First, a little background. I have a 40 gallon corner tank. A bunch of live rock. It was filtered up until last week with a HOB AquaClear 110 running bioballs and a sponge. I removed the AquaClear and replaced it with a Reef Octopus HOB Protein Skimmer last week, and it has been doing pretty well IMO. Still breaking in, but pulling some nasty stuff out.
Anyways, the problem I'm having is this weekend I did about a 7 gallon water change. This water change was using my RO system and Reef Crystals salt. This is the first time I've ever mixed my own water. My refractometer put the salinity at around 1.024-1.025 and the tank was the same before the swap. I used a small Koralia Powerhead to mix the RO water and the salt and I mixed the salt in over the course of about 3 days with the Powerhead on the whole time and a heater keeping the water about the right temp. The only parameter of the water I checked before mixing was the salinity, but after stuff started bleaching I checked the parameters of the water, and the only thing off was that the calcium was down near 320. I've been moving it up since and it should be around 380 at the moment with the end goal being 420.
The question is, what did I do wrong? I must have missed something because all of the corals were doing so well. The most noticeable was my Tyree True Montipora Undata frag whose white polyps aren't out anymore, however the little hair things on my birdsnest frag haven't been out in 2 days. How do I remedy this?
Thanks for any help guys. Still new at this
Water Params for reference:
Nitrates 0 (as far as I can tell from my kit)
PH 8.2-8.4
Alk 9
Calcium 320 (was at around 400, but is low now)
Anyways, the problem I'm having is this weekend I did about a 7 gallon water change. This water change was using my RO system and Reef Crystals salt. This is the first time I've ever mixed my own water. My refractometer put the salinity at around 1.024-1.025 and the tank was the same before the swap. I used a small Koralia Powerhead to mix the RO water and the salt and I mixed the salt in over the course of about 3 days with the Powerhead on the whole time and a heater keeping the water about the right temp. The only parameter of the water I checked before mixing was the salinity, but after stuff started bleaching I checked the parameters of the water, and the only thing off was that the calcium was down near 320. I've been moving it up since and it should be around 380 at the moment with the end goal being 420.
The question is, what did I do wrong? I must have missed something because all of the corals were doing so well. The most noticeable was my Tyree True Montipora Undata frag whose white polyps aren't out anymore, however the little hair things on my birdsnest frag haven't been out in 2 days. How do I remedy this?
Thanks for any help guys. Still new at this
Water Params for reference:
Nitrates 0 (as far as I can tell from my kit)
PH 8.2-8.4
Alk 9
Calcium 320 (was at around 400, but is low now)