jeudi 31 mars 2016

Corals not happy

Hello!
I have a question about my corals.
I have a 10 gallon reef tank. Almost 7 months old. It was downgraded from a 55 gallon when I moved back home with my parents briefly....they didn't want a large tank. I did not have a second cycle and did it all pretty seamlessly about 3 months ago.
It has been fallow for 3 weeks, but just put two baby clownfish in it. One is a baby domino and the other a baby nemo (not sure which species, but the generic $19.99 clown). I am planning an upgrade toa 20 or 30 gallon sometime in the next 6months so by the time the fish have grown a bit they will have much more room. Not planning on getting any more fish due to the small size of the tank.
During the fallow period, I fed weekly brine shrimp to keep the cycle going and all water levels are pretty stable except the pH is pretty low in the morning (7.6-7.8). I know this is normal but I hate it! So I do buffer daily with Aquavitro eight four. It helps a lot.

The corals I have are:
A large star polyp rock with two species of SP's. Two small Zoa frags and a leather toadstool.
my star polyp has almost always been okay except there are two MUTANT pods that I found munching on it in the middle of the night while removing a bristle worm. When I say mutant I mean they are huge for pods. The size of a small insect, probably a half of an inch long or more. I've never seen pods that size. I saw two of them actually EATING my SP's and I can see the damage they are doing and don't know how to rid my tank of these vile creatures.
They still open up during the day though.

My leather coral is the most bipolar of them all! It just "shedded" and grew quite a bit actually but it is still a bit white around some edges. It will be wide open at 10 AM and by 8 PM it is completely shriveled into nothing.
no ammonia, no nitrite or nitrate (oddly, I test 0 for nitrate all the time on my API liquid test kit...this is weird to me), pH is a bit low but every day I buffer. I have no clue what is happening.
It is not browning and I have pretty powerful lights but they are always on low, its a great light setup I think. Its a huge LED unit that I had two of for my 55 gallon. But I use one turned almost all the way down.
Flow: The leather has always been right under my Aquaclear 30 getting plenty of flow and it generally seems super happy with that. But then it shrivels back up and I don't know what to change because I don't know what is making him unhappy.

As for my Zoa frags, I'm so stumped on these. Zoas have never really enjoyed my tank. They are supposed to be super easy to keep but my zoas are always dull and half the time don't open. Is my tank possibly TOO clean? I am running an AC 30 on a 10 gallon....? One of my frags opens a lot, but is super dull in color and looks really rough. The other never opens at all anymore.

A few weeks ago I started dosing Fuel (I believe by Seachems) twice a week for the corals. Doesn't seem to do them any good.

Again, here are my parameters so you can tell me what you think it may be.
Ammonia - 0 (once it got up to .5 about a week ago but I have no idea why. I do regular water changes. I changed the water (about 30%) and it went back down and has been 0-.10 since then. I use Amquel and prime even if there is a tiny bit of ammonia.
pH - 7.8-8.4
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0 (never over 0, which is odd)
Temp - 76-78
Lights - http://ift.tt/1pNUiSX that light turned almost all the way down (I promise, its quite decent light and turned down its very dim, just like the fish stores coral tanks look, no browning on my corals at all)
Flow - I use an AquaClear 30 HOB, this creates plenty of flow I think for a 10 gallon, but I'm open for suggestions!

Please let me know what I am missing here! I want to get my corals in order so I can get an anemone for my clowns to host. I don't want to do that until I am better at keeping corals, though.
Thanks!


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