Whats wrong with my bubble coral?

[Eggpaul]

Cant seem to have success with bubbles. First one lasted a good month and then quickly went bad. 2nd one was good for a few days and started looking worse each day. Now it looks like this. Nitrates have been hovering near 40 lately, but I'm working on that and all the other corals are doing great.

 

[Ingy]

It looks like you've lost a lot of LPS corals in your threads (plate, hammer and 2 bubbles) and you said somewhere you only had stock lights. I can only see softies in the pics, which don't need much lighting compared to the LPS you keep loosing. Not sure what the BC stock light is, so perhaps you should post that info. I suspect it is the lights that have killed all your LPS corals tho. What has survived in the tank?
as for the 40ppm nitrate, there is a daily additive bacteria called "Nitrate Destroyer" that consumes nitrate. It cannot survive in the tank and needs to be added daily, but the corals will eat the bacteria as they die. A win win for your nitrate problem and coral feeding and it's not terribly expensive.

 

[Eggpaul]

It looks like you've lost a lot of LPS corals in your threads (plate, hammer and 2 bubbles) and you said somewhere you only had stock lights. I can only see softies in the pics, which don't need much lighting compared to the LPS you keep loosing. Not sure what the BC stock light is, so perhaps you should post that info. I suspect it is the lights that have killed all your LPS corals tho. What has survived in the tank?
as for the 40ppm nitrate, there is a daily additive bacteria called "Nitrate Destroyer" that consumes nitrate. It cannot survive in the tank and needs to be added daily, but the corals will eat the bacteria as they die. A win win for your nitrate problem and coral feeding and it's not terribly expensive.

Well, the only reason I lost my hammer was because it got stung by a button polyp and got brown jelly disease (and I didn't have iodine to save it). I think the plate was already bad at the LFS, can't know for sure. But anyways, I have lots of LPS in my tank that are thriving. I have a frogspawn that split already to 2 branches, a 3 branch hammer that is happy, 1 favia that is growing, Blastomosa that is splitting like crazy, Gonopora that is doing really great for a long time. Just the bubbles aren't doing good. Thanks for the nitrate destroyer idea. Last night I vacuumed out a LOT of junk from chamber 1. It was disgusting. I'm sure that was causing lots of nitrates to appear. I will vacuum the tank more often now. Chaeto is growing so that should help also.

 

[Rmckoy]

It looks like you've lost a lot of LPS corals in your threads (plate, hammer and 2 bubbles) and you said somewhere you only had stock lights. I can only see softies in the pics, which don't need much lighting compared to the LPS you keep loosing. Not sure what the BC stock light is, so perhaps you should post that info. I suspect it is the lights that have killed all your LPS corals tho. What has survived in the tank?
as for the 40ppm nitrate, there is a daily additive bacteria called "Nitrate Destroyer" that consumes nitrate. It cannot survive in the tank and needs to be added daily, but the corals will eat the bacteria as they die. A win win for your nitrate problem and coral feeding and it's not terribly expensive.

I'm not exactly positive but I think the water quality has a lot to do with it .
My bubble is doing amazing .
What are the rest of your parameters like ?

 

[Eggpaul]

I'm not exactly positive but I think the water quality has a lot to do with it .
My bubble is doing amazing .
What are the rest of your parameters like ?

Of course ammonia and nitrites are always at 0. 1.025 SG, temerature ranges between 78-80 a day. Have tons of live rock too, protein skimmer, water changes every 3 weeks.

 

[Rmckoy]

Of course ammonia and nitrites are always at 0. 1.025 SG, temerature ranges between 78-80 a day. Have tons of live rock too, protein skimmer, water changes every 3 weeks.

I do 20% PWC every week sometimes every other weekend .
To keep my nitrates at 5 ppm

 

[Rmckoy]

Of course ammonia and nitrites are always at 0. 1.025 SG, temerature ranges between 78-80 a day. Have tons of live rock too, protein skimmer, water changes every 3 weeks.

I can't seam to get them lower then that .
I think it's time to add a sump to my system

 

[Eggpaul]

I can't seam to get them lower then that .
I think it's time to add a sump to my system

Well, my nitrates were at 0 for the first 4 months, and ow jumped up pretty high. I wasn't cleaning the still areas where detritus piled up, so I think it just slowly got me. But yah, I'll do more water changes, and I already added live rock in the 2nd chamber and a ball of chaeto

 

[Rmckoy]

Well, my nitrates were at 0 for the first 4 months, and ow jumped up pretty high. I wasn't cleaning the still areas where detritus piled up, so I think it just slowly got me. But yah, I'll do more water changes, and I already added live rock in the 2nd chamber and a ball of chaeto

To get nitrates down to tolerable parameters you could consider doing bigger water changes .