I need some help to prevent a total coral-pocalypse. I have a Biocube 16 that has been going downhill for a few months now, but over the last few weeks has gotten worse. I feel like I'll need to write a book to explain everything that might be relevant, but I've seen enough posts where the OP leaves info out and all the replies ask for it lol. I think the majority of the corals I have right now are zoas so I posted to this forum.
At the end of July I had 2 dosing pumps run BRS 2 Part all night, I did a 90% water change.and then 3 weeks later the alkalinity doser ran a few hours. After that is when I noticed the GSP stopped coming out. My zoas have been small for at least that long. On 10/8 I added a new batch of frags that included a Monti Cap, 2 leptos, a chalice, mushrooms, and some zoas. I think this batch may have been a little distressed from day 1. I'm in a wheelchair and unfortunately can't perform any of the care or maintenance myself and I know these corals were left in Bayer dip a bit longer than I had wanted, like 23 minutes instead of 15. The ones that were obviously unhappy were the mushrooms and zoas that were shrunk up, the others were still showing color. 10 days later I noticed the Monti Csp was turning white like it was getting bleached even though it was in a spot that should have been less PAR than it could have handled, 70ish. So I turned my lights down even further, I have the Steve's LEDs upgrade and they're currently set to 17% blue and 10% white. 2 weeks ago I had an outbreak of what I assumed was green hair algae, I dosed Chemiclean because I saw a video about it helping with closed zoas. 1 week ago I added 12 dwarf blue leg hermit crabs. They've eaten a ton of the algae but there's still a lot on my center rock of woodstock zoas.
Here's what I had been adding every day:
BRS Alk: 3ml. I wasn't running the Part 2 because my Ca reading was 500+. I then realized it was actually an issue with the Hanna checker.
Red Sea Reef Energy Plus: 3.7ml
Red Sea Trace Colors ABCD: 0.3ml each (dose taken from Red Sea my recipe page)
Red Sea NoPox: 0.3ml
Brightwell Aquatics Vitamarin-C: 8 drops
Then the other day I wondered if it was possible I was harming the corals with an overdose of trace elements or Magnesium. For the last month my Magnesium has read 1500+ using an AquaForest kit, the salt water I had mixed also took the whole syringe and didn't change. One time I had my sister put more in the syringe and keep adding drops until it actually changed and it read like 1950. So I wondered if the kit was just wrong so I ordered the Red Sea test kit. So this week I quit using the 2 part, trace colors, and vitamin c, then did an extra water change.
Water parameters tonight Sunday 11/15:
Salinity: 1.026
pH: 8
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 3
Alkalinity: 10.7
Calcium: 440
Magnesium: 1760 with the Red Sea kit. New salt water mixed yesterday reads 1440
Phosphate: 0.00 (this is usually 0.03 but I think my water change Friday has it down)
Iodine: 0.06
Stock is currently 2 nano clown fish, a yellow clown goby, 12 hermit crabs, and some snails.
Here is an album with some pictures from the past few weeks, this seems easier than trying to upload 10+ pictures.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/95sCTigu5KuUrg3q9
Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.
At the end of July I had 2 dosing pumps run BRS 2 Part all night, I did a 90% water change.and then 3 weeks later the alkalinity doser ran a few hours. After that is when I noticed the GSP stopped coming out. My zoas have been small for at least that long. On 10/8 I added a new batch of frags that included a Monti Cap, 2 leptos, a chalice, mushrooms, and some zoas. I think this batch may have been a little distressed from day 1. I'm in a wheelchair and unfortunately can't perform any of the care or maintenance myself and I know these corals were left in Bayer dip a bit longer than I had wanted, like 23 minutes instead of 15. The ones that were obviously unhappy were the mushrooms and zoas that were shrunk up, the others were still showing color. 10 days later I noticed the Monti Csp was turning white like it was getting bleached even though it was in a spot that should have been less PAR than it could have handled, 70ish. So I turned my lights down even further, I have the Steve's LEDs upgrade and they're currently set to 17% blue and 10% white. 2 weeks ago I had an outbreak of what I assumed was green hair algae, I dosed Chemiclean because I saw a video about it helping with closed zoas. 1 week ago I added 12 dwarf blue leg hermit crabs. They've eaten a ton of the algae but there's still a lot on my center rock of woodstock zoas.
Here's what I had been adding every day:
BRS Alk: 3ml. I wasn't running the Part 2 because my Ca reading was 500+. I then realized it was actually an issue with the Hanna checker.
Red Sea Reef Energy Plus: 3.7ml
Red Sea Trace Colors ABCD: 0.3ml each (dose taken from Red Sea my recipe page)
Red Sea NoPox: 0.3ml
Brightwell Aquatics Vitamarin-C: 8 drops
Then the other day I wondered if it was possible I was harming the corals with an overdose of trace elements or Magnesium. For the last month my Magnesium has read 1500+ using an AquaForest kit, the salt water I had mixed also took the whole syringe and didn't change. One time I had my sister put more in the syringe and keep adding drops until it actually changed and it read like 1950. So I wondered if the kit was just wrong so I ordered the Red Sea test kit. So this week I quit using the 2 part, trace colors, and vitamin c, then did an extra water change.
Water parameters tonight Sunday 11/15:
Salinity: 1.026
pH: 8
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 3
Alkalinity: 10.7
Calcium: 440
Magnesium: 1760 with the Red Sea kit. New salt water mixed yesterday reads 1440
Phosphate: 0.00 (this is usually 0.03 but I think my water change Friday has it down)
Iodine: 0.06
Stock is currently 2 nano clown fish, a yellow clown goby, 12 hermit crabs, and some snails.
Here is an album with some pictures from the past few weeks, this seems easier than trying to upload 10+ pictures.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/95sCTigu5KuUrg3q9
Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.