Hey guys, i'm going to tell you guys about my 1 week old reef tank and some of the concerns that i'm having that I don't know how to solve.
The tank is a 40 gallon breeder with a population of just 2 Onyx (Sea Quest Line) Clownfish. It's filtration is an aquatop Forza canister filter (which i'll admit does suck up some sand at times and I am considering moving its intake up higher in the tank), and the tank is also equipped with a tunze ATO and protein skimmer, an aquatop heater, 2 hydor power heads controlled by a hydor smart controller (set to alternate flows every minute), and a Seneye Reef monitoring system.
About the fish, I got them on August the 22nd, and they have been lovely and healthy the whole time, except for the smaller one (the second one i focus on in the video at around 11 seconds in). I hope you can see it in the video but to me as far as the way it looked on day one, I fear it is losing its color, the black is giving way to a white or orange color. I'm not sure why, it could be water parameters (which are showcased below) or it could be nutrition, so to see if it's a nutrition problem I've added "Vitachem Marine Formula" to their twice daily feedings of "Northfin Marine Formula" fish pellets (of which they don't seem to care much for), and "LRS Reef Frenzy Nano" frozen fish food (which they really like to eat), thawed out for an hour in some of their tank water all mixed in. As for how they behave, I got them from the lfs from the same displaly so I know they are tank friends, both the large one and the small one (the one losing color) seem rather peaceful, though sometimes I see the big one bull rush the other as the other dodges out of the way, but it's not a chase as the small one will sidle next to the big one immediately after, so I think it's just playing or displays of dominance. They appear to me to be breathing and swimming just fine with no visible issues save the small ones color, and they like to dig craters in the sand bed. So my only issue with them is the discoloration on the small one, so now let me talk about my water parameters.
This is as of 4:10 PM CST the readings from my seneye system. I drew obvious circles around them but if you bring your attention to my ammonium, ammonia, and pH readings, you will see that they are all very worrisome. I don't know what to do about this. Take a look at this now.
These are recording of the results of all the manual tests I do that the seneye doesn't. The color coding makes it obvious but as you can tell, some things are still bad looking, even for the one today. I use red sea test kits for everything except for nitrite which is a salifert test kit. I've done two 10% water changes, one on August 27 because I wanted to see if I could bring things to normalcy, and one August 29 as a more scheduled water change I want to do every Saturday. This leads me to the concern that a water change greater than 10% won't do much as it appears two water changes did nothing for me. I'll also note that through this whole period after fixing a salinity issue on the 21st, my salinity has been absolutely dead on 35 ppm, so I know my salt water mix is OK. As for my pH, I am at a loss. I will also let you guys know that the week before I got the fish, to cycle the tank I added some bacteria starter fluids so I know my tank should have bacteria which is a real wonder as to why my nitrogen cycle parameters are so weird (unless they're not weird, which brings me to my final point).
I'm very new to this, as in, a few weeks new, only got the fish a week ago and I want to ensure the absolute best care for them, and i'm still inexperienced as to whats normal to a reef tank, so if anybody could tell me how i'm doing, maybe offer some advice or words of wisdom/encouragement, and some words of serious help in regard to my water parameters, I would seriously seriously appreciate the communities guidance. Thank you so much. I am also open to any questions to fill in any gaps I missed in my summary/explanation.