I am seeing some "problems" and I wonder if the sum of them points to some fundamental issue in my tank. Here goes...
90 G display, 10 G fuge, 15 sump. Tank has two blue-green chromises, a lawnmower blenny, and 110 lbs of live rock. I have green star polyps and your basic mushrooms. Water parameters have traditionally been:
pH 8.2-8.5; Salinity 1.025-1.026; Nitrates 5 or lower (5 up until recently, now more like 1); Ammonia and Nitrites and Phosphate 0. KH was 11.5, now down to 9.1.
1. I had been dosing kalk from a kalk reactor from Oct 21 to Nov 5. But due to a calcium reading of more than 500, I removed the kalk. (Calcium was always that high even without kalk!)
2. I added a bunch of new snails on Oct 26. Nassarius, trochus, ceriths, and astreas.
3. The fuge has a number of macroalgaes, which were just taking off! Great growth and color.
4. On 11/5, I added toadstool leather coral and purple montipora. The next day, the montipora turned red(?) and the toadstool began to close. A week later, both were dead.
5. I have also lost a number of snails, including all the turbos, my margarites, many ceriths. On the other hand, the nassarius are spawning, leaving white eggs everywhere on the glass. Some young nassarius have even made it. (Now, the snails did an amazing job. It could be they simply ate themselves to death, in the sense that after the binge of cleaning diatom from everywhere, there were too many for too few resources. There were 25 ceriths, 12 astreas, 5 trochus, 5 turbos, 2 margarites, and 25 red-legged hermits by the end of October.)
6. My macroalgaes are falling apart. Losing color, growth has stopped. The water in the fuge has a more smelly smell than before, too. Usually it smells like ocean, but this is more pungent.
7. Water changes have been 15-20% per week, matching salinity and temperature.
8. My star polyps remain closed and part of the mat no longer opens at all. There's just algae growing on part of the mat.
9. I recently upped my MH time from 5 hours to 8. I run two 250W 10K MHs, and two VHO blue actinics. Actinics are on about 10 hours The fuge has its own 65 W LOA flourescent flood light and a 15 W reptile "daylight" bulb. (The latter bulb helps the mangroves.)
I am stumped. I do not know if all of this is related or just part of the maturing process as nutrients move from one part of the system to another, say. The dying off of the macroalgae is weird. The star polyps were beautiful, but they do not open anymore (the mat was probably 6x4 at least.)
The fish seem great and the mushrooms seem OK, too. I have lots of amphipods growing in the fuge and have seen some in the display, too.
I don't get it. What's up with the macroalgae and the polyps?
Let me know if I can provide more information...
90 G display, 10 G fuge, 15 sump. Tank has two blue-green chromises, a lawnmower blenny, and 110 lbs of live rock. I have green star polyps and your basic mushrooms. Water parameters have traditionally been:
pH 8.2-8.5; Salinity 1.025-1.026; Nitrates 5 or lower (5 up until recently, now more like 1); Ammonia and Nitrites and Phosphate 0. KH was 11.5, now down to 9.1.
1. I had been dosing kalk from a kalk reactor from Oct 21 to Nov 5. But due to a calcium reading of more than 500, I removed the kalk. (Calcium was always that high even without kalk!)
2. I added a bunch of new snails on Oct 26. Nassarius, trochus, ceriths, and astreas.
3. The fuge has a number of macroalgaes, which were just taking off! Great growth and color.
4. On 11/5, I added toadstool leather coral and purple montipora. The next day, the montipora turned red(?) and the toadstool began to close. A week later, both were dead.
5. I have also lost a number of snails, including all the turbos, my margarites, many ceriths. On the other hand, the nassarius are spawning, leaving white eggs everywhere on the glass. Some young nassarius have even made it. (Now, the snails did an amazing job. It could be they simply ate themselves to death, in the sense that after the binge of cleaning diatom from everywhere, there were too many for too few resources. There were 25 ceriths, 12 astreas, 5 trochus, 5 turbos, 2 margarites, and 25 red-legged hermits by the end of October.)
6. My macroalgaes are falling apart. Losing color, growth has stopped. The water in the fuge has a more smelly smell than before, too. Usually it smells like ocean, but this is more pungent.
7. Water changes have been 15-20% per week, matching salinity and temperature.
8. My star polyps remain closed and part of the mat no longer opens at all. There's just algae growing on part of the mat.
9. I recently upped my MH time from 5 hours to 8. I run two 250W 10K MHs, and two VHO blue actinics. Actinics are on about 10 hours The fuge has its own 65 W LOA flourescent flood light and a 15 W reptile "daylight" bulb. (The latter bulb helps the mangroves.)
I am stumped. I do not know if all of this is related or just part of the maturing process as nutrients move from one part of the system to another, say. The dying off of the macroalgae is weird. The star polyps were beautiful, but they do not open anymore (the mat was probably 6x4 at least.)
The fish seem great and the mushrooms seem OK, too. I have lots of amphipods growing in the fuge and have seen some in the display, too.
I don't get it. What's up with the macroalgae and the polyps?
Let me know if I can provide more information...
