Need help- something is wrong

Did you let the containers completely air dry before putting water in them or dry them with a towel? I was told by another reefer to air dry. Not sure.

 

1+ on the water change, I would do a 20% water change, and then get some test kits to see if your water parameters are correct. Based on the corals symptoms the nitrates and alkalinity are probably off, high nitrates and low alkalinity . I don't think the bleach is your problem, but I wouldn't use it to clean out your ATO bucket. Not sure why you are getting fuzzy bacteria colonies in your water, but I would put a cover on it or get a new bucket.

 

I didn't see it mentioned, but I would get some carbon going is well. That's probably the first thing (since it's fastest IMO) I would do when suspecting some sort of unwanted chemical is in the tank, the second being water changes, of course. The corals that are not attached to rocks you could also try dipping, if you have soemthing like coralrx around the house. According to the directions though, it is not recommended to be dipping nems at all.

 

How much GFO did you use? I have seen some post on nano-reef that if you are putting too much in too quickly the phosphates drop so fast the corals etc don't react well.

 

Did your problems start when you started feeding the frozen foods? Was everything ok prior to that?

 

something I would check is your alk. My understanding is when running GFO it will drop your alk drastically

 

I would get new test kits and try and figure out what's out of whack. Use the old ones for now even if they're expired; they're usually still fine for awhile from my experience. You can always double check things once you get a new kit. I know you were using green water in your tank, at tank tour time anyways; when did you stop with that? I wonder if you had a *bad* batch somehow? You had said you were getting algae issues after starting that, so it makes me wonder if you were adding phosphates into the tank when you added it.........Algae is living off of something obviously, either nitrates, phosphates or both.....the quickest way to get rid of those is with water changes.
Did you notice a change when you started using the LED's?
Are you 100% sure of your RODI water quality? When did you last change filters/resin? I know CV Bay sells ready-made saltwater (probably the other places do too) if you want to do some faster water changes and not have to bother with mixing up more SW.
Good luck figuring it out. It's hard to watch things deteriorate like that :/

 

I have some test kits you are welcome to. Also have alot of cyclops type foods for corals you are also welcome to. I am seeing great results from a varied diet, in a 7 day period the tank doesnt see the same food.  works for me anyways.....wish you luck....anything I can do let me know....

 

How is your skinner? I just put an order in for bio-pellets, but may hold off on using them. Sounds like the bio pellets help grow bacteria to use nutrients then the skimmer removes the nutrient laden bacteria...

 

+1 If you start at your recommended dose of GFO for your first run, that is a no no!!! You should really take it slow when first introducing gfo and carbon into the system.. BRS has a guide for this..

 

If you think there's chlorine, use a dechlorinator Kylie. You can also throw in a PolyFilter. Feed the corals and make sure they are getting the Par they need. It could be several things as stated above but I would do WC's, run carbon, stop the biopellets(at least temporaily until things get better...if you start them again, do so slowly and correctly), use a dechlorinator,polyfilter and feed the corals. Sounds like they may be starving ;-( Good luck Kylie!!

 

Kylie, First things first- you need to get you're water tested, Even if you're kits are old they may still give you some insights to where things are off. Take a sample to you're LFS and have them take a look. Also test you're RO water once you get some updated kits, for phos that was were my problem with algae was coming from ( had a bad Membrane).
If I lived in town I would come and test for you!
Good Luck!

 

+1 on the water test. Also check salinity...I might have read over what it's at...but a drop in salinity can cause a lot of these issues with algae/coral deterioration. IF you use a standard hydrometer have it checked with a refractometer. If you use the refractometer check the calibration on it. HTH

Tim

 

GFO shock...my first guess

I would turn it off and do some water changes every couple of days using balanced alkalinity and calcium and magnesium.

A good balance is:
Calcium 425ppm
Alkalinity 9.0
Magnesium 1300ppm
You can use the calculator Here to find the correct balanced parameters. http://reef.diesyst.com/flashcalc/flashcalc.html

Keep carbon going until you get parameters in whack. Then you can start leaching out the PO4 with GFO at 1/4 the recommended dose and ramp up to the full dose over the next month or so.
You made a couple really drastic changes very quickly and that can have a bad effect many times. sometime worse than what you are trying to fix.

For now get the main 3 parameters stabilized and monitor closley, go light on feeding the tank..... this should save the corals and then we can re-attack the possible nutrient issue.

Hope that helps!

Bill