something goes south.

Id also test a freshly made batch before deployment.

This would rule out some imbalance in your salt.

In the process of making another batch now, I'll be sure to check. Typically my salt mix Alk tends to be lower than what I keep the tank at, but only by a little and I'll dose back up to desired levels after a water change. I've been doing it this way since I started up the tank and hasn't been an issue before.

I also just rechecked my parameters, everything still checks out with NO3 now somewhere between 2-5 (closer to 5).

For kicks do an ammonia test just to make sure thats at 0 and check your salinity too

Just checked, ammonia reads 0.

 

[ReefSoup]

From the pics i would say its algae bothering the coral.

Maybe for the zoas, but I've had some algae around these zoas for a while and it typically doesn't bother them to this extent. There's also not much algae around the pink zipper zoas, so something else is bugging them. It's an ongoing battle but I do what I can to keep it minimal.

There really isn't any algae around the duncan or acans, so to me I think it's something else.

 

[redeyejedi]

I

Maybe for the zoas, but I've had some algae around these zoas for a while and it typically doesn't bother them to this extent. There's also not much algae around the pink zipper zoas, so something else is bugging them. It's an ongoing battle but I do what I can to keep it minimal.

There really isn't any algae around the duncan or acans, so to me I think it's something else.

Ive had algae wipe out large colonies of zoas in my inexperinced days. And your duncan and acan coral are prob unhappy about the high p04 levels that your test kit wont pickup because its bound in the algae. Just my opinion.

 

[ReefSoup]

I
Ive had algae wipe out large colonies of zoas in my inexperinced days. And your duncan and acan coral are prob unhappy about the high p04 levels that your test kit wont pickup because its bound in the algae. Just my opinion.

I see, that makes sense. My hope is now that I finally got my hands on some chaeto it'll start to outcompete the GHA in the display and it'll grow back less and less each time I manually remove it. Hopefully that's the case and I can get things back in line with another water change and some more frequent maintenance.