Time to pull this nem?

[cnreef]

I think he's going downhill because I've had alk issues recently, and me trying to get dosing started has stressed him out. He hasn't inflated for several weeks now. This is a night pic but he looks fairly the same during the day, except his insides are not out during the day like in the pic.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

I wouldn't pull it yet. Hopefully you get the water parameters under control quickly. If it starts to get stringy then pull it. With a 29 good consistent water changes should keep your parameters in line as far as alk goes and you should NOT be dosing. You don't mention any corals so again you don't have to do any dosing. My tank is in my signature and I don't dose at all. I do weekly water changes to keep it all in line. I also have a 20 gal sump and a total of close to 80 lbs or so of lr and I do run a skimmer.

Water changes are the solution I'd do a 5 gal wc every other day for the next week to get it cleaned up.

 

[ThRoewer]

Is that a BTA?

 

[cnreef]

Yes it's a bta.

I can def bump up water changes. My coral list isn't that extensive in my opinion. I have 2 sps frags and 1 colony, 2 torches, 2 hammers, several zoas, and several acans. Now that you mention it, that probably isn't enough the need to dose, so maybe my water change schedule has just been not enough. I've previously just done a 10% every 2 weeks.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2271385

Link I mentioned

 

[Dkuhlmann]

I'd do like I mentioned every other day for a week then go weekly and you'll be fine. BTA's are a PITA. It gets me everytime mine expels waste. Looks like a nuclear meltdown LOL

BTA's ball up to protect themselves.

What lighting you have?

 

[cnreef]

Alright, I'll give that a try. My lighting is a reefbreeders value led with 120deg optics set around 60% white and blues around 80% I believe. I've heard this is sufficient but I've considered changing to the popular eBay leds which have 90 degree optics and apparently are pretty successful for nems and sps.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Those lights should be fine, but never a bad thing to upgrade. Just watch putting too much light too fast, it can burn some corals.

I honestly think that if you do a 5 gal change your numbers will come down quite a bit. Might be OK with just switching to weekly but it's easy and cheap enough to do 3 or 4 this week and then go to a once a week schedule. Today is my WC day.

 

[cnreef]

I forgot to mention my current parameters, the reason I was raising my alk was because it was really low (around 5.9) and I was gradually raising it up to 9. As of now, my alk is at 8 dKH now and mag 1365, calcium 400. I'll have to test consistently the next few days, because I have a feeling it's dropping fairly quickly and I'm not sure why.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Just do the water changes and you'll be fine.

 

[cnreef]

Alrighty, thanks!

 

[Dkuhlmann]

LOL you're thinking WAY TOO MUCH into this

 

[rogerstammy]

Dont do what I did, my first tank mine did this... I freaked out and threw it away. : / I now wish I didn't, I'm pretty sure it would have been OK

 

[Sn1per9000]

Are you dosing because you need to it want to? Water changes need to happen frequently in a small tank like yours.

Your bio-load is really high for a small tank too. On top of the corals that you mention how many fish do you have in there? You haven't mentioned any other water parameters. Anemones make the bio load high if you are feeding too.

Was the anemone fine before you started dosing? If so you should slow down or stop dosing. There's a good chance you are what's stressing him.

Anemones are generally recommended to 50 gallon plus tanks.

 

[cnreef]

I wasn't necessarily "dosing" as in setting up anything daily on a doser. I was just raising the alk up to a desirable level, although it probably would've been better to do it gradually through water changes.

I have 4 fish, which are 2 clowns, a blenny, and a royal gramma. I don't think my bio-load is an issue. I have a skimmer rated much higher than my tank and some of my sps have loss of coloration presumably due to low nutrients (or so a decent amount of RC members agreed on). So I've been trying to feed once a day rather than once every other day as I used to do. I also have never target fed the anemone (have had him for 4 months now).

My current parameters are:
8 dKH
400 calcium
1365 magnesium
1.025 sg
7.8 pH
Phosphates are around .03