Help with frags, about to lose Capnella. Put them in too early.

[kwirky]

Common noob mistake made.

It's a bit of an impatience mistake too. I cycled my liverock, everything was testing 0, so I went to the LFS (Gold's) to ask whether I should turn the lights on or not. Albert there said the liverock's cycled now, and suggested I get some frags of easy to look after, photosynthetic corals. I got Capnella, Sarcophytoa (Toadstool), and Echinophyllia. He just said don't feed them for a month because they're photosynthetic.

My water paramaters have been great, but now the diatoms are showing up, and I'm wishing I never got those frags so early. Hair algae's starting to show up a little bit too. I tested my water (aquarium pharmeceuticals) and ammonia was 0, nitrite was 0, and nitrate was hard to tell if it was 5ppm or 0ppm (I'm an artist myself, and I find most colour charts for test kits horrible due to printing processes. It's like "wth? It's NONE of these colours! lol). I tested RO water, and it was hard to tell if it was 0 or 5ppm of nitrate too lol.

Now the problem is the scar tissue area of the frags are starting to get algae on them. Daily, I've been blowing them off lightly with a baster. The Capnella is really showing stress and it's deteriorating at it's scar tissue.


you can notice at the base it's turning white. The one branch is hanging by a tiny bit, and one little branch has fallen off already.

I've got two frags of Sarcophytoa. This one's doing quite well against the algae, but it's polyp tips aren't coming out.


the second Sarcophytoa is not doing as well. It's base tissue, where it was cut, has diatoms on it, and there's few strands of hair algae on it.


the echinophyllia is doing quite well. You can notice the new tissue it's forming at it's base. Only been a week.


I know not to repeat this situation again, but I don't know how to help these frags. One connection I can make is I increased the water flow in the tank. I read an article in advanced aquarist that high water flow is important to corals, and so I did the same. The next day, come to think of it, the Capnella started showing it's distress.

Here's details on my system, and test parameters.

18" high, 12" deep, 18" long. (16 gallons)
16 gallon sump with heater in sump.
two aqualight mini 9+9 watt lighting (36 watts total).
mag pondmaster 150 gph as sump return. zero head, sump directly attached to tank.
aquaclear 402 powerhead on lowest setting to help with dead spots. (approximately 100 gph).
0 ammonia
0 nitrite
0-5ppm nitrate (hard to tell colour)
unreadable phosphates
5 gallons RO water, rest is tap water. (just started using RO for water changes now. aerated/mixed for a day at least before use)
16 lbs indo rock (suspected to be cultured, but still looks good)
I gave the liverock two thorough swishings in a bucket, to remove any detritus that was on them in the LFS's tank.
today I did a good snowstorming of the tank with the polisher on the aquaclear, using a turkey baster. thought maybe the detritus was starting to decompose causing the spike in nitrates.

the corals themselves are about halfway in the depth of the tank. The way the rock's arranged it doesn't go very high

I think it's too much flow in the display area, so I've just moved the aquaclear powerhead to the sump for surface agitation, and now only the 150 gph mag is driving the water flow of the display area.