My tank is fubar

Performed a water change yesterday....2 gallons. Tank is 13.5

Changed from an old bucket of Aquatic Dreams brand to reef crystals.

DKH and calcium have been running a little low. After the water change I tested calcium and DKH. Calcium was good but DKH was at 6 so I dosed Kent's part b. Have been dosing one tsp a day and upped to 1.5 since I wasn't seeing much of a change. Also added Kent's coral vite like I do every weekend.



Today I get home and my meteor shower has bleached, Montipora is bleached, my gold wall hammer is not expanding and my anemone mouth is gaping open....tank does not look good. Tested everything and it all looks ok. DKH is at 7.

What should I try to save everything?


Also I got some advice to vacuum my sand so I did this for the first time. Tank has been going for about 4 months.


Edited by chuckfu5 - February 27 2017 at 7:33pm

4 months. I had the water tested at aquatic dreams a bit ago and it measures the same as my test kit.

Whats your mag reading? I know when I switched to the orange box from the purple box of reef crystals my mag went way up.

Did you blend some of the old and new salts for this water change or just go straight from one salt to the new salt? Going straight from one salt to another can cause shock in corals as well as dosing. Each salt has it's own levels of not only calcium, alk and magnesium butalso many other trace elements that each manufacturer adds to "balance" their salt. Switching too quickly from one salt to another is stressful to the tank.

I generally recommend that when switching salt you mix 1/4 new salt and 3/4 old salt to the first water change. Then the next one do 50/50 on the salts and then 3/4 new and 1/4 old and finally all new. This reduces the stress and allows the system to acclimate to the new salts parameters over time.

I would suspect that the bleaching is alk burn from the water change with new salt, and then alk dosing. A good rule of thumb when trying to raise alk is do not raise it more than 1.25dKh in a 24 hour period or there is a high risk of alk burn. Dosing that small of a tank should be done in very small amounts spread out over the day to prevent spikes. The spike may rebound quickly as the water mixes but the spike of the initial addition of the compound can be harsh and hard for corals to deal with.

Are you using a dosing caluclator (like the one on BRS's web site) to determine how much to safely dose? I would recommend that as it will help reduce alk swing issues as you try to adjust your levels.

If it were me I would test Alk and Mag again to see where they are at now that it's had a day to stabilize.

If Alk is low then I would use the calculator and break the recommended amount up into about 3 doses throughout the day. Make sure that the dosing liquid is added slowly to a high flow area where it can mix with as much tank water as possible before getting back to the display area of the tank (I'm kind of assuming that this 13.5 gallon tank is an all in one with some filtration in the back). If there is no sump or back compartment then take a few cups of the tank water out and mix your dosing amount into that and slowly add it back to the tank to help reduce the alk and ph spike.

If Alk is high then there are a couple of options. First is to do small water changes each day to slowly bring it down (this assumes that the new salt has a lower alk than your tank when fresh mixed) or do nothing and let the alk slowly drop as it is consumed by the system. This option is probably the best as it gives the most time to let corals acclimate to the changing level over time.

I wouldn't change anything else at the moment. That includes anymore vacuuming, media changes (unless some of the corals start losing more tissue as you will need more carbon then) etc. Making lots of changes to the tank right now will usually make it worse. I have a suspicion that the damage to the three corals is most likely already done and the best thing you can do is to stabilize the water parameters and make slow adjustments to get the numbers in the correct range.

I hope that helps.

Calcium was being dosed as well 1 tsp per day.  I did not change that and it was maintaining around 380 - 400 when testing.  

Mark Peterson wrote: chuckfu5 wrote: DKH and calcium have been running a little low.

*A 4 month old system of any size is still maturing and the system draw on nutrients/elements is simply not there yet. There is something wrong in the set up to have alk issues already. 

|*I dont recomend doseing a system this small. The parameters will not be stable.

I agree with Shaun. There could easily be something wrong with the setup. In the other thread linked above, chuckfu5 tells us that the tank is packed with coral. I looked at all his posts since last year. In the last few months he has been requesting all kinds of coral, including lots of stony coral. In my looking at previous posts, I also saw a thread where I had stated my concerns with what I saw going on with this tank, beginning with the use of all dry dead LR. Unfortunately, my observations and concerns regarding how chuckfu5 was proceeding were not well accepted, almost criticized.