Tank crashing. Need advice

About a week and a half ago I started treating my Blue Throat trigger with food loaded with Metro. He was loosing weight and from what I could tell he had internal parasites. I treated with Metro loaded home made food for 5 or 6 days. This was the first time I made my own food (Shrimp, scallops, salmon, clams, mussels, oysters, kril, mysis, cyclopeeze, fresh garlic, krill). I normally don't run carbon but I began running it in a BRS reactor when I started treating to pull the medication out of the water. I had run carbon for a while several months ago but had a few frags die when I did so I stopped.

On Friday night I noticed that a purple digitata started to STN on me. The Blue Throat stopped eating on Saturday. I also noticed another digitata frag had poor polyp extension on Saturday. At that time I started making water for a water change and so I could set up a hospital tank. Sunday I changed 10 gallons and used the old water for the hospital tank. Catching the trigger was somewhat of a challenge and I had to rip out a bunch of rock and coral to get him. The coral went into buckets of tank water while I was pulling apart the tank. I caught the trigger in about 20 minutes and the coral went back in the tank. One of the corals that came out was a softball size orange digitata colony. It looked better than the others when I pulled it out but it hasn't extended its polyps since Sunday. I'm starting to see algae on its tips.

On Monday I noticed that my nice size orange monti cap started looking pale in the older growth. My green one is also getting pale and has some algae growing on an edge. I changed another 10 gallons of water on Monday.

Today I noticed that some of my acros are looking bad.

I changed the carbon today (black diamond) and filled the canister half way. I have never run GFO but I started running with about half an inch in the canister and it is tumbling nicely.

Here are my parameters:

Nitrate 5 ppm (Used to keep it < 1 but with all of the extra feeding it got as high as 10)
pH 8.2
Alk 8.0
Calc 460
Temp 82
SG 1.026
Mg 1380
Phosphate 0-0.015 with Salifert.

With the exception of nitrate, nothing else has changed. Lots of people swear by carbon so it is unlikely that it is the carbon so that leaves the Metro -- obviously.

With the exception of more water changes what else can I do?

What is the prognosis for my corals recovering?

 

do you usually keep it at 82 degrees? i always thought that above 80 was walking the line for corals

 

Usually between 80 and 82.

 

well the best i can say is to skim really heavy and do some substantial water changes... idk what else it could be from!?
have an anemone or something that can nuke your tank?

 

I do have an anemone but he's ok. He's upset that I had tr rearrange his rockwork so he's starting to move around. Hope he doesn't meet a powerhead.

I did have to reduce skimming somewhat because it started getting very very wet. I'm skimming harder now. Will do a big water change tomorrow. About 15-20 gallons are mixing now.

 

I think Dingo is on the right track, a pair of back to back 30% water changes and lay off the Metro laced food for a few days to see what happens. None of your parameters are jumping out as out of whack so the general rule of dilution is your friend applies for the moment.

good luck

 

On a side thought, how old are your lights/ the corals condition may be a seperate issue from the fish not eating.

 

Lights got replaced about 6 weeks ago. One acro didn't like the change and started fading right away. Everything else has been fine. Metro is done. Treating in a hospital tank with Prazi now.

 

pgreef

If I where in this position, aside from the water changes and running carbon
I would also add a Polybio marine polyfilter (tm) into my filtration system

these things remove all manner of toxins such as metals, chemicals, nitrogen cycle waste, phosphates etc
they remove things that carbon does not remove and may just help take out of the water whatever is in there thats irritated some of your corals

hope you can turn it around, Paul

Steve

 

I'll be picking up a polyfilter tonight. Thanks for the suggestion.