Zoa issues

[Hallowhead]

Howdy,

I am running a 30 gallon IM long AIO tank with a tunze 9001 protein skimmer filter floss chemi pure, purigen and marine pure blocks. I have two clown-fish


So I've been treating bryopsis the past two weeks. All of my coral have been doing fine the entire time but towards the last two days brown diatom broke out heavily and it seemed to be linked with my coral specifically my zoa's starting to close up and show unhappiness. This passed Thursday was my last day of treatment so I did a routine 5 gallon water change thinking this would solve all of my zoa issues. It was not :( It's weird though as it appears my zoa's on the left side of my tank are doing better than the ones on the right...

My water parameters as of last Thursday:

Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 20 ppm (lower than usual)
PH 8.0-8.2
Salinity 1.025

This passed Friday the tank appeared to be doing a little bit better but not as good as it's been fast forward to today. I did another water change when I got home from Memorial Day shenanigans thinking maybe it's leftover brown diatom.

My water parameters as of Today:

Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 0 ppm
PH 8.2
Salinity was closer to 1.022

First my thought was that the salinity was way to low so during my water change I got it back to 1.025.

The water change did not do much :(

After some reading zoa's don't like 0 nitrates and being that I didn't feed them a tremendous amount the entire treatment nor did they get fed since Friday morning I think they need more nitrates around.

I ordered two more fish and will dos some extra food. Does anyone have other input? Do you think that's the reason?

 

[bobby.w.hodges]

I noticed that you didn't post phosphate numbers. If they are low and you did a water change then you would have lowered them more.

 

[Hallowhead]

I noticed that you didn't post phosphate numbers. If they are low and you did a water change then you would have lowered them more.

I have ordered test kits to test those levels...

 

[bobby.w.hodges]

Feeding extra can help, also dosing amino acids(fuel or red sea reef energy) can help, reef roids.

 

[Hallowhead]

Feeding extra can help, also dosing amino acids(fuel or red sea reef energy) can help, reef roids.

Do you think this is a potential? I will ghost feed tomorrow before their lights turn on too. I am ordering both a hanna alk tester and a ultra low phosphate checker.

 

[bobby.w.hodges]

You would probably be better off turning off your skimmer and putting about 10 ml of the skimmate back in the tank. It's mostly fish poop. Coral loves fish poop.

 

[Hallowhead]

You would probably be better off turning off your skimmer and putting about 10 ml of the skimmate back in the tank. It's mostly fish poop. Coral loves fish poop.

my skimmer was doing an INSANE job skimming.. the skimmate was so thick

 

[bobby.w.hodges]

my skimmer was doing an INSANE job skimming.. the skimmate was so thick

That is probably contribution to your low nutrient values. I run my skimmer on a timer so that it turns off before I feed in the evening and turns back on 6 hours later, it's been working well for me. My skimmer is over sized for my system and i was having trouble with pale corals due to low nutrients, it got bets after I put it on a timer.

 

[Scooter90254]

I raised my Nitrate and Phosphate to battle Dino’s. One result was my Zoas have never looked better. Hard to say for sure but worth a shot.

 

[Hallowhead]

Update all!

So when arriving home I did my water change and fed mysis shrimp and made this post! After further reading / investigating I believed it was because I was removing all my nitrates from the water without replacing any. I've ordered a flame angel and a yellow watchman goby to produce more "crap" haha hopefully this will stop my protein skimmer from removing ALL the "crap". I've since dosed food pellets yesterday morning fed them dinner and dosed again this morning. Last night my zoa's looked the best they've had since the issues began.

I believe we are on the ups!

 

[hockeyhead019]

Glad to hear things are looking up. If it wasn't a feeding/nutrients issue I was going to ask about flow/lighting changes since you had some inequality in the tank (you stated left side zoas looked better than right side). Glad they're showing signs of improvement!

 

[Hallowhead]

Glad to hear things are looking up. If it wasn't a feeding/nutrients issue I was going to ask about flow/lighting changes since you had some inequality in the tank (you stated left side zoas looked better than right side). Glad they're showing signs of improvement!

Yeah they right one's have def turned around drastically. However, the lights on the left/right are the same. The powerhead is on the right side however, it's turned down a little and pointed away from the zoa's. So there flow is just as minimal as the left side.

 

[Hallowhead]

Update as of today 5/29/19

Everything looked much better at the end of the day near the shut of the lights. I have my mom send me periodic pictures throughout the day. I don't know if it has any correlation to my lights being too powerful and they get weaker at the end of the day or if it's just because my parameters are leveling out.

Here is a picture of my lights and how close they are to the water. They reach a max intensity of 45 at peak during the bulk of the day.. is that too much for that close to the water? or how big the tank is? They used to do fine at that intensity in the beginning.

Left side Vibraniums (Doing Well)

Left side Spongebobs I believe (Starting to do much much better but growing weirdly up..)

Left side Fuit Loops (Doing much better)

Left side Futti Tutti (Doing better now)

Middle Utter Chaos Paly (Never looked bad)

Right side Orange Hornet (Still struggling - used to be INSANE)

Right side Gummie Bear (Not doing well)

Right side Sunny D's (Always been doing good)

Right side Fallen Angel (Super closed until today)

 

[bobby.w.hodges]

Tank looks very young.

 

[Hallowhead]

Tank looks very young.

Tanks 2 months and cycled with live rock from 5 year old tank

 

[bobby.w.hodges]

I personally would hold off adding more coral until you start seeing coraline algae. Even though it was cycled with mature rock, it takes time for a tank to mature enough for coral to thrive.

 

[Hallowhead]

I personally would hold off adding more coral until you start seeing coraline algae. Even though it was cycled with mature rock, it takes time for a tank to mature enough for coral to thrive.

I don't plan on adding any coral for a bit.. ~ 1 month till reefapalooza NY so I got time ;)