Toadstool Leather Suddenly Not Happy, Bugs On It?

[adoptaspork]

Quick back story. I've got a 20g long nano reef that's been running for a year now. I went to Alaska for a week, came back a couple of days ago, and it seems everything has gone wrong with it in the time that I was gone. Previously, I have had no real problems with it. The people taking care of the tank lost one of my clownfish while I was gone, so only my female remains and I haven't had time to get her another male yet. The day after I got back, I noticed the toadstool leather is not "coming out" at all. It's never done this in the near-year that I've had it. The other corals (even the GSP) don't seem super happy right now, either. Also in the time period that I was gone, my spellbinder zoas which were on a loose frag that I hadn't set yet fell into a crack in my LR and I can't for the life of me fish them out. They're invisible to the eye and I can get a little hold of them sometimes if I pry hard with my fingers but I can't get them out from inside the caverns of the LR so I don't even know how they're doing. They could be dying for all I know, or they could just pop out of the rock one day. Took my water sample to the LFS yesterday to have it tested out since mine came back fine and I was being paranoid that maybe my testing kit (API) wasn't "right" since it's not exactly a super expensive one. All water params were fine, but evaporation had my salinity up to 1.027 since even though I'd given them top-off water they hadn't done that throughout the week. That's it, though. No signs of anything else but all the corals seem to be in distress and one fish was lost...whether or not that is connected. The clown that died was kind of neurologic and swam wrong from the get-go so I'd gotten him a while back not knowing if he'd even live in general. The remaining one, which was the female of the pair, is still doing fine with no signs of stress. I did a partial water change yesterday and given that today things look the same I'm going to change a couple more gallons of water out.

HOWEVER...here's the strange thing.

When I was inspecting the toadstool leather today (the other corals are varying degrees of unhappiness but that one is the one that's usually super hardy and not problematic at all, which is why it is getting so much of my attention...) I noticed a couple of "bugs" crawling around on it. They look reddish brown in color, are visible to the eye, and scoot around at a decent clip. Not SUPER fast but not slow as dirt either. I've red a lot about the hated "red bugs" in tanks and am not sure if they're that or something else? Would they bother a toadstool leather? Should I be worried about them? Would they be causing this coral outrage? I've got a couple of the "normal" flatworms hanging out on the glass also but since they're not really becoming an issue I was just planning on tossing a wrasse in for a little to let it munch on them. I'm not really into something like flatworm exit. I dip all of my corals before putting them into the tank and haven't had a problem with pests until now, so I'm not sure how they came in, but my most recently added piece was the pulsing xenia.

Please help! The tank is usually so happy and I'm really stumped as to why my babies are all so unhappy right now!

In the tank...
Reef Tank: 20g
1 Electric Blue Hermit Crab
3 Blue Leg Hermit Crabs
3 Red Leg Hermit Crabs
2 Nerite Snails
3 Zebra Turbo Snails
5 Astraea Snails
1 Toadstool Leather
1 Spellbinder Zoa.
1 Green Star Polyp
1 Ricordea
1 Dunkin
1 Frogspawn
1 Small Ocellaris Clownfish
1 Leptoseris
1 Cyphastrea
1 Pulsing Xenia

 

[AcroporAddict]

I would do some testing for KH, magnesium, calcium, and specific gravity to make sure levels are normal. Maybe test for ammonia and nitrite as well. You might want to do a couple water changes as well. They never hurt.

Things can get out of whack fast in a smaller volume reef tank. Could your caretaker have over fed? Could be as simple as an ammonia spike from too much food, for example. Was anything sprayed in the house when you were gone? Could be any number of reasons for the issue, is what I am trying to illustrate here.

After testing, increased water changes are probably what I would do first.

Regarding your leather, I would not worry about a couple critters on it. If you were not aware, leather corals periodically shed their outer tissue layer for whatever reason, and they look terrible, with no polyp extension for a week or two.

Hope this helps some.

 

[CoralsAddiction]

Could be bugs but also water chemistry. Could be that water params aren't in check or there's an undesirable coral sitting next to eat and emitting toxins.

 

[adoptaspork]

Thanks for the help, guys! All water params came back within normal range. I ended up doing a few water changes for the heck of it and it remained that way...but then a few days ago, it opened back up. Now it's fine looking and acting normal. I don't really have an explanation for what happened and it doesn't seem to have shed, but it's back to its happy self now.