AHH! Bubble coral!

[fortheloveofcrabs]

Thanks for your input Bev. I've always had a hard time with all the fuss over water chemistry. Is it really that important? Well, most (if not all) of you just said 'absolutly it is, foolish child' but hear me out. If you are precise about your water changes, and do them religiously, you shouldn't have a problem, provided everything else is constant in your tank, correct? 'Well, THEORETICALLY, yes' you say (after all, that's how it works in the largest 'tank' of all). Okay, I do my water changes every week, about 20%. So far everything has been thriving up until this crabby little bubble coral, so what's the deal with my water chimisty is the first and most natural reaction... So, I wanted to see what all this 'water chemisty' talk is about and put it to the test. Because, after all, if nothing has changed (no new tank mates (added or removed), same regular water changes done the same way, some feeding habbits, same location in the tank, same lighting, same everything) then surely the only option left is water chemistry. I went out and bought every NUTRAFIN (which I was told are most accurate of the non-electronic tests) test I could get my hands on. And here's the scoop:

Ammonia: 0.0 mg/l
Nitrate: 0.0 mg/l
Nitrite: 0.0 mg/l
pH: (between) 7.5 and 8.0
PO4: 0
Ca: 420mg/L

And that's all they had. Am I missing something?

Oh, temp is a constent 79 thanks to a chiller, and salinity is a 1.024 thanks to an auto top-off. So, is there something else I should test for? This whole 'water chemistry' is really quite frustrating because anytime something goes wrong, everybody yells 'WC!'... Well, what if that's okay? Then what? Is my coal just drepressed? Prehaps it feels unattractive? Any ideas what's wrong, anything else I should test for?

-Edgy in Edmonton

Thanks!