Tank is dying a slow death! Need some serious help!

JohnnyDanger

JohnnyDanger

Reefing newb
Alright guys I need some help here.. About 2 months ago I put 3 Peppermint shrimp in my tank to take care of some aptasia. They ate the aptasia along with my favorite acans and half of my Green Earth ORA frag.. I got rid of the peppermints not before they bred and had 14 million babies, most of which got eaten by my live stock.... Ever since around the time I put in the shrimp all my corals have not been opening up fully.. Zoas, montiporas, acroporass, birdnest, and goniporas have not been coming out fully.. All my zoas come about half way in and out throughout the day. The only corals that fully extend are candy canes, hammers, leathers (barely) and frogspawns. All my montis are bleaching horribly. My two rose bubble tips are fine. All my fish are acting normal and show no signs of ich or desease from stress.. Lats week I added a new sump and skimmer (Eshopps r-300 and Reef Octopus Diablo 160). I've checked my parameters NUMEROUS times and they're always perfect.. (0/0/0, 9alc, 450 calc, .023 salin, temp is always at 82) My rasta and fruit loop zoas barely ever show face. It seems as though some type of red slime has coated the outside of the zoa sleeve and wont allow them to open. The ones that aren't coated with that SH*T are barely coming out. Here are some pictures of what the tank is looking like today after the lights have been on for 2 hours. My setup is a 55 gallon display with the eshopps r300 sump along with the reef octopus diablo 160, phosban reactor running thrive biostimulant crush and two ecotech radions set to natural mode (35% power where they have always been). I recently put in a poly filter to pull out any type or ammonia from cleaner in case that is what is killing my tank.. Here are some pictures..

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full tank shot

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sump

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skimmer (still not broken in after a 10 days)

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whats left of my rasta zoas.. (notice the red stuff growing on them)

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dead green earth frag and fruit loops

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gonis and my recovering acans..


And no.. All that red stuff is not red slime algae, its red coraline.. I tried scraping it off to check and its hard..
 
I don't think it's red coralline, it looks exactly like something I had a few years ago. It started on my button polyps and covered them I was removing it with tweezers every week. It slowly took over my tank. I will try to find the link to it.
 
Just scraped the red slimy stuff off my rasta zoas with.. The polyps are clean now and I'm waiting to see what kind of extension I get (if any at all).. How do you get rid of the red stuff if it's not good.. And do you think that's the root of all my problems?
 
Zero phosphates always.. Sorry forgot to put that in my param list.. I run the reactor and change phosphate sponges out weekly..
 
The r-300 sump is a refugium rated for a 300 gallon tank.. Before upgrading to it I used my DIY 20 gallon long refugium and never had any phosphate problems..
 
That red stuff is turf algae. It's THE worst you can have since it requires the same water conditions as the corals do. I think it was Sen. that posted a thread on how he beat it back.

I'm also betting that you didn't get Pepperment shrimp. I'd bet a dollar to a donut you ended up with Camel shrimp, which will eat corals.
 
Yote, the stuff in the pics that you are referring to as red turf - are you talking specifically about the stuff on the zoa frag plug (which to me looks like cyano), or the red stuff on the rocks in the rest of the picture? The red stuff on the rocks in the rest of the picture looks exactly like what has been growing all over my tank. I've thought it was red coralline up to this point, but now a few patches are showing some fuzzier turf like growth. Its not cyano - doesn't blow off and I can't scrape it off.
 
I had Ctano a few months back and mine started on the sand and then moved to the rocks but then it started getting long strands all over the place. I could actually take a baster and blow it off my rocks but it just spread faster.
 
FishyReef said:
Yote, the stuff in the pics that you are referring to as red turf - are you talking specifically about the stuff on the zoa frag plug (which to me looks like cyano), or the red stuff on the rocks in the rest of the picture? The red stuff on the rocks in the rest of the picture looks exactly like what has been growing all over my tank. I've thought it was red coralline up to this point, but now a few patches are showing some fuzzier turf like growth. Its not cyano - doesn't blow off and I can't scrape it off.
Click to expand...

The stuff in the rest of the pictures Fishy.
About the only way that I know of to remove live red turf is with a hammer and chisel.
 
I would try tweaking the lights and see if that helps. When I had my battle with it I was running PC's and was on the low lighting end
 
Even though the donuts sounds awesome here is what I did (the things I was doing wrong). First off I didn't have a good protein skimmer. I had a HOB POS but finally bit the bullet ans spend some cash on a used one at my LFS. Then I started feeding every other day vice every day. When I feed now, I feed slowly so not as much food hits the sand. I also blow off my live rock every now and then just to get any waste out of the cracks. Make sure you clean any pre-filters on any pumps in your sump or others. And lastly, make sure you are doing enough water changes with the RO water.

One last thing you might think of is getting some macroalgea in your sump, which eats phosphates so with less phosphates the less cyanobacteria has to eat.
 

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