Colt Coral Acting Differently...

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FireFish36

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
5
Hello everyone,

This is my first post here, I came across this site while searching for some good aquarium info and this seemed like a great place! I hope to learn a lot and hopefully contribute some myself...

On to my problem...

I have a 55g saltwater reef tank, with a few different fish species (yellow & sailfin tang, clown, six-lined wrasse, fiji blue damsel, lawnmower blenny) and a few different soft corals (colt coral, green and orange colony polyps, starbust polyps, blue mushrooms and a multitude of feather dusters that have popped up on their own!).
The tank is coming up on almost 1 year old in my possesion. It was originally a FOWLR tank, but about 8 months ago I started to convert it to the soft corals as well.

My colt coral (aka finger leather coral?) was my first coral and has thrived since I got it. It has a normal cycle of being shrunken during the night cycle and expanding during the day cycle.

However I came home roughly 4 days ago and noticed that the coral had not expanded. It was slightly off color, and shrunken down more than it usually does during its night cycle. I was not sure what had happened, as I had not done anything to the tank out of the ordinary. I checked again the next, and again the same problem, up until the time of creating this message. It currently is very off color and still very condensed.

I conducted a check of the water to see if anything was out of the ordinary. The stats I got were:

Salinity - 1.026
Temp - 78' - 81' No chiller yet! :(
Ammonia/Nitrite/Nitrate - 0
Phosphate - 0.5
Calcium - >500

I was concerned about the phosphate and the calcium, though Im not sure if I should have been about the calcium. The number just seemed high and I wasnt sure if there are any rammifications to having too much calcium.

I added a phosphate removing substance, and conducted water changes totalling 15g. After that the phospates were 0 but calcium remained high.

I am currently adding calcium, iodine, strontium/molybedium, and coral-brite supplementals as directed on the bottles. My lighting is x2 Current power compact dual acintic/daylight bulbs. All other corals and fish are behaving/looking fine!

Anyone have any ideas or thoughts? My clownfish would greatly appreciate it since the coral is his home and he has been somewhat stressed since this happened. Thanks so much in advance!

FireFish36
 
Do you have test kits for everything you are dosing? Regular PWCs should replace the trace elements that have been depleted.
 
I agree with the guys. Right now your tank does not need the supplements you are adding. They are causing more harm then good. As the others said, PWCs will replenish what your fish/corals use up. I got away with just doing PWCs for nearly 2 years until my SPS corals took over my tank and I had to add calcium.

I would stop adding the supplements and do regular PWCs, every other week is what I do and have done since the beginning of my tanks.
 
I'm thinking an overdose on iodine, but as the others have said... just stop with all the supplements. With what you have, water changes every week or every other week will give them everything they need.

I'd also do some 20% changes every couple days for at least a week to try and get your water parameters back to where they should be. Calcium of >500ppm isn't a bad thing, but it does point to the fact that most likely all those other "trace element" parameters are out of whack too.
 
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