LPS look deflated

[IzzysPop]

Hey all - having a little problem with my LPS looking a little sad and deflated.

I have had the system up for 10 months. The bubble coral, zoas, blasto, candy cane and mushrooms were growing great and just 2 days ago started looking closed and upset. Torches are ok, trachys are ok, but the others are not.

Nothing has changed in the system except a quick drop in nitrates. Didn’t add anything, no new rock, been doing weekly 20% water changes, etc.

could the drop in nitrates be causing this? There is some hair algae that I’ve been fighting, dosed nopox to get rid of it and then nitrates shot down.

Other params
1.026 salinity
8.2 ph
0 nitrate - was at 30 beginning of October
.08 phosphate
7.9 alk
445 calcium
1290 mag
All of those params have been pretty steady except the nitrates.

any ideas friends????

 

[Eagle_Steve]

Hey all - having a little problem with my LPS looking a little sad and deflated.

I have had the system up for 10 months. The bubble coral, zoas, blasto, candy cane and mushrooms were growing great and just 2 days ago started looking closed and upset. Torches are ok, trachys are ok, but the others are not.

Nothing has changed in the system except a quick drop in nitrates. Didn’t add anything, no new rock, been doing weekly 20% water changes, etc.

could the drop in nitrates be causing this? There is some hair algae that I’ve been fighting, dosed nopox to get rid of it and then nitrates shot down.

Other params
1.026 salinity
8.2 ph
0 nitrate - was at 30 beginning of October
.08 phosphate
7.9 alk
445 calcium
1290 mag
All of those params have been pretty steady except the nitrates.

any ideas friends????

A big drop will surely annoy them. Most lps like a little dirt. Also, 0 is never good. It leads to Dino’s and other things. Being as PO4 is .08, I suggest no3 around 5-10. This should even things out a bit nutrient wise.

 

[IzzysPop]

any tips on raising it without causing the hair algae to take off again?

 

[Eagle_Steve]

any tips on raising it without causing the hair algae to take off again?

Slow and steady by feeding. You need to manually remove as much gha as possible, then a little help from an appropriate clean up crew can help. Your tank is still young, so has to find an equilibrium for itself. Dropping nitrates that fast, is basically an equilibrium reset, so to speak. Not a true reset, but a delay for the tank finding its way.

In short, slow changes. While determining a root cause of the issue. Your root cause could have been the 30 nitrate. But it could have just been you needed to pull it out and get some more snails. Not like 100 snails, but a few to eat the algae as it grows. There are tons of tanks with high nitrates and no algae, but they are typically older tanks and have a huge clean up crew.

Just feed a little more, stop the nopox, and monitor the nitrates. When they get to 5, go back to normal feeding and monitor the nitrates to see if they stay stable or go down/up. From there you can watch the gha as well. Is it still growing fast, receding, are more cleanup crew needed, etc.