Tropical Fish Forums

[southernfish]

3 weeks ago I got water from my LFS as I always do and did a water change. the next day a few of my corals didn't open all the way and with every day got worse looking. while I suspect I got some bad water I did another change a week later, not muc chaned. last night I did another change and my green star polyps seem to be coming around but not fully yet and the same with my torch coral. my alkalinty is a couple of gedrees low at 7kh and this is what my kenya tree looks like. just seems its getting worse and not coming around after being so healthy for months and months.

[FloridaBoy]

So you think this is related to the water change?
What are your latest nitrate readings...
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Keepin' marines happy for 25 years

[southernfish]

latest nitrates were about 40ppm, the highest theve ever been and I havnt really done anything different as to routine ar made any changes other than over the past few months got a couple more fish. so my bioload is a little more. but my skimmer produces foam but its still clean.

[FloridaBoy]

Well unlike SPS corals, these softies do like some nutrients in the water, they actually feed on them. But having said that, let me quickly add; 40 ppm is high for many inverts, even dangerous. Most hobbyists with reef tanks and delicate inverts try to target a nitrate level below 5 ppm. Another possibility, the water change could have caused a rapid change in your salinity or pH, and possibly shocked the corals. I wouldn't do anything drastic or sudden, but keep an eye on those nitrates. You want to find the source of that high nitrate (likely your substrate is turning into a nutrient sink and causing this) and look to carefully creating better water quality for your inverts.
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Keepin' marines happy for 25 years

[southernfish]

my wet dry sump was pretty dirty nd hd lots of solids in it settled at the bottom so I took it out last nightwhen I did a 7gal water change and cleaned it,my return pump and my skimmer pretty good. ill test nitrates tomorrow to see how much it helped and am going to try to get my refugium going soon.

[FloridaBoy]

Yeah, with soft corals nitrates are a bit tricky; I think you have to find a happy medium for the species you are keeping. Some softies do better in tanks with higher dissolved organics, for example you can read this article by Noel Curry, Director of Propagation, Scientific Coral Corp in Atlanta. Noel reports the following observations...

"Soft corals tend to live in water that has a much higher nutrient load, ie more polluted. Many of them PREFER much more polluted water. The challenge is keeping a higher nutrient load without starting up the algae monster... our soft corals live in a very nutrient rich environment due to our heavy feeding of the fish, and they do very very well. In fact, we had very clean systems early on that had very little dissolved nutrients, and in the soft corals in many cases do not do well at all." more here:
http://www.Corals101.com/Information/Corals_Soft.htm
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Keepin' marines happy for 25 years