Need Help

[victorwin]

Hi guys,

My tank is fairly new (~4 months). My main tank is 95 gal with a 25 gal sump. Here are my AWT water test results:



I do weekly water changes (around 25 gals) with Instant Ocean Reef Crystals Reef Salt. Invertebrates such as snails and anemone and corals such as zoas wouldn't survive more than a week. Is there any way I can reduce my magnesium level? Should I test for Iron? I just don't understand why all my fish survives but not the corals or invertebrates. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

My tank is 20"x48"x24"
2 - Radion XR30W G4 Pro
Nyos quantum 160 skimmer
2 - Gyre FX250
Temp 77.5-88.5
Salinity 1.023-1.025
pH 7.88 - 7.91

 

[Dmitri]

I would stop doing water changes for a few weeks to see how it affects your water parameters. From reading some articles about high magnesium issues, invertebrate may struggle to survive anything above 1600

Also it maybe bad saltwater mix that may cause high mag issues.

 

[FutureInterest]

Fish are a lot more tolerant of various parameters than corals and inverts are so it makes sense that they're thriving. I agree with @myaquariumpro, I've had snails die off in the past when I was intentionally raising my mag levels very high with tech-m to combat bryopsis... before the use of fluco was around. I don't think it ever got as high as yours though... so I'm not sure what happens in that range or if that is the culprit but at levels lower than what you have my snails would die off...

As such, I think you might want to consider just doing instant ocean or another brand of salt instead of the IO reef crystals brand. The RC has elevated Ca/Alk/Mag which you don't need at this point.

 

[victorwin]

Thanks guys. I was also fighting off some algae outbreak. I should have pay more attention but it could have been dino or diatom. If it’s dino then introducing a new patch of cleaning crew was wrong at the time. Tank is currently going under darkness too.

 

[spike]

Tank should be at least a year old before trying anemones. I made that mistake. Even then buy tank raised not wild collected. Make sure inverts are very slowly acclimated, especially snails. I would agree on no water changes. Just test water and dose as needed. On Zoa’s if they are closing and shrinking maybe getting to much light. Or possibly a fish is nipping.

 

[urbanknight]

For what it's worth, I drip acclimate my cleanup crew for about an hour as Spike suggest. They seem to do ok when I do this. Twice I have been in a hurry and just dumped snails and hermits into the tank. Lost a couple of hermits out of ten and 8 of ten snails. All in three days! Been acclimating them every since.