Zero Polyp extention, Help

[gogregerson]

My tank was all going wonderful and stronge. Last weekend I cleaned out my refuguim to get rid of a red hair algae problem. I took all the sand out and disgarded, removed the 20-30lbs of LR rubel to a sepperate tank to cook, and had to throw away all my cheto do to it becoming red with algae. Now all I've got in the refuguim is zenea and some red sea weed. Soon after reworking the refuguim I noticed the polyp extention on my SPS reduced. My amonia levels did raise to .01ppm do to the distubance but returned to 0ppm with in a day. Then I noticed a steady drop in my Ph. I have never seen my Ph go below 8.2 and now it dropped to 7.6. I was able to raise it back up to 8.3 with some pickling lime but it is now takeing daily dosing of kalk to maintain my Ph. What could be causing the drop in Ph? What could be causing the lack of polyp extention and causing my SPS to look like crap? What Should I do?!

Water peramiters; Ammonia-0, Nitrate-0, Phosphate-undetectable, Calcuim-430, Alk-3.43, KH-9.6, Mag-1350

[storrisch]

taking out the sand could have an effect. the aragonite sand could have been helping to buffer your ph. That is my guess.

[gogregerson]

I've also got sand in the display, wouldn't that do all the buffering needed?

[mattb]

How are you measuring pH?

Did you leave your refugia running as you took everything out? If you disturb a sand bed with the system running you could let bacteria or other micro orgs into the system, this could result in stress to your system, and an increase ammonia.

If not, by taking out the lr and sand, you could have some nice de/nitirying activity taking place and by removing that and the algae, your tank's lr couldn't keep up with the demand. Again these are just possibilities, though I believe that bacteria populations, once established are pretty dynamic. Meaning, you've already got the cultures developed with more nutrients, they'd probably reproduce faster to consume them.

By taking algae out, I'd expect your pH to go down. That's a huge benefit of having a refugia, a higher, stable pH. I'd think that while the xenia would grow to consume the nutrients, it may not be as fast as the algae would be.

As far as PE, there are many reasons that sps exhibit PE: gas exchange, autotrophic feeding, heterotrophic feeding, shading.... we shouldn't be using PE as a measure of an sps' health.

[David Grigor]

Providing your ALK levels have been maintained the entire time, your PH drop is 100% effected by the CO2 levels. Removing your Macro algae combined with the tank constantly trying to reach equalibrium with the in house CO2 levels there will alway be a constant battle to keep PH levels up. Kalkwasser dosed at night to react with the excess CO2 in the tank is the most practical way to combat it until your Macro algae is established again.

[gogregerson]

Sounds like I need to get my cheto mass back. Thanks for the advise and direction.

[gogregerson]

I've figured out what is going on with my corals. The clown gobies I got last week are irritating them! Who knew? They were so cute in the store.

[kpax]

At least they were cheap --I assume......I hd one of them and I had the same issue.