A little help if you can

[spencermoose]

So I have a huge problem in one of my tanks right now and need a little advice on how to proceed. I will start from the beginning.

I have had my 30 set up for over a year now and all has been going great. Water params have been all great... nitrates 0, nitrites 0, ammonia 0, PH 8.2, and calcium around 350. I had moved to doing water changes to about once a month about 3 months ago and all stayed well. That was until this last week. I noticed that my frogspawn and a few other corals were not coming out as much as they normally do. I tested water and it was as follows: ph 8.2, ammonia 0, nitrates 0, but the nitrites were at 1.0ppm! Ouch, I did a 30% water change. The next day, nitrates went down to .50ppm... some progress. I got home today and here are my readings: ph 8.2, nitrites 0, ammonia .5ppm, nitrates 5 ppm. My frogspawn, torch coral and some others now look like they are completely bleached out (are they completely dead????). The only corals that seem to still be alive are the zoas and colt coral.

Here is the equipment that I am running: remora skimmer, koralia powerhead, and a phosban reactor.

I do not have that much livestock in the tank... 2 maroon clowns, 1 damsel, bubble anenome and several snails all which are doing great... the only casualty so far has been a peppermint shrimp.

I am going to do another water change first thing in the morning, but is there anything else that I can do? Are the corals that appear to be bleached out completely gone and should I remove them from the tank? (it looked like the frogspawn was attempting to come out... I could still see a part of the tip coming out of the skeleton). The only changes that have been made lately is that the clowns have been moving the sand with their tails away from the rock that the anenome is on... Would this be enough to make that big of a change? And if so, should I move them out? I have not added any new corals in over a month and I was really enjoying the way the tank was progressing. Any advice would help.

On a side note, I have started my 75 build and have made a stand, drilled holes, and made a foam structure for the tank... all of which I will post pics later on.

Thanks!

 

[seesick]

Water changes are good, however how are you doing the change?
Are you skimming from the bottom or pulling it off the top?

 

[spencermoose]

When I do a water change, I remove water from the tank and then replace it with mixed water that has the same SG... making sure that I use RO water.

The pump for the skimmer is at the bottom of the tank. Would have it higher, but the line is too rigid to have it up higher. I do have the koralia a little upward though so there is a break in the surface water so it is not stagnint. Does this make a huge difference?

All params are back in line now, but I do not want it to happen again. I have read somewhere that it could have been another cycle that was occuring and it sometimes common in established tanks. Also read that the corals that appear to be dead may just be stressed and that is why they have the bleached look... so I went ahead and left them in there. The corals that survived and are opening their polyps are the zoas, colt, stars, candy cane and mushrooms. The brain seems to maintain its color as well. Just looks like the xenia, torch, frogspawn, black sun polyp, shelf coral took the brunt of it and appear dead.

 

[spencermoose]

The anenome is looking a little sickly as well and I am trying to revive it back.