Dying Coral Contributes to Nitrates?

[Thinner25]

Hello all. If I may add my question regarding nitrates. Currently my livestock are a Torch coral, Giniopora, 6 hermit crab, and 1 cleaner shrimp. My tank is up and running for a year now and recently lost two clown fishes and a juvenile foxface to an ich outbrake or most likely marine velvet since it took my fishes out in 5 days. So right now I am running my tank only invertebrates for 90 days.

So my issue is that my nitrates is still between 5 to 10 ppm. I already did two 25% water changes for the past two weeks. However, my nitrates never dropped. I feed my invertebrates few pellets a day and that is it. However, the Giniopora that I adopted from a friend was dying when I took it in. Its flesh continues to peel. I am trying to save it. I am not sure if I am successful but my friend tells me that it looks way better now than it was in his tank.

The kicker here is when I had my two clown fished and fox face my nitrates were always less that .5 ppm.

Does anyone can tell me if by any chance, the little degeneration or dying Giniopora flesh is making my nitrates high?

Thank you in advance.



Here are my tank parameters:

Ammonia 0
Nitrates 0
Nitrates bet 5 to 10 ppm
PH 8.15
50 lbs live rock
40 lbs live sand
Sump - protein skimmer ; filter sock ; Carbon and GFO reactor

 

[peasofme]

anything dying will

 

[Thinner25]

Thank you peasofme. At this point I am stuck just with the Giniopora. I will just hope that I can stop it from peeling. I know Giniopora have a tuff record.

 

[dendrite]

I had a large birds nest suddenly RTN on me. I quickly removed most of it except where it had grown into the underlying rock. There has been an explosion of hair algae out of those crevices that I can only assume results from the residual organic material. So yes, dead is dead and can only cause problems