Please help me stop the coral-pocalypse

[BCI Can Do Better]

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.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Bump for you.

how often do you do water changes?
I would move the monti to the sand bed

some people have issues with black sand
(I did)

zoas like dirty water

how much do you feed?
Do you feed your corals, if so what?

 

[danschoenherr]

Sounds like like your tank has been on some crazy rollercoaster.
I would personally stop all dosing and rely on normal water changes to stabilize parameters. The regular water changes should be enough to keep up with the corals that you have for now. The zoas and mushrooms do like dirtier water and your phosphates could be low due to the hair algae consuming it. Best way I've found is to feed heavy, but that is difficult with a Biocube as you need to remove the excess via Skimming, Fuge, filter socks or Algae Scrubber, and Biocubes have very little room to add those. It can be done with lower nitrate/phosphate and that may have to be the way you do it with a small tank. Its best to get your tank balanced fiirst, get a handle on the hair algae and go from there.
It sounds as though you have checked the PAR on your tank. With that being said, I had a BIOcube with those LEDs and they were plenty strong enough as long as you check the PAR. (I run between 80-180PAR) I also had the black sand and ended up taking the tank down. I can't confirm that was the cause, but I could not get rid of the hair algae

 

[PokeFish]

^ and if that doesn't work, think back om what changes you made on the tank and after the change, the corals were unhappy. For example, the parameters on my tank were great, but the corals were unhappy. I thought back, and I remembered that when I added another power head, everything started closing up. So I took 1 out, and now everything is better. So if doing water changes and everything don't work, check flow, lighting, and(metals in tank??)

 

[HuduVudu]

I agree with dan ... stop dosing do regular water changes. Your parameters are all over the place.

 

[BCI Can Do Better]

how much do you feed?
Do you feed your corals, if so what?

Water change once a week. Feed small amount of flakes once a day. I use the reef energy plus and occasionally reef roids. It's been a while since I used the roids because everything got covered in brown stuff after I used it last.

The zoas and mushrooms do like dirtier water and your phosphates could be low due to the hair algae consuming it. Best way I've found is to feed heavy, but that is difficult with a Biocube as you need to remove the excess via Skimming, Fuge, filter socks or Algae Scrubber, and Biocubes have very little room to add those.

I do have a skimmer in mine so I can work on raising my nitrate and phosphate back up.

It sounds as though you have checked the PAR on your tank. With that being said, I had a BIOcube with those LEDs and they were plenty strong enough

Yeah I have the tank mapped out for a few different intensities. The lights go far beyond the highest levels I would consider using for this tank.

So if doing water changes and everything don't work, check flow, lighting, and(metals in tank??)

Flow is something I'm never 100% sure on. I have an Icecap gyre 1k. Maybe I can get my fake anemones put back in and take a video to post showing them blowing around.

For now I'll just stop dosing things. Should I stop the reef energy plus too? Thanks for the advice guys.

 

[danschoenherr]

If your corals are not doing well, then dosing the Reef Energy is not needed.
The Gyre may be too much flow. I have mine at 10% in my 50 Lowboy and it moves a lot of water, though many of my zoas do just fine with that flow.

 

[BCI Can Do Better]

I am over due for an update on this. The hair algae eventually got under control. But by the time it cleared, some of my zoas were also cleared off of their frag plugs completely. I ended up getting an ICP test on sale and everything was normal except for a few things. My Barium and Molybdenum levels were slightly elevated. Out of the possible causes listed I'm assuming my dosing trace elements was the issue even though I had stopped 3 weeks before that. The full results are here https://www.triton-lab.de/en/showroom/icp-oes/112759

Shortly after my last post I did turn my flow down quite a bit. Then last week I ended turning it back up.

Yesterdays parameters were:
Salinity: 1.027
pH: 7.8
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 3
Alkalinity: 8.3
Calcium: 405
Magnesium: 1760
Phosphate: 0.07
This was about 9 days after the last water change.

The issue I started seeing a few days ago is my zoas growing long stalks. I know this usually means they want more light, but could it be because of the increased flow? That is the last change I've made before I noticed the long stalks.

Hopefully everything can stay alive and start to make forward progress. I just got a used Red Sea Reefer 170 that I want to get set up and move them into.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Stretching isn’t definitely a light issue. If you were battling hair algae and they were covered more than likely they were trying to become tall enough to get light while I assume being shadowed by hair algae give them some time they may shorten back up

 

[RedFrog211]

I’m glad to see they survived 2020 and are on the mend- I’d personally say they want more light, but as dyerrm mentioned, it’s not definitive. If you do alter anything, do it gradually. Maybe 5% increase here and there, and just assess how they’re looking

Side note: I would keep an eye on the pH, don’t want it getting much lower than that!