Sick candy canes

[smdoty]

I have some candy canes I got from my lfs a few weeks ago. They haven't looked great since I got them home and they're beginning to look worse. The skeleton is beginning to show. I know I have high phosphates, but other than that I'm kind of out of ideas. I have some neon greens in the same tank that aren't puffing up too well, but the don't appear to be dying like these. The other corals look fine. I have a branching frogspawn, galaxea, xenias, giant mushroom, and green star polyps that are all happy. I know my lights are getting close to needing replaced. I have 4 t5s over a 55 gallon that are about 10 months old.

Parameters:
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm
pH 8.0
Phosphate 2.0ppm
Salinity 1.023
Calcium over 520ppm
Carbonate hardness 13dKH

Any ideas?

 

[ErinCahir]

I'd blame it on the phosphates. What else do you have for corals?

 

[smdoty]

Frogspawn, galaxea, green star polyps, neon green candy canes, a trach, pulsing Xenia, pompom Xenia, and a giant elephant ear mushroom. The closest neighbor was the big mushroom.

 

[chichimom79]

Are you dosing anything?

 

[smdoty]

No. I don't add anything. I do a 10% water change every other week. I run a remora pro skimmer and an hob filter with gfo and carbon bags in it. I have no algae at all but I do have some cyano on the sand in lower flow areas. I use ro/di water to top off. The phosphates came from overfeeding frozen food a couple of times. I have a TLF Phosban reactor that I just got, but I don't have a pump for it yet. I was hoping to do a big water change and get that up and running this weekend. One of my actinic lights looks weaker than the other lights, would that do anything to my corals?

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

I had issues too when my mag dropped.

 

[smdoty]

I don't have a test kit for magnesium, so I haven't checked that. I'm thinking it has to be phosphates and/or changing light spectrum.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Sounds like youve got a plan. :-)

 

[little_fish]

There really arent any phosphate kits on the market I would trust to get an actual phosphate reading, but the fact you have cyano tells me you do have a phosphate/nitrate issue and potentially a flow issue as well.

I would assume the LFS had slightly better water quality than you do, so they are not adjusting well where as the other corals have had time adjust to the phosphates as they slowly increased.

So, best solution would be do more, and bigger water changes. I would do 20% every week.

Also, did you put the candy canes up high near the top? You should generally start your corals off near the bottom so they can adjust to the new lighting conditions.

 

[smdoty]

I did put them higher in the tank. My LFS had them under metal halides, so I figured they'd be fine under t5s. I added several corals at the same time and the others seem to be ok.

 

[little_fish]

I would move them to the bottom and give them a week

 

[smdoty]

Ok. Thanks for the advice.