Sick polyps

[BoborLinda]

Does anybody know what the black crusty stuff is on the stem of these polyps. And how to get rid of it. It seems to be killing multiple colonies of this type of polyp. We have had these colonies for over 1 1/2 years. It was very slow spreading until this weekend, then it jumped to several others. We dipped in iodine Fri. night & no luck, but the main one opened up to his nearly 2 inch size right after we returned him to the tank.
We had to buy a new test kit and found out we were off on several things.
Amm - 0.1
no2 - .3
no3 - 30
PH - 7.7
phos- 1
cal stopped at 160
salinity 1.023
KH 12
These results were from yesterday afternoon before our 2nd dose of treatment on our water.
We have a 55 with hob w/ bio wheel & rena xp1 canister filter.
Glo 2 54 K18 & 2 Coralife actinic F28-T5-BP for lighting.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj259/cddiver/P1010008Medium.jpg

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj259/cddiver/P1010006Medium.jpg

[BioCube14]

dip them in lugols

[BioCube14]

i see you have several reading also not right

[RICKY81]

well i am no expert but according to ur water parameters seems like you need to feed fish less. do a partial water change, and fix ur parameters, your ammonia, nitrate, nitrite are to high, calcium to low, and ph is to low. as far as the black stuff sorry can't help you there..... just some info. maybe that can help with ur problems.

[BoborLinda]

Thank You for your help, we did the lugol's dip Fri night,no help. As far as the water we did see our test kit was not doing the job so we bought a new one and are treating the water also. Did a water change also. After all this is when it spread even going to another colony. I do not want to loose what we have in there to this, is why we are seeking help.

[coraline79]

those numbers seem pretty off. It is pretty hard to get your PH under 8.0 here in south texas, and as far as I have learned here you should never have an ammonia reading.

[ErikH]

Take a 5 gallon bucket, mix some NEW SW in it and test the new, fresh water. Assuming you are using clean RO/DI, this should help to determine if your kit is faulty or not. CA test kits can sometimes be tricky, so it may just be user error. Your levels are higher/off than they should be, and with a rise in levels comes the onset of problems. You need to make sure you are doing regular water changes, and if you are, increase the volume of the water changed until you get the proper feel for it.

Could you give us the entire rundown of your system? What is your stocking list?

Water changes are the first thing you should be looking at anytime you have problems, as they are the cause of probably 90% of the posts in the emergency discussion.

Remember, we can only speculate as to what is causing the problems with your water quality, so the more informed you can make us, the higher probability you will get an informed, accurate answer. Vicarious reefkeeping, yaaa. :)

[BoborLinda]

Thankyou for the reply, We are going to retest our water. that was the first time we have ever had a nitrite or am reading. We just bought a Hagen test kit last week after we found ours to be in error. But will do the 5 gallon test also. Had a thought, we buy our water from the windmill on Austin Hwy, has there been any reports on their water? This has been set up for 2 years, & yes off & on we have had problems,but worked them out we thought. Then pops up all this, the black stuff is really bothering me & our babies.

[BoborLinda]

Okay new water tests results are in...trying to be funny on this day.
Fresh salt water Aquarium
.1 Amm 0
0 nitrite .1
0 nitrate 50 to 75
8.5 ph 7.9

We are starting the water change now.

[stoneroller]

They are certainly irritated. Try moving them to a higher flow area.

[BoborLinda]

Thank You moving power head.

[MKCindy]

I have also been using the Windmill on Austin Hwy for about 2 years. The only problem I had was a green hair algae outbreak, but nothing a clean-up crew couldn't handle.