Hammer and Torch not Puffed Up

[csd99]

Hello all, I have some tank issues that happened while I was on a week long vacation. Everything seems to have recovered over the course of the week following my return but the torch and the hammer have not fully puffed up their tentacles. They’re both fully open and not receding whatsoever, but their tentacles are 50% smaller/thinner. While I was on vacation, the tank watcher only fed the tank every other day. I also assume that each feeding was a bit smaller than what I normally do. When I returned, I noticed my hammer and torch to be a bit ticked off while my encrusting and plating montipora seemed near death. I immediately tested and found the nutrients in my tank to be near zero with all other parameters normal. Since resuming my feeding and AB+ dosing, all montipora have shown significant recovery. I guess my question for you all at R2R is do you believe the nutrients was the issue for the hammer + torch and do you believe they’re just slower to return to normal than the montipora?

 

[blaxsun]

Quite possibly, yes. It's possible it was something else (not a lot of info to go on), but as you indicated many of the corals have recovered I'm inclined to think low nutrients may have been the primary cause.

 

[csd99]

Quite possibly, yes. It's possible it was something else (not a lot of info to go on), but as you indicated many of the corals have recovered I'm inclined to think low nutrients may have been the primary cause.

Alkalinity, calcium, and magnesium all remained stable at 7.8, 425, and 1450 respectively. Nitrates went from 10 ppm to less than 2 ppm and phosphates have always been undetectable on my salifert test kit. Need to get ULR Hanna checker. To the best of my knowledge, those things were the only things that changed in the tank that week.

 

[blaxsun]

My coral seem happiest with phosphates above 0.1ppm and nitrates above 15ppm. Your tank will vary of course, but it seems the "dirtier" the tank the happy everything is.