New forum Member questions introduction

[oldss72]

Hello,

I have had freshwater tanks for years. At points I have had sucessful angel fish tanks, a great cichlid tank, of goldfish tanks, guppies, and many others. I currently have a 55 gallon setup with goldfish, a 20 tall with guppies thats split that is being used for breeding, and a simple 10 gallon tank that has a pair of gurami and beta that are in the bedroom.

My salt water experience is quite limited, and my tank has been setup for about 6 months now and is doing well. I have a 20 gallon long tank with 3 fish (lawnmower blenny, 6 line wrasp, & a clownfish). I also have 2 peppermint shrimp, a myrid of hermit crabs, an emerald crab, and a few remaining snails that have not died. I have had the fish for quite a while, and had no issues, so I decided to move on to coral. I started with a hammer coral, and a candy cane coral. I then got a Xenia, a leather (can you identify it?), a Dersa clam, a single green mushroom, and some button polyps. My girlfriend then decided she wanted an anemone and came home with a condy without doing research, which has actually been doing well and has not moved around much or hurt any of my other coral. I also got a millepora from my lfs for a few dollars and thought I would give it a try. The millepora seems to be doing fine, and it is right near the top of the tank to get the best lighting.

Lighting is AH supply 2x55w 10k/blue combo bulbs T5. The lighting came about 3 months after the tank had been setup, right before I started with the coral. I have the Taam Rio protein skimmer. I also have a bubbler and a 30 gallon submerged powerhead to keep things moving around

My tank is doing great if you ask me, however I wanted some input. I have noticed in the past few weeks (3 weeks) that the hammer coral has not been opening up. Some days it will open 1/4 of the way, others it stays like it gets at night. I did buy it with 2 heads, and it now has nearly split into 3, however it does not open fully. I have moved it around a bit, and a little more flow does seem to help, but it is nowhere like it used to be. The candy cane has also split both heads and is nearly 4 fully heads now. 1 stalk of the xenia did some walking, but it is near a patch of hair algae so it is not doing as well as the main bit, but its been doing better since I started picking that hair algae out. The amount of algae is decreasing slowly except on one rock mainly.

If you have any input on why the hammer looks pitiful, please let me know. Water parameters are 1.023, 450 calcium, no nitrate/nitrites. PH is slightly north of 8.0, but not 8.5. KH is at 240 ppm, GH is at 180ppm. Ammonia is at 0-0.5 depending on the day/time of the month. I do weekly water changes of 2-3 gallons. Temp is constant at about 79F

[oldss72]

more pics. The pic above with the shrimp is what the hammer has looked like for the past few weeks. The one pic in this set shows what it looks like from above. Note, i only turned on the light for a few mins to take these pics, so it was totally closed. You can see that when it was really open it looked good, but not it just looks sad...

BTW, i use about a 8 hour photo period.

What is the red tree? it was attached to my live rock, and I love it, but just want to know what it is

Also, what type of sponge?