Sulking Elegance Coral?

[nigelwhite85]

Hi, I've had a marine tank for 6 months and introduced an Australian elegance coral into the tank about 5/6 weeks ago. I originally placed it at the front left of my 150l cube aquarium on the sand bed. Acting on the advice of my LFS I've been target feeding it half a small fish every 3/4 days and it was doing ok but not as well as it was at the LFS. Since I've added a few LPS corals lately the LFS suggested I switch to better lights and I've just installed a TMC v2 Ilumenair 600 which I'm hoping will help.

About 3 days ago the coral started closing and appeared to be covered in something resembling cobwebs. Any advice on what this is please? I've now moved the coral to the front centre of the tank on the sand bed under the new lights.

Tank params are good with the only change of late being the addition of Ca to try and increase the tank from 400ppm to 440ppm. I split the dose into 4 and planned to spread it out over 3 weeks but since the coral has been sulking I've stopped halfway through the dosing.

I've tried to attach pictures so hopefully they'll help identify the problem.

Thanks Nigel!

 

[nigelwhite85]

 

[Mark9]

No pictures

 

[nigelwhite85]

 

[nigelwhite85]

Trying to add one but struggling using tapatalk app!

 

[nigelwhite85]

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Nigel, what exactly are your water parameters? That looks pretty bad.

 

[nigelwhite85]

Salinty - 1.025
Temp - 25c
Nitrate - 20
Nitrite - trace
Ammonium - trace
Calcium - 420 (increased from 400 over a week)
Ph - 8-8.5
Dkh - 9.6

 

[nigelwhite85]

It looked like this 3 weeks ago.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

You should have 0 nitrites and ammonia. Have those checked by your lfs to make sure your kit is reading correctly. 20 nitrates is higher than I like and could be part of the problem. I keep mine below 10 usually 5 or less. I would do a big water change of about 25% wait two days and do another 25% wc and see what your tank reads then.

That Elegance didn't look great 3weeks ago.

 

[nigelwhite85]

Thanks for the help. Nitrites and ammonia are showing up as basically zero but on the colour chart it says 0-trace so I'd write trace to be safe. I did a 20% change yesterday (above readings were 2 days ago) and will do another tomorrow. Will post new parameters. I've had the water tested at the LFS and they seemed happy. Nitrates are normally 10 or below. Could it be changing the calcium which is having an effect? I'm also hoping the new light will help as the old ones were just basic led's which weren't great for LPS.

 

[nigelwhite85]

Ok so I've just tested everything again after a 15% water change (quite soon after so my readings may be slightly higher than once the water has cycled round).
Temp - 25c
Salinity 1.025
Nitrates - 10 (down from 20)
Ammonium - <0.05 (the lowest on the test).
Nitrite - 0.1 ( this has gone up from 0.05 but I read that some disease treatments can cause this to happen and I dosed the tank for ich 3 weeks ago)
Calcium - showing as 480 and has risen from 400 in about a week so I must've got my dosage wrong as I was halfway through trying to increase it from 400 to 440. Dkh is 7.5 (down from 9.)

I presume the slight nitrite spike is down to the oodinex treatment for ich but could the calcium rise be upsetting the elegance and also causing the dkh to drop?

Any advice please?