After a tank disaster in June (details in the footnote) I am re-establishing my reef tank. Last week I rebuilt my rockwork, moving some corals around to places where I thought they'd be happier. For several days they were, then two days ago the acans stopped opening and the toadstool leather stopped extending his "fingers" although he still opens his "plate".Although I've had my tanks for a while I'm still sort of a noob, so please feel free to ELI5 (explain like I'm 5) if you have an answer.
The tank is a 34 gallon Red Sea Max (don't judge, it was a birthday present). I did a 20% water change last week with the rebuild.
Tonight's parameters (I have not done this week's water change yet) are: SG 1.025 by refractometer; pH 8.3 by API or 8.7 by my Hanna meter (which I don't trust much and accidentally dropped into the tank after the measurement, so it might be toast now anyway); Mg 1230; Ca 420 by Salifert, 480 by Red Sea Max (don't know which one to trust); dKH 6.1 (low, I know); Phos 0; and temp 78.
Livestock: two black perculas, a fire shrimp, two peppermint shrimp, a coral goby, a tuxedo urchin and CUC.
Corals: Large toadstool leather, some Kenya tree, several asst. ricordea, a couple of acans and some zoas. Yes, I tried to stick with the easy stuff. The only ones who aren't happy are the acans and the leather.
My differential includes:
--too much light, but then why were they so happy for the first few days and now they're not? They were under very strong light at the store too and looked great. Would being closer to the light cause them to be better, then get worse?
--too close to the leather; they're not too far but I don't think they're close enough to be exposed to any leather nastiness. I don't think they were further before I rebuilt things. How far should they be ideally to eliminate this issue?
--Annoying neighbors, but I've never seen anyone bother them except the goby (who likes to sit in the leather at times, although it doesn't seem to mind) and once the tuxedo got a little close to one of the acans, but didn't seem to cause any damage. I really don't think this is the problem, especially since it's a new issue.
I'd really appreciate any help or suggestions you can offer. Thanks a bunch!
:tears:The sad footnote: We had a professional aquarist move the tank in July to our new home. It was a very short trip in Phoenix, but by the following day everything looked like poop. My husband commented that the water felt warmer than usual (Phoenix remember!) so I unpacked the thermometer and it read NINETY-TWO DEGREES more than 24 hours after the move! I am reasonably sure that the water he used to do a water change had been in his truck for long enough to heat up; after all, it was about 110 outside and there's no other explanation. We did what we could to cool it emergently but the damage was done. We left almost immediately for a vacation but even with good care from our friends we came home to a dead tank. We lost all the corals and inverts, but amazingly the fish survived. I scrubbed the dead corals off the rock with a scrub brush, did massive water changes daily and eventually the parameters came back. A couple of mushrooms survived too, which really surprised me. The guy who moved the tank really stepped up to the plate though; he was super apologetic and replaced everything we had lost in the move. Today it's almost as if it never happened, and we're adding some additional nice corals into the mix as well.
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