need some help with this weird issue

[Hats_]

Right, im at a loss. i moved all my livestock, rocks and sand from my reefer 250 to my reefer 350 in january. after that the tank was never the same. corals in the main display dont grow and arent as healthy as they used to in the old reefer. odd thing is that i converted my ato reservoir into a frag tank and corals do fine in there. they are all on the same water so i dont think my issues are chemistry related. Acros used to grow fine and i was growing some nice sps and lps corals. right now lps seems to be doing decently and sps has been quite bad unless theyre in the frag tank in the cabinet. sps corals in the main display tend to pale out or grow algae on the tips

just for reference i have a reefer 350 with 4 ai prime HD, i run a reefmat 500, a skimz skimmer that skims a fair bit of skimmate and flow comes mainly from 2 maxpect jump gyres (MJ-GF2K)
i dose all4reef and test the water once a week, water parameters are quite consistent and i do carbon dose to maintain nutrients. on my previous tank i ran 3 of the same ai prime hd, i did have the gyres mounted differently (on the back wall instead of the side panels)

as for livestock, i havent seen them touch any of the corals in question unless they are very sneaky, what i did notice is that i have a LOT of asterina starfish, like a couple hundred at least.

below ill attach my lighting schedule, water parameters and a couple of pics of corals that are doing not too great and corals that are thriving in the sump tank.

hopepully someone recognizes this issue and may have some actions that i can take to improve this... if i havent provided enough info please ask

 

[Reefer Matt]

Hey there! I'm curious if you have tested your par in the new tank? Also, have you tested alk in the morning versus at peak lighting intensity?

 

[Hats_]

I have, par was around 350 at the top of the rocks and around 150 to 200 in some spots on the sandbed. Have tested the alk throughout the day as it stays stable, but if the alk was the problem then i would assume that the corals in the sump would have issues with that too

 

[MrGisonni]

Your Nitrates seem to be bottoming out, and that looks like cyano on your rocks. I am also assuming your frag sump tank is getting different lighting from your main display so that is another variable

 

[Hats_]

Your Nitrates seem to be bottoming out, and that looks like cyano on your rocks. I am also assuming your frag sump tank is getting different lighting from your main display so that is another variable

Nitrates have been stable around 5ppm for a while now, theres no cyano in the tank i think that might just be the photo. Yes the frag tank is being lit by a tiny tunze eco chic blue led.

 

[MrGisonni]

Then really the only variable is lighting. Make some slight adjustments then and see how it goes.

 

[Hats_]

im thinking of sourcing a par meter to do some measurements again to dial it in best, since i have 4 lights overlapping eachother its probably better to have the middle two dialed lower. thing is that i have 3 options and im wondering which one is the best idea.

- borrow my friends seneye reef again to measure PAR, even though it gave a couple odd readings last time
- rent a PARwise at the lfs
- rent an Apogee MQ-510 at an online store i usually order dry goods at

so what im wondering which would be the most reliable since the software for the seneye is a bit wonky on windows i can probably borrow a macbook from my work and see if thats better