Aquarium Predicament

the_bandit

Member
So here's my problem.
For about 6 months, my aquarium sat up in my room. I slowly started putting coral and such in and everything was fine. Coraline was growing, clowfish were showing signs of mating, and so on.
Well I decided to start a Mantis Shrimp tank and I couldn't have both tanks in one room upstairs for obvious reasons. So as delicatly as possible, I transfered everything downstairs. I caught all fish and placed them in a bucket, took all non-attatched corals out and put them in a 10g with a filter and light, and tried to keep as much original water as possible. In the process, I did move alot of detrius and sand, causing a mini spike. But once everything was aqua scaped new, all was better and I only had to add one new 5g bucket of pre mixed saltwater.
NOW. My main problem is my corals are acting wierd to say the least. Some open normally and fast, others take all day to open, some open then close then open again. BUT no fish or invertabrets are acting odd. All is normal. Some have actually gotten better.
I have Zoo's, Leather's, Frogspawn, Torch(acting the wierdest), Hammer, Mushrooms, GSP, Daisy Clovers, Ric's, and Goniporia. No SPS.
Mind you, I do use tap water but it is very pure and I condition it for at least a day using two different water conditioners. I let all salt dissolve before putting it in.
Im running a HOB filter for up to 75g, a Aqua C Remora HOB skimmer, 2 MJ 1200's, I have T5HO lights running from 10a.m. to 12 p.m. give or take a hour or two, I feed every 2 days, and I dont dose anything.
My tank is a 55g with well over 100lbs of premium live rock along with 60lbs of live sand.
Water Parameters are as follows:
PH - 8.0
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrates - 0 to 10
KH - 200ish 11-12DKH
Phospates - 0.5
Calcium - 520
This is alot to take in. I understand that. The only thing I can think of is that the corals weren't in the same spot with the exact same flow and lighting. Im think that they are just getting used to their new area. The tank has been downstairs for about a week. I also did a 50% water change 2 days ago.
Hope you can help *Fingers Crossed*
 

aquaknight

Active Member
What were the 'obvious' reasons you couldn't have two tanks upstairs? Almost every 2nd house residential house is built to withstand at least one queen sized waterbed in one of the rooms. A queen waterbed is around 180gallons. Our previous house, built in 1999, had two queen waterbeds in the bedrooms above the garage, and we never crashed through

If the corals were in the 'mini-spike' and were exposed to elevated ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels, yea, it will take them some time to heal. Keep their current levels excellent, and they should get back to normal soon.
For your lighting schedule "10am-12pm," do you mean 10am-12am? If it's 14 hours of light time, that's a massive amount. Typically recommended is 8-10 hours. I would definitely cut some hours back.
 

the_bandit

Member
Well, two tanks in a smaller room would deffinetly be stuffy and my room is the hottest of all rooms so it would be kinda humid and hot in here.
Also, we needed something to tie the downstairs together and the tank did it pretty well.
I guess Ill just keep working on the water and trying to keep it up in tip top shape. Not sure if it was a mini spike or just a large amount of ammonia and nitrates kicked up from when I stirred up the sand and moved the rock.
Did all my water parameters check out ok?
Thanks for such a fast response
 
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