Nepthea dead or shedding mucous?

[BlueSallymandr]

Hi, my nepthea tree coral looks terrible all of a sudden when I came home - it had seemed so healthy before! Is it dead or is it just shedding mucous? What should I do?

Background: It's in a freshly cycled 14 gallon BioCube. I just added 3 trochus snails, 1 nassarius snail, and 1 discostoma mushroom yesterday. I dipped the discostoma before adding it. I'm about to test my water and will update when finished.

 

[BlueSallymandr]

I did a 20% water change yesterday when I added the snails and new coral.
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 5.0
phosphate 0
pH 8.2
salinity 1.025
temp 77 F

 

[Tired]

Well, it's definitely not dead, but 0 phosphate will kill it sooner or later. You want an absolute minimum of 0.03ppm, ideally a fair bit more. It may be stressed by the lack of nutrients, or it may just be temporarily annoyed at something else.

 

[BlueSallymandr]

Thank you! I forgot to add, there are currently no fish in the tank, so phosphate isn't being added via food yet.

 

[Tired]

That's definitely an issue. You'll likely want to dose phosphates to keep your corals alive, if you aren't going to be adding fish within the next few days.