Corals Upset

Trouble1375 · Feb 11, 2021

Need some direction please. 125 gallon tank running dual 20 gallon sumps with ATS, bio-balls and filter floss. On Saturday (2/6/2021), added 60lbs of cycled rock (testing on the rock cycling water 0 Nitrite, 0 Ammonia, .4 Phosphate) to the existing 60lbs of live rock and 80lbs of sand. System has been up and running for almost 2 years. Wanted to increase rocks for more caves, coves, etc for the fish, inverts and corals. We have 2 tangs and a foxface in QT to be added to the DT in about a month.

Parameters as of 2/9/2021
Temp 79.7
Salinity 1.025
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 20
Phosphate 0.4
pH 8.5
Calcium 434
Magnesium 1200
Alkalinity 10.248 (been running at this # for over a year with no ill effects)
Iodine 0.03
Strontium 10

Stock List
8" Sailfin Tang
4" Japanese Swallowtail Angel
2 Firefish
2" Cubicus Boxfish
4" Melanurus Wrasse
1" Six Line Wrasse
5" Cleaner Wrasse
Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
Fire Shrimp
Starry Blenny
Black Sailfin Blenny
4 Emerald Crabs
1 Sally Lightgood Crab
Wide Barred Shrimp Goby

Feed 1 cube Mysis, 1 mini cube baby brine shrimp, 1/4 sheet Nori (the Sailfin eats this directly from my hand), some flakes and some pellets daily

Since Saturday the corals have started melting. We lost our Xenia and a long polyp white toadstool completely. The Sinularias, GSP, Metallic Star Polyps and gorgonias are closed up completely. Blue Ridge Coral has not opened polyps since we added it (that was 2 weeks ago). Hammers and Frogspawns are melting. Trachy isn't as puffy as it was before and the Scoly is shrinking and mad. The Zoas and Purple Sea Whip are still open and most of the mushrooms seem to be happy enough.

I know the Phosphates are higher than they should be but that doesn't seem like it should be enough to do what we are seeing. I have added GFO and PhosGuard to both sumps and the number will come down a little and go right back up the next day. Dosing Microbatr7 daily.

Trouble1375 · Feb 11, 2021

Completed 30 gallon water change the same day the rocks were added

Saltyanimals · Mar 2, 2021

Hope the tank is okay by now. Suspect is any large system change. Adding 60 lbs of rock at once may be that event even properly cycled rock as I think you're describing. I typically wait a few days before the large WC after doing major work to allow whatever the change event to settle. Changing it same day you're really just giving cleaning water for the change event, not to address any impact from the event. Do more WCs and run carbon for see if that helps stabilize.

Trouble1375 · Mar 3, 2021

Things seem to be recovering. The scoly is still a bit upset and we still haven't seen polyps on the Blue Ridge coral. We lost the metallic star polyps and the GSP (strange loses to be sure) but everything else is happier. I wound up doing 4 additional 15 gallon water changes plus it is getting 1 gallon water change every day as we have a QT tank up for some new fish and I am giving them 1 gallon of DT water daily because it is a smaller QT and there are 3 fish in it.

Saltyanimals · Mar 3, 2021

Trouble1375 said:
Things seem to be recovering. The scoly is still a bit upset and we still haven't seen polyps on the Blue Ridge coral. We lost the metallic star polyps and the GSP (strange loses to be sure) but everything else is happier. I wound up doing 4 additional 15 gallon water changes plus it is getting 1 gallon water change every day as we have a QT tank up for some new fish and I am giving them 1 gallon of DT water daily because it is a smaller QT and there are 3 fish in it.

Glad to hear. There were some videos/articles highlighting how larger WCs are preferred to fix something. Smaller ones really don't turn over that much water when you think about the volume relative to the DT volume once you factor in how new water mixes with existing water. I personally have challenges doing larger impactful WC given my water volume.