Rookie finally ready to be judged in Stoneham

[Morbid Florist]

I've had this biocube14 for almost a year now. I wasn't new to marine tanks but I am new to reefs and nanoreefs didn't exist when I had my first tank many moons ago. I do have one current issue but I'll save that for the end. Right now my guest list is:

Randall's goby
mated clownfish pair
cleaner shrimp (named agador spartacus IV)
4 scarlet hermits
1 unidentified hermit
2 redleg hermits
5 snails of different kinds
2 mouth ricordea
pink catseye zoa rock
orange mushrooms, probably 10
tonga bullseye mushrooms, 4-5
green clove rock (not doing well and is the problem mentioned)
neon green favia frag, growing nicely, 6-7 mouths I think
tree softie you can't miss up in front
new as of yesterday green/yellow zoa frag


The cloves have been having a problem for the last 4 months or so. They look like they're dissolving. I DID have a water problem in the fall with the PH being a bit low and hardness being low, but that's corrected. Today's water readings:

CA: 540
PH 8.5ish
nothing in the nitrogen/ammonia family at all
salt .025
po4 0

Iodine may be a bit high but I don't have a test for it yet

Clearly everything else in the tank is doing a-ok. What could be doing this to the cloves? Will they recover or do I have to wait for them to grow new polyps?

I've been giving them oyster eggs once a week, they seem to like that. Is that the right stuff?

 

[Behrmon]

Could just be a phase, what's you Alk at??

 

[frank180reef]

welcome and nice tank

 

[tigerslacrosse4]

well your cal is way high it should be around 420 425 your alk is probably around 5.5 dkh with the cal being so high. thats def the problem. im not one for dosing so i think someone else could jump in on this one and say what to do. thats all i got.

 

[Morbid Florist]

Wow I completely forgot posting this, sorry to not reply to anyone trying to help

Believe it or not, it ended up being a flow issue. I guess these kind of cloves need a pretty hefty current on them even though it looks like they're getting hammered by it. Since I moved a few things around and put the nano flowing pretty hard over them they've started to regrow their lost parts.

I can say it's flow because only half the rock was getting blasted when I first moved it, and that half started to recover while the other side was only marginally improving. I got the ricordea out of the way and moved the nano over the whole thing, so hopefully in a few weeks I should see everything turning around


Thanks for the advice

 

[RayD]

I don't think the CA is overly high. Not really necessary to be that high unless you have alot of stonys that require high CA requirement. My SPS tank is at about 520. With softs CA isn't even an issue. dKH should be consistent. It's more about consistency than the number. Shoot for 8-10 and try to keep it where it lands.

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[gonorth16]

nice looking tank! welcome to BRS

 

[CrazyCorals]

nice tank.......... welcome aboard