Help With Coral

[Kaush]

This is my 20 gallon reef tank. It has 2 percula clowns, 1 yellow tail blue damsel, 1 yellow watchman goby, some zoas, my leather, and now one small aipatsia.

. you can't see the aipatsia, but i have cicled it.

The leather has retracted its polyps and it is usually gree,red and now one of its arms is drooping and there are some turquoise patches, circled in this pic

I also have a feather duster, about 20 feeder shrimp, a sand sifting star and i am using trace elements. What could be wrong with it. Could it be a sting from an anenomne i can't see?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Could be a few things.

1st thing to check is temp, PH, SG, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphate levels

What "trace elements" are you dosing these with? You most likely dont need to be doing this and it could actually be doing more harm than good, espically if you are not testing the water for the things you are dosing.

Last thing is that unless im missing it (possible, Im half asleep at the moment ) the only water movement you have in the tank is from the return on a canister filter? If so this is not enough flow so you need to add a powerhead or two for both your LR filtration and to give your corals the correct amount of flow. About 20-30 times your tank volume in water flow so in total for your tank you need around 400-600GPH of flow (personally I would get a couple of smaller powerheads rather than 1 large one).

How long have you had the leather for?

 

[Kaush]

The trace elements are called Corall and i have A, B and C, and i dose 5ml one a week. there is one intake and one output which gives off a pretty good flow. i have had the leather for about 2 and a half weeks and it shed about 4 days afer i got it and then it opened up pretty well but probably not fully. the water parameters are good. Maybe a sting from the zoanthids?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

I would stop the dosing right away. If you do regular water changes it is not needed (unless you have a LOT of high demands SPS corals) and you should never dose anything unless you measure exactly what you are dosing and are extremely careful.

Corall A contains Strontium, Magnesium, Barium, Lithium ...
Corall B contains Magnesium, Iron, Chrome, Mangan, Nickel, Kobalt, Copper ...
Corall C contains Fluor, Iodine, Bor, Molybdenum ...

Its really quiet insane that they contain copper! unless I'm missing something here copper will kill most inverts (shrimp, snails, corals, etc). At the moment you are dosing your tank with these but really have nothing in there that is using them so they just build up and eventually will harm the livestock. You honestly dont need to use these.

The canister filter really will not be giving you enough flow. Taking a really good top range canister filter (and eheim pro) this is specced to push through 700l per hour which is only about 150G (UK). If the filter has media of any kind in there you can probably cut that by a 1/3 if it is lightly filled and probably a half if it is really filled. Then if it has been running for awhile the pump will not be as effective as it should be so you realistically are only looking at about 70-80GPH water flow. This is not enough flow for the LR filtration and it is definitely not enough flow for corals (and thats assuming you have a top of the range canister filter that is brand new). So that is about 300-500GPH low.

What kind of lighting do you have as well?

PS: I hope I dont come across sounding like an jerk here, if I do its really not my intention, just trying to help

 

[Kaush]

I have been dosing 5ml a week for two weeks now, and all my inverts seem fine. I have a load of feeder shrimp that never got eaten and they are fine, my pyramid snail is fine also. It is just a few hours ago that it looked like this. Could it possibly be something to do with coral next to it, it is a orange polyp i think a zoa. the lighting is a Marine White Light 15W 14,000K with a reflector. what powerhead would you recommend, and how would i fit it/install it?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

No it wont have anything to do with the other coral, its most likely lack of water flow, possible overdosing with some trace elements and not really enough light. Have you tested your water parameters as well?

For power heads I would recommend getting a couple of koralia 1's (or a few koralia nanos). These just attached to the side of the glass with magnets. If you want a cheaper option some of the maxijet powerheads are fairly cheap. The tunze powerheads are very good also.