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Stappercrab

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Tank metrics look good, but leathers & green starburst polyps are not doing well. Hard corals are excellent (cup, scroll, frog's pawn, etc.). Green Carpet Anemone also excellent. ANY IDEAS???? PLEASE HELP!!!!!!

CA=375, Alk=3, pH=8.31, ORP=350, Salinity=1.024(stable), Temp=80.5F, Nitrate=5, Iodide=high, Phosphate=0, High water circulation & exchange w/ sump, Hallides & Actinic VHO's. 200 gallon tank with 80 gallon sump. ETSS skimmer working well & clean. CA reactor working well.
 

VkeSu

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Have you done anything at all to the tank in the last week or so? Water change? Different additives?
 

Stappercrab

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More info:

Tank is 2.5 years old, reef from the beginning. I FOUGHT for the first 1.75 years trying to make a series of lousy skimmers work, and trying to balance the Alk/CA. Finally broke down about 6 months ago and bought an ETSS skimmer and a Calcium Reactor. At that time, I had massive red slime problems, phosphates, CA=100, ORP=106. I call that, the dark ages.

Over the last 6 months things got steadily better. My cup, scroll, and leathers lived through the dark ages. As things got better, the cup & scroll started looking great, but the leathers have still not come back. Since all metrics now look good, I began to wonder if the problems with my leathers were due to the damage done during the dark ages. So I bought a few new corals to see how they would do.

I bought a green Starburst, did well for 3 days, then stopped showing. I bought a frog's pawn, and its doing excellent. So now I have a mix of new and old. All softs are struggling, all hards are doing well. So I'm wondering if there is something they need that the hard corals don't.

To answer your question specifically, nothing new to speak of. About 1 month ago I did some heavy dosing of Iodide at the suggestion of a LFSG. In the last 4 weeks all I've done is my normal 10% change every two weeks. (now moving to 5% every week). Hope that helps, thanks for your interest.

(by the way, my fish are great, but I can't see ANY hermit crabs and I'm beginning to think they all died or were eaten by my coris wrasse).
 

AnotherGoldenTeapot

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I have noticed in my tank that excesive iodide does lead to problems. On the other hand so dose not enough. Anything close to normal seems to work best for me.

Your calcium is a little low for hard corals - maybe turn up the drip rate on the reactor a little bit (and presumably th3e bubble rate too if you're not using a CO2 controller)?

Run some carbon for a couple of days - that will clear up any chemical-warfare going on.
 

Clearblue303

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Didn't you have in there a red starfish that died?
This happened to me once and all the softies,shrooms died off.
 

Stappercrab

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Nope, no starfish. I've double checked me CA/Alk today and things have changed a bit. CA is over 450 and Alk is around 2. I still don't understand why that would effect a starburst polyp, that is typically quite hardy. In any event, I buffered up a bit and ORP shot up to 415. I'll wait to see if it helps.

Also, the starburst looks great in the morning, but closes up later in the day. Could this be pH related? pH starts around 8.1 in AM and climbs to 8.34 in PM. Any further input?
 

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