Good, Bad, or Just Ugly?

Temp: 77.9
pH: 8.4
Phosphate: 0.5ppm
Alkalinity: 268.5ppm KH
Nitrate: 5.0ppm
Nitrite: 0.5ppm
Specific Gravity: 1.024
Salinity: 32

 

Brand new bulbs (less that 1 month)

 

Powder Blue Tang
Pakistan Butterflyfish
Six Line Wrasse
Ocellaris Clownfish x2
Yellowtail Damselfish x3

I feed once per day. Frozen Mysis shrimp & Formula Two.

 

This is in a ~120gal tank that was moved to my house on February 11th and RODI water was used to fill it. I am using distilled water for top offs. I did my first water change this past weekend (20 gals).

 

Do you water change with distilled to? because topping off with distilled is your culprit imo. You should ONLY put 0tds RODI water in your tank ever. Even top offs.

It might taste ok, or look okay, but theres still some elements in distilled water that we do not want in out tank, hence the high cyano growth rate. The water is supplying it with way to many phosphates and nitrates.
the reason why the test is so low, is cuz the cyano is sucking up most of it.

 

You could try to suck up some of it with a 1/2" inside diameter vinyl hose. It should come off the rocks easy enough. Where its on the sand you may suck up a little sand but I wouldnt worry too much, then do your water changes. You could take out the majority of it with 5 gallons of water, but you still need to do some water changes as stated above.

 

Moving a tank stirs up all kinds of stuff. I assume you moved it sand and all? It'll act just like a new tank. The fact that you have nitrite shows that you had an ammonia spike at some point because of the move. Also, your phosphates need to come down, that's fueling it.