Tank Turned to Crap - Help

[BudgetR33f]

I've had my tank for about 10 months, and it is not at all where I would expect it to be by now. I was honestly very proud of it at around August, but as I started to get more busy, things exponentially started going downhill. I'm still pretty busy, but I at least would like an answer as to what might be wrong and how I could remedy it. I'll append tank before and after photos at the end; here are my tank specifications for now:

Alk.: 11.5dkh
Calc.: 425ppm
Mag.: 1230ppm
pH: 8.3
NO3: 2.5ppm
PO4: Should not be too high but exceeds range of Hanna ULR Phosphorous tester (maybe a little more than 0.6)

Overall, a couple things changed from August up until now. Alkalinity changed from 10 to 11.5, which is kind of odd because the salt mixture I use (Red Sea Blue Bucket), whose water must make up around 70% of the tank's as I'm in the process of switching mixes, is supposed to be 10. I would like to blame this on the amount of algae in my tank as my pH is also fairly high. However, it could also be an inconsistency in my All-for-Reef mixture that I mixed myself and have been dosing 2-3 ml per day of. Calcium has also increased, but only around 10ppm, which is most likely due to my new salt mix. Magnesium has stayed roughly the same. pH increased slightly, as well as Nitrate from a ppm of 0 because I have recently started feeding more and dosing NeoNitro for a week. The excess feeding may lead to higher phosphates, but since my nitrates are also low I doubt that's the case. As for bioload/stocking, I lost 2 Astrea Snails, got 2 Cerith Snails, got an Emerald Crab, and got some Berghia Nudibranchs (which may or may not have been eaten by the new Emerald Crab since I've only seen them once one week after adding) to halt an aptasia infestation. I also changed the flow slightly and raised my sps higher a month or two ago to suit my sps better. Lastly, I have seen an explosion of cyanobacteria which I hope my Ceriths can aid in the fighting of. I will probably do a water change today; here are my tank photos (first five are before; last four are after):

One final note is that there has been some noticeable bleaching on my Anacropora over the last few days starting from the bottom, and both my sps have lost color even though they have grown. Thanks to all who help

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Not sure what help you are looking for, there are no questions lol. It sounds like you know you let up on your maintenance from August to now, parameters flow and lighting seems to have all changed. A 5 month decline will take several months to bring back in line if not longer. Get some nudi berghia's, get more clean up crew, do more water changes, manual algae removal, test more often and bring the parameters back in line..... its going to take time, good luck.

 

[BudgetR33f]

Not sure what help you are looking for, there are no questions lol. It sounds like you know you let up on your maintenance from August to now, parameters flow and lighting seems to have all changed. A 5 month decline will take several months to bring back in line if not longer. Get some nudi berghia's, get more clean up crew, do more water changes, manual algae removal, test more often and bring the parameters back in line..... its going to take time, good luck.

Sorry, my main question was why my corals even look like this now. I know that my parameters are different but they should still be acceptable, no? For example, my hammers now dont even extend much past their flesh band, but somehow my frogspawns have declined but still seem to be fine.

 

[BryanM]

Everyones tank is different with successful tanks running wide ranges of numbers.

My main concern is your phosphate, and assuming it is in an okay range when it seems you cannot test for it.

My tank is looking the best it ever has with 23 Nitrate and .3 phosphate. Many people would say my phos is way too high, but if you let the tank speak for itself, it would appear my tank likes this.

I do think its a good call to dose NeoNitro and raise that.

I'd take some water to a LFS and have them test phosphate for you. If its off the charts high, that's problematic... Personally I'd start to worry if its over .5... but again, there's tons of people here that like it in the .05 range.

Otherwise like someone else said, start up on maintenance again, siphon out the algae on the sand, and just try to stick to the maintenance.

 

[Bohemian Waxwing]

It’s hard to know what could be building up in the tank.

The beauty of water changes is that even if you aren’t doing regular testing or any ICP testing, water changes will generally keep anything toxic or otherwise unhelpful from building up (or crashing to zero).

First step is getting back into doing regular water changes.

Use F-Aiptasia to nuke all the aiptasia you can find. Your tank is small so this will only take 30 mins or so.

For the algae, a nice mix of pitho/emerald crab + Trochus snails will go a long way. Turbo snails could also help. If you want speed things up, you can remove some with a toothbrush before your water changes.

Halloween urchin will also devour the algae but you will need to make sure you can find a new home for it as it won’t have enough to eat in your size tank.