New frag feeding and now dying ????

[New to reef]

So I've had my frags in the tank for a week now. Last night I feed the coral using a Baster with zooplankton and now my coral are looking really bad. Few of them are losing color and my brain coral I'm sure is dead. What did I do wrong ? Watching YouTube and that's how they all show to do it. Did I kill them. The tank is new and all of the water chemistry looks good.

[thegrun]

I suspect something other than the feeding is going on. Corals will close up after they are fed to digest the food, could that be happening? Could the baster had any soap or other contaminates in it? As always please list your water parameters, "water chemistry looks good" does little to help us figure out your issue.

[New to reef]

The tank is new... 2 weeks old, the live rock was in another tank that I had. I just transferred the rock to new tank. I've got a diy sump tank with all new parts. New protein skimmer, bio balls filters and I gotta add some substrate. Tomorrow I'll check the water chemistry and let you know what they are. But as for now the only thing that has happened is the feeding. I do know that the bottle says to add the zooplankton to the water via cap full. I don't think that there are any critters in the live rock due to the old tank wasn't really taken care of and all life parished. I checked the water the same day I fed the coral and all was right. Anyhow I'll post more tomorrow when I do my checks.

[Jone]

you can run some carbon in a reactor to possibly filter out some contaminants from the new tank and equipment..just a thought of your system being new...or a poly filter and see whats possibly in the water,,regardless youll end up running carbon it sounds like..maybe a param is off..or a light intensity issue ??

[ryeguyy84]

How exactly was the last tank not taken care of? If the tank is a week old with bad rock what's your ammonia level?

[leviburns89]

"Tank 2 weeks old"

Probably ammonia, or nitrates. Both are toxic.

A tank should be allowed to fully cycle for at least a month to allow beneficial bacteria to populate that way it can break down the excess food.

Odds are, you are dumping in copious amounts of ammonia via feeding, and the nitrogen cycle hasn't even begun yet, thus you are poisoning your tank.

The stickies in this forum are super helpful.

A water change may help, but you can't avoid the necessity of time.

[CStrickland]

It could be new tank issues with ammonia/nitrogens, the zooplankton mixes can be very rich so if you're cranking a lot into a new tank, it could cause a spike.

But also, it happens sometimes where someone really squirts the food right into the mouth of an lps, and angers it. Idk if that's cause the foods a little sour cause it thawed on the truck to the lps and got some ammonia and acid going then refroze, or its cold, or what. But I like to shut off the pumps and let the food fall from a turkey baster above the coral.

We don't have much to go on with "I did it like YouTube" and "my params are good"
Welcome to the forum, you'll be on the right track in no time :)

[TatorTaco]

Unfortunately, I think your frags are dead or will die soon. The stickies at the top provide a wealth of information.

Without properly going through the nitrogen cycle, you're gonna have a bad time and end up where you are now - with dead or dieing livestock. Since you're tank is only 2 weeks old, we don't even need to know your parameters...they'll all be off the chart.

Simply read the stickies and leave the existing corals in their for your ammonia source since the nitrogen cycle is now started.