aliciak
Member
Ok, here it goes - {we have/had a 55 gallon with 2 clowns, a 6-line wrasse, a lawnmower blennie, a yellow tang (I know, I know), 4 peppermint shrimp, 1 orange linkia, 1 serpent star, 1 brown cucumber, red, green, striped and blueberry mushrooms, hairy mushrooms, ricordia, large feather duster, pulsating xenia, palm tree xenia, something that's a bunch of tiny green xenia type things that shrink back into almost nothing, sun polyps, blastomussa, and a little leather - plus snails and hermits}
About 4-5 weeks ago our red algae outbreak had to be stopped.
We had cleaned all the rocks, done water changes, increased water flow, and nothing was helping (parameters read ok, just had algae everywhere). So I checked around on this site and ended up going the Maracyn route. Probably shouldn't have done that, but what's done is done. After a few days of Maracyn (2 days 2 tablets a day, 3 days 1 tablet), we did a water change. The Maracyn seemed to stress the corals a bit, but the algae was gone! A few days later, algae still gone, corals on the re-coop, but almost all corralline bleached. Every rock seemed to have a gray/brown dust on it. So at the end of that week, another water change. Then we went on a 1 week vacation and set up the auto feeder (we could find NO ONE to check on the tank). Back from vacation, the corals were looking bad, the pulsating xenia's were completely gone, the feathers of the feather duster were on the opposite side of the tank as the dusters tube, two shrimps were missing, and the serpent star was stiff and on his back.
We removed him and did another water change (6 gallons). I checked the water 1 week ago and found all parameters good, except ammonia was almost OFF THE CHARTS!
I immediately used AmmoLock and started making some new water. 24 hours later we did another 6 gal. water change and added StressZyme to help the biofilter get back to work and then checked a day later - Ammo still holy high, and one shrimp totally missing and one siezuring (he's gone now). Tonight we plan on a 10 gallon water change, using StressCoat and/or StressZyme. The leather looks like a shriveled dehydrating orange, the mushrooms (those that still exist) are tiny and shriveled, and the sun coral is mostly bleached. The only things that seem to be doing great are the fish, the cucumber, the palm xenia, and the green xenia/polyp things. Any suggestions? :help:
About 4-5 weeks ago our red algae outbreak had to be stopped.
We had cleaned all the rocks, done water changes, increased water flow, and nothing was helping (parameters read ok, just had algae everywhere). So I checked around on this site and ended up going the Maracyn route. Probably shouldn't have done that, but what's done is done. After a few days of Maracyn (2 days 2 tablets a day, 3 days 1 tablet), we did a water change. The Maracyn seemed to stress the corals a bit, but the algae was gone! A few days later, algae still gone, corals on the re-coop, but almost all corralline bleached. Every rock seemed to have a gray/brown dust on it. So at the end of that week, another water change. Then we went on a 1 week vacation and set up the auto feeder (we could find NO ONE to check on the tank). Back from vacation, the corals were looking bad, the pulsating xenia's were completely gone, the feathers of the feather duster were on the opposite side of the tank as the dusters tube, two shrimps were missing, and the serpent star was stiff and on his back.
