What the #$%^ is going on every time i do a water change.
 

Ok so Im stumped. I dunno whats going on. I did a water change and a tank clean last night, nothing durastic, cleaned the glass, moved my frogspawn(which is great still) , set a shrimp trap, changed some carbon, moved a powerhead(same flow in area of corals just pointed at sand bed now) and changed a total of about 6 gal of water, its a 46 gallon tank. This is what happend today.....

http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/z...n/DSC00879.jpg

http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/z...n/DSC00880.jpg

Im thinking the acro is toast, and the xenia has done that before. My zoas are a bit ****ed and one of my montipora is a little light, but other then that everything else is hunky dory. So i figured it must of been a chemical swing. Tested my dKh. Both are 12.(tested twice with different kits) If the tank was out before i dont think changing 6 gal would bring it back that quick would it? PH is 8.2 on the mix and 8.3 in the tank. Ammonia,Nitrates is zilch on both.I added the water pretty slow with an old powerhead i have so it wasnt turbulent. Im getting to the point where im afraid to do my waterchanges. Any help to get this figured out would be greatly appreciated. OH and im not going to lie the salt mix was prob 2 1/2 weeks old, i keep it in a stock tank in the basement, constantly circulated and heated, i use it for shrimp hatching and waterchanges of course, i just mix 40 or so gal at a time. Is this the problem??? Forgive the stupidity if it is.

Can you describe what's going on? I am not seeing it sorry, your acro seems to have a good PE, unless your acro is not supposed to be white the there is definitely something wrong there.

what salt are you using?

http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/z...4/DSC00799.jpg

So thats what it looked like before. Sorry i should have mentioned that. The xenia seems to look the same in the pic but its normally more extended and has a lot more brownish colors in it. The colors do seem to be slowly coming back in the acro and the xenia does seem to be filling out again but i just dont think its right.

I use instant ocean. Havent changed. Im confused now cause theres another post going on that says your dKh should be around 7 with calcium around 420ppm. Mine is 12dKh with calcium at 420ppm and I have no reactors to turn off to lower my dKh. Thats just what is mixed so it never varies much from that. Im testing with a hagen test and API.

Um.. Could it be that the acro is actually happier after all those changes (new water, new carbon, etc.), and is now showing its true colours? I actually like how it looks now, lighter and less brown. Looks more brown in the older pic of that acro.

As for the xenia, well they do that, as you've observed, I wouldn't worry about them.

well i was just over at whatcaneyedo's house again and well his is under better lights but its more blue in his tank with the brown polyps so im thinking it looks brown as im only under t5ho's, white still bad i think. Im ok with waiting on the xenia (cant disagree with the totm guy!) Thanks!

Newly mixed Instant Ocean typically has an alkalinity of 11 dkh according to this post so that is normal http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1714505 Most brands have higher than natural levels of many elements to help compensate for uptake in our systems.

I've stopped caring when soft corals close up. Any little change can trigger them to shrink down to nothing. As long as they eventually opening again and your SPS have good polyp extension it looks fine to me.

Its funny what different light types will do. Lonnie switched from 400W MH to T5 a few years ago and all of his acropora bleached at first. Once they recovered some looked browner while others looked lighter...

Huh... ok. hahaha. Well thank you. I need to calm down a bit im thinking. sorry. haha. So what about ideal dKh? Is 12 actually ok? New mixed salt comes like that so cant be that bad right? All those mixes sure seem to vary quite a bit.

I prefer slightly higher alkalinity around 9 or 10 for two reasons. One is because it helps to keep my pH higher which I have a problem with in the winter because of my calcium reactor. And two, because it provides a bit of a buffer againts having my alkalinity drop too far if something goes wrong. For example: I had my calcium reactor stop working (long story, doesnt matter) and my alkalinity began to drop by about 1 dkh per day. If I didnt keep it slighter higher it would have dropped a lot lower than the 5 dkh that it ended up at before I corrected the problem.

Ok. Thanks again! man i must be getting annoying by now. haha. Sorry. So last question for tonight promise.haha. So should I not worry about a calcium reactor or kalk doser untill i notice a requirement for it? Or should I be looking now for one for when i want to get a clam in the future.