My birdsnest coral is not thriving

[serez]

Hey I might be over reacting because I’m new to the hobby but please take a look at this sps frag I got. Below is the day after I got it. The first day it didn’t have these brown spots (closed up polyps) and looked fluffy.
The next day some polyps closed up.

a few days later it looked like this. I did catch my puffer fish nibble on it a little but it mostly leaves it alone because the flow is strong around it unless I turn the pump off for feeding.

Then the next day it actually opened up a lot more but still doesn’t look fluffy like when I first added it to the tank.

And today I moved it to another spot for stronger flow and better light. I thought that’s why it wasn’t opening up. But due to the handling and everything, it closed up completely

Should I be worried??? My euphyllia torches and hammers are doing very well, leather coral grew to twice it’s original size in the past 3 weeks
Water quality is immaculate as far as I know.
Kh is not 100% stable (I’m still tweaking the dosing pump) but within the 9.0-9.4 range. I’m dosing coralline gro
Salinity 1.025 no swings
Calcium 425 after weekly water change
Mag 1425
I’m not dosing calcium or magnesium because I only have 2 lps and one sps atm there is no significant use of these elements
No ammonia, nitrate < 2 with Salifert test kit
I’m also running gfo filter media so I have no detectable phosphate
In my media basket there is also carbon media
My tank is 20 gallons. I keep the temperature at 25 C
Hope I provided enough info.

 

[Garf]

Stop moving it, and see what happens. Looks healthy to me. They like lots of flow.

 

[tbrown]

Hey I might be over reacting because I’m new to the hobby but please take a look at this sps frag I got. Below is the day after I got it. The first day it didn’t have these brown spots (closed up polyps) and looked fluffy.
The next day some polyps closed up.

a few days later it looked like this. I did catch my puffer fish nibble on it a little but it mostly leaves it alone because the flow is strong around it unless I turn the pump off for feeding.

Then the next day it actually opened up a lot more but still doesn’t look fluffy like when I first added it to the tank.

And today I moved it to another spot for stronger flow and better light. I thought that’s why it wasn’t opening up. But due to the handling and everything, it closed up completely

Should I be worried??? My euphyllia torches and hammers are doing very well, leather coral grew to twice it’s original size in the past 3 weeks
Water quality is immaculate as far as I know.
Kh is not 100% stable (I’m still tweaking the dosing pump) but within the 9.0-9.4 range. I’m dosing coralline gro
Salinity 1.025 no swings
Calcium 425 after weekly water change
Mag 1425
I’m not dosing calcium or magnesium because I only have 2 lps and one sps atm there is no significant use of these elements
No ammonia, nitrate < 2 with Salifert test kit
I’m also running gfo filter media so I have no detectable phosphate
In my media basket there is also carbon media
My tank is 20 gallons. I keep the temperature at 25 C
Hope I provided enough info.

Phosphate and nitrates are part of what corals "eat" for starters, so non detect on both can be a problem. Also, messing with flow and light constantly can stress your corals and make them close. Give them time. It went from whatever the light was at your LFS to your current light settings and then you changed it again pretty quickly.

 

[serez]

Phosphate and nitrates are part of what corals "eat" for starters, so non detect on both can be a problem. Also, messing with flow and light constantly can stress your corals and make them close. Give them time. It went from whatever the light was at your LFS to your current light settings and then you changed it again pretty quickly.

I see. Didn’t realize they need a long time to adjust. I’ll leave it alone now

 

[serez]

Phosphate and nitrates are part of what corals "eat" for starters, so non detect on both can be a problem. Also, messing with flow and light constantly can stress your corals and make them close. Give them time. It went from whatever the light was at your LFS to your current light settings and then you changed it again pretty quickly.

Maybe I should stop skimming all the time to allow nitrate? Or maybe I’m doing too much water changes? I’m doing once a week at the moment but changing out about 15% at a time.
Instead, should I do 10% weekly or 15-20% biweekly?
in terms of phosphates, should I stop running gfo? It seems like my algae problem came and went. But the tank is only less than 2 months old