I wonder if anyone can help me on this. I have a 500lt system, lots of live rock, water and light parameters are fine, have denitrator and octopus
protein skimmer installed. Tank has been running for 6 months and is understocked.
I recently bought a very healthly
plate coral and elegance coral. They were in perfect condition and eating bits of lobster every second or third day. In addition to the lobster, I feed cyclops eeze for other other corals, tubeworms etc. I went away for 4 days, no-one was feeding my tank while I was away. The lights were on a timer and they all looked perfect and ate when I got back the Monday morning. The monday night things started to look dodgy and by Tuesday morning the two new corals were very dead and stinking out my place! I fed the usual amount and there were no leftovers. The other corals are fine (closed up in the death water though), and the fish (a few damsels) are ok... just these two lovely healthy corals suddenly died. I tested the water and found the nitrates were understandably a little higher than normal (as the corals were rotting in the water )
I did a 200lt water change over 2 days to get things back to normal as well as put charcoal in the sump for absorbing any poisons. The remaining corals are starting to recover and looking better. Can anyone give an opinion as to what happened?? I have been keeping marine tanks for 4 years now and this has never happened before.
Thanks!
