What’s wrong with my coral

[jcabral125]

Hey everyone my pulsing xenia has been doing great but over the last day and a half I’ve noticed it begin to look more rigid and less tree like than it usually does. Something seems to be off with my anemone as well. All my parameters are good, salinity is good so I have no idea what could be going on. Please help!
Attached is a pic of my Xenia now and what it looked like (pic with no blue light)

 

[srobertb]

Rarely pulsing Xenia will not pulse.
Everything looks ok. I hear what you’re saying and you should trust your intuition but these pictures aren’t giving us a lot.

“all my parameters are good” isn’t helpful.

-how olds the tank?
-what are your parameters and how are you testing.
Lighting?

 

[jcabral125]

Rarely pulsing Xenia will not pulse.
Everything looks ok. I hear what you’re saying and you should trust your intuition but these pictures aren’t giving us a lot.

“all my parameters are good” isn’t helpful.

-how olds the tank?
-what are your parameters and how are you testing.
Lighting?

yeah your right just got home from work and haven’t done a test.

my tank is about 8 months old but everything was sourced from an older tank.

salinity is 1.026
PH 8.4
Ammonia 0ppm maybe a tiny bit above
Nitrate 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Phosphate 0ppm
Calcium 460
KH 143
Temp 70

these parameters haven’t really changed at all during the tanks life. Only thing I can think of is that I just did a big clean on my protein skimmer and maybe it’s causing a negative effect.

 

[reefinatl]

How did you clean the skimmer?

 

[SchrutesReefs]

That temp seems off to me

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Might be the lack of detectable nitrate an PO4

A reef can survive and even thrive with high levels of both, but generally, even if that’s not how you run things you want some of both in the system. Soft corals particularly seem to like a bit of nutrients in the water

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Double post but yeah. 70 is pretty low for most reefs. Gotta remember the majority of what most people keep are from tropical locals. So the water is at the range of temps we all aim for in nature

 

[srobertb]

Might be the lack of detectable nitrate an PO4

A reef can survive and even thrive with high levels of both, but generally, even if that’s not how you run things you want some of both in the system. Soft corals particularly seem to like a bit of nutrients in the water

Yeah but he’s probably using a basic test because he’s saying “0” which means I’m sure he has some, just less than 10

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Yeah but he’s probably using a basic test because he’s saying “0” which means I’m sure he has some, just less than 10

true. Knowing the test kits being used would help

 

[jcabral125]

How did you clean the skimmer?

Used salt water that I have for my next water change

 

[srobertb]

yeah your right just got home from work and haven’t done a test.

my tank is about 8 months old but everything was sourced from an older tank.

salinity is 1.026
PH 8.4
Ammonia 0ppm maybe a tiny bit above
Nitrate 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Phosphate 0ppm
Calcium 460
KH 143
Temp 70

these parameters haven’t really changed at all during the tanks life. Only thing I can think of is that I just did a big clean on my protein skimmer and maybe it’s causing a negative effect.

70 degrees is cold for most reef tanks (as others have stated).

a little ammonia is either a bad test or possibly a sign of die kff

 

[BoxKing]

yeah your right just got home from work and haven’t done a test.

my tank is about 8 months old but everything was sourced from an older tank.

salinity is 1.026
PH 8.4
Ammonia 0ppm maybe a tiny bit above
Nitrate 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Phosphate 0ppm
Calcium 460
KH 143
Temp 70

these parameters haven’t really changed at all during the tanks life. Only thing I can think of is that I just did a big clean on my protein skimmer and maybe it’s causing a negative effect.

Ummmmm some suspect parameters listed:
Temp 70…. That’s insanly low. Raise the temp slowly … 77-79 dealers choice.
Agree with the above - zero nutrients for softies isn’t the best. Keep in mind you dont want to raise those numbers too quickly or you will get a bloom of some unwanted algae.

 

[jcabral125]

true. Knowing the test kits being used would help

Using API saltwater test kit

 

[jcabral125]

Yeah but he’s probably using a basic test because he’s saying “0” which means I’m sure he has some, just less than 10

Using API test kit with drops

 

[jcabral125]

Temp will be raised slowly.

 

[BeltedCoyote]

Using API test kit with drops

im not familiar with the other test kits they have. But even I fell prey to the legendary inaccuracy of their ammonia test kit. Dunno for sure but I wouldn’t be surprised if their other kits are as inaccurate

 

[Musovski]

API ammonia test is generally off by .5. So if you are generating nitrates you will most likely not have ammonia lingering around a lot..

As for whats wrong with that. Just get the water a tad dirty. If you have a skimmer do not run it 24/7... Run it for about 6 hours a day, test and adjust.

Generally you want to keep it around 5ppm of nitrate and 0.01ppm of phosphate.

Im going to take that your Alk is 143 ppm, that translates to around 7.9ish dKH. You will want to raise that as well. Alk, although they are softies, some softies have sclerites within them. you want to get Alk a tad higher. I used to run my alk around 10 dKH.

Temperature you might was to get it closer to 72-79. I always found 75-76 to the best for me. Just make sure when you do this you dont do it immediately. you'll want to increase temp by a degree or two every day.

 

[jcabral125]

looks like my anemone is splitting now. Kinda bummed feel like I’m going to lose it and I have no clue why. Fish don’t seem to be in any distress from water condition

 

[LAA]

Hey everyone my pulsing xenia has been doing great but over the last day and a half I’ve noticed it begin to look more rigid and less tree like than it usually does. Something seems to be off with my anemone as well. All my parameters are good, salinity is good so I have no idea what could be going on. Please help!
Attached is a pic of my Xenia now and what it looked like (pic with no blue light)

They look fine to me.