Somebody tell me why my corals are dieng and not opening?

[Reeftanker3295]

The biocube was fine for a couple of months then literally 1 day i woke up and turned the lights on and the corals wouldnt open and were looking bad. I did large water changes and that didnt help. Since then, my 9 large neon green mushrooms have all completely melted away, my zoas still wont open in the biocube, my xenia will only survive if it is within 5" of the surface of the water, and my clove polyps are not growing and look like crap. I would say phosphates but it just doesnt make sense.. If i put the corals in any other tanks with the same water they open right up and are fine. No changes were made when this happened and i would really like to know how to get my corals to open back up!

[fchidsey]

What kind of light and how old are the bulbs?

I'm assuming all water perameters are good.

[Reeftanker3295]

The only parameter that is not fine is phosphates which are pretty high and i will be getting an RO/DI system as soon as possible to fix that.. But thats never been a problem up until that day and now corals wont even open and die only in the biocube..

Stock biocube lighting (2 bulb PC) Bulbs are around 2 months old. Corals havent opened for around 3-4 months.

[SoK]

what kinda water treatments are you adding to the tap water? or is it RODI from the LFS?

[Seamore]

move the light over another tankk to see how the corals react. Iy sounds like a bad bulb leaking some deadly radiation. If the other tank reacts harshly change the bulb, and do some wc to drive your phosphates down using distilled water from the store to make your ASW. Good luck.

[Reeftanker3295]

Its LFS water. They use coralife salt and all levels are fine except phosphates.

[Seamore]

I understand thats why you need to make your own w/distilled fresh and salt at home to drop the phosphates.

[ibanez2k]

Originally Posted by Reeftanker3295

The biocube was fine for a couple of months then literally 1 day i woke up and turned the lights on and the corals wouldnt open and were looking bad. I did large water changes and that didnt help. Since then, my 9 large neon green mushrooms have all completely melted away, my zoas still wont open in the biocube, my xenia will only survive if it is within 5" of the surface of the water, and my clove polyps are not growing and look like crap. I would say phosphates but it just doesnt make sense.. If i put the corals in any other tanks with the same water they open right up and are fine. No changes were made when this happened and i would really like to know how to get my corals to open back up!

I agree with you. It does seem rather odd that everything would be not doing so well all of a sudden, expecially as long as your tank has been up. I would have thought the water changes would have helped significantly. Makes me worried about my own tank as I have one thats still got another month before it's as old as yours is now and it's doing great for now. I would hate to wake up tomorrow and find my corals in that state. This certainly is confusing. Are your lights on and off at the same time every day? Changed food lately perhaps? Changed the salt you were using? How has the temp been? No really big fluctuations? Sorry, just trying to think of whatever I can. Good luck with it and if you can't find the cause, hopefully everything turns around again for the better soon.

[Reeftanker3295]

Originally Posted by ibanez2k

I agree with you. It does seem rather odd that everything would be not doing so well all of a sudden, expecially as long as your tank has been up. I would have thought the water changes would have helped significantly. Makes me worried about my own tank as I have one thats still got another month before it's as old as yours is now and it's doing great for now. I would hate to wake up tomorrow and find my corals in that state. This certainly is confusing. Are your lights on and off at the same time every day? Changed food lately perhaps? Changed the salt you were using? How has the temp been? No really big fluctuations? Sorry, just trying to think of whatever I can. Good luck with it and if you can't find the cause, hopefully everything turns around again for the better soon.

Temp never changes from 78-79 all day/night, didnt change salt, light schedule didnt change.

[Reeftanker3295]

Originally Posted by Seamore

I understand thats why you need to make your own w/distilled fresh and salt at home to drop the phosphates.

Ill have my RO/DI system within the next week hopefully and that will be my water for my next water change.

[Seamore]

If the LFS SW is phosphate laden thats the first thing to clean up. the bulb would be high on the list too.

[Reeftanker3295]

Originally Posted by Seamore

If the LFS SW is phosphate laden thats the first thing to clean up. the bulb would be high on the list too.

The same water is used in all of my tanks and the corals open fine in the other tanks, how could the phosphates only be effecting 1 tank out of 4?
Ive changed the bulbs and it didnt do anything about 2 months ago.

[Seamore]

Soon will not change the dieing corals, distilled water used w/homemade ASW will drop the levels tomorrow if you do a WC and it's cheep compared to the price of the corals that are unhappy.

[Dragonist]

wha5 is the ppm of p04

[Reeftanker3295]

3 ppm