My first corals - will they heal?

[charliedarling]

Hiya, newbie here. Have been in/around the fishkeeping hobby for 10+ years but recently took the plunge into reefing & saltwater. About three months ago I obtained a small AIO 8 gallon clownfish setup that had been abandoned in an office.

So far things have been good. It was bare when I got it other than the clowns and some crabs. After upgrading all of the equipment I stocked it with macroalge. Some diatoms blooms and minor issues aside it’s been great.

Fast forward to now - I got my first corals two weeks ago. A small chalice, and three small hammer / frogspawn looking dudes. They’ve been happy up until now.

I made the stupid decision to rearrange all my rock work (maybe not stupid as nothing was epoxied down and constantly falling), and I was able to glue the corals down to the rock work instead of staring at the frag plugs which is great, but it stressed everyone out. One of my clowns was heavy breathing with a wound on her tail. I raced to petco and bought some Herbtana because I thought she might have a parasite or some other outbreak.

I did one dose (according to the package), and she has perked up. I decided to stop dosing it because she started to act normal again and it shrunk up one of my corals badly. One of my hammers immediately “deflated” and started showing skeleton.

I did a 10% water change and changed out my carbon and added extra in a larger media bag. I’m worried I may have stupidly affected my coral negatively.

Here’s pictures of the coral from the LFS, the day I put it in the tank and now today. Time span is about a 2 week period.

At LFS

First day in tank

Today, two days after herbtana

Parameters are as follows

Salinity 34.9 ppt
pH 7.8
Alk 12.7
Nitrate 7.8 (dosing neonitro, otherwise it’s 0.0)
Phos 0.05
Cal 445
Mag 1380

Am I overreacting and it will perk up on its own, or should I do something to help it? It gets moderate light and flow..

Thanks.

 

[Troylee]

Not too familiar with Herbtana but appears to be reef safe if used correctly.. your alkalinity is high id drop that down to 8-9… from reading your post there’s not much else you can do but water changes and run carbon.. what lighting is on the tank?

 

[charliedarling]

Not too familiar with Herbtana but appears to be reef safe if used correctly.. your alkalinity is high id drop that down to 8-9… from reading your post there’s not much else you can do but water changes and run carbon.. what lighting is on the tank?

Thanks I appreciate your reply. Yeah the alk is definitely too high, I just checked & recalibrated my doser, I think it was dumping too much all for reef into the system.

Sounds good will do. I’ll make sure to keep up on water change & carbon

Lighting is a Kessil a80 nano mounted about 5 inches over waterline at lowest intensity for 10 hrs/day

 

[Troylee]

Thanks I appreciate your reply. Yeah the alk is definitely too high, I just checked & recalibrated my doser, I think it was dumping too much all for reef into the system.

Sounds good will do. I’ll make sure to keep up on water change & carbon

Lighting is a Kessil a80 nano mounted about 5 inches over waterline at lowest intensity for 10 hrs/day

You shouldn’t need to dose anything on a such a small tank just keep up with regular water changes.. it could never house enough corals to use up a surplus of alk or cal unless it was coated inside and out with Corraline algae.

 

[charliedarling]

You shouldn’t need to dose anything on a such a small tank just keep up with regular water changes.. it could never house enough corals to use up a surplus of alk or cal unless it was coated inside and out with Corraline algae.

Noted. Thanks. Is 2 gallon water change once a week too much in your opinion? Feel like I’m maybe doing to large of water changes and disrupting things too much.