Please help: mushrooms goo, frogspawn & leather not extending polyps, zoas closed

myfast

Member
Hello,

I posted the thread below in the reef chemistry forum. I've taken all of Jonathan's advice so far (new carbon, polyfilter, will do 10% water change tonight). I also tested iodate this morning and it was colorless, so below 0.03. The polyfilter hasn't changed color indicating copper or anything else toxic. Corals still look the same as the pictures in the thread.

Any other ideas? Thanks for the help.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2013665
 
Thanks, TheReefNinja. It's really frustrating. Hopefully I'll get some more advice to figure it out.
 
i would say double check your salinity and alk readings. how did u calibrate your refractometer?
 
Thanks, ykh. I calibrated the refractometer with the pinpoint calibration solution. I will recheck the alkalinity. What is a good target for alkalinity?
 
then you should be fine on salinity. your alk of 8 is fine, but saw you added buffer to bring to 9.9. As long as there's no a big swing in alk, you are ok. I guess your best bet is doing a 10-20% water change and see how it goes.
 
Thanks, ykh. I'm sure the alkalinity move didn't help matters. It doesn't seem like that started the issues, though, since the problems were happening before i added the buffer. Is the swing to 9.9 too much? I'm mixing saltwater now and will do a water change tonight.

What do you use for a buffer? I was using SeaChem Marine Buffer, but Jonathan Bertoni on the reef chemistry forum said baking soda would be better for me because it doesn't contain borate. Does anyone know how much baking soda to use? Is it 1 tsp per 20 gallons like it is for Marine Buffer?
 
Im not sure how helpful this may be but from my experience softies such as leathers and shrooms and zoas all have preferred "dirtier" water. I have an all sps tank and since the switch from mixed to mainly sps, my two leather corals (large colt coral and a some unknown softy) have decreased in size and are not as large and full as when I was less concerned with having a low nutrient system. These are just observations made from my tank so it may not be the same case with others
 
Thanks, Spartanman 22. That's a good tip, too.

I also contacted wetwebmedia and Bob Fenner thinks my issue could be chemical warfare between corals (allelopathy). I need to do some more reading on this. Does anyone have experience with allelopathy? How did you fix the issue?
 
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