bubble coral

I have had a bubble coral now for about a month. Recently he had stopped opening up. I have tried feeding mysis with no response. Prior to this i fed him a small piece of raw shrimp. Could he just no be hungry?
any ideas? thanks

 

What are your water params? Where in the tank is the bubble situated? What flow is it getting?

Marc.

 

malcom, params are alk=5, sal=1.025, temp 78-80, am, nitrates, nitrites=0.
I had it in medium flow medium light, about halw way up. I have since moved it out of the flow, but also down in the tank. I have a 6 bulb T5-VHO. all my other softie seem to be thriving (frogspawn, torch, hammer)

 

A couple more questions. Whats your Calcium level? Did you add anything to the tank recently and i mean anything, fish, coral, invert, some product that you didnt use before, etc? Bubble corals need moderate light and moderate to low flow (IME preferably low). And just FYI frogspawn, torch, hammer and bubble are LSP (large polyp stony) not softies.

Marc.

 

right. i have never measured calcium. I use purple up maybe 3 times a week. I did start to uses Mr Wages. in the make up water.
I have also been having a diatom problem for about 3 weeks now, im not sure where that came from. All water is through a Kent's Hi-S RO/DI which is only a few months old. TDS says 230 going in and 0 coming out. I woudl say its in low flow moderate light right now.

 

How old is the tank? If you have diatom either its still cycling or somethings wrong. Get a Ca test kit also. What test kits do you use?

Marc.

 

the tank is about 5 months old. It has finished cycling. I suddenly got this diatom after a water change when i cleaned out a bunch of sponges in my sump. (bad idea i know now, apparently they remove silicates from the water)
I currently use the seachem multi (free am, total amm, pH, alk, nitrates and nitrites). Any Ca kit you recomend, i guess they are all the same.

 

Seachem test are fine. I use the same one. But you might want to look into Salifert tests also. IMO there are one of the best brands. Especially the Ca test. Not all test are created equal .

Im not sure i follow you on the sponges that remove silicates from the water? Can you explain please?

Marc.

 

I had a bunch of white sponges in my sump. The diatoms started right after i removed them. I started a thread asking about them, the general opinion was that these little white sponges (truncates)remove silicates from the water. Im not sure why I would suddenly get an increase in silicates though?
This link helped me a lot
What's a Tunicate?
I removed about 30 of these guys from sump as when they detached they woudl get clogged in my return filter

 

ok maybe someone else with more knowledge on tunicates can help you out on that one cause im no expert in anyway on that subject. Just one more thing, you didnt list your ph reading, its probably fine and you just forgot to post it but just in case, what is it? Just the fact that you have diatom proves to me that something is up. Maybe its the tunicates???

Marc.