Upgrade gone bad, fish ok but corals in bad shape

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Hi,

I had a 1.2m x 450, 750 tank. Wife bough me a 1.8m x 500 x650 for my birthday. So I moved the tanks around and kept the sump and refugium as is to maintain filtration. Started well for first 2 weeks then all the corals closed up. No fish issues, but starfish is gone and sea urchin seems on its way. All corals not doing well at all. Here is the specifics..

main tank 1.8m x 500 x 650.
sump 1.0m x 320 x 500
refugium 900 x 400x 500

1 x 5500l/h up pump
1 x 2500l/h up pump (Connected to 10Watt UV)
2x Skimmers (Queen and Prizim)
2 x Wave Makers (SunSun 3000l/h)
4 x 80Watt T5's
2 x 39Watt T5's

Ph 8.1
KH 9
Calcium 450
Magnesium 1600
Salinity 1.022
Temp 25
Phos =0
Nitrite =0
Nitrate = Of the scale.

Corals:
Frog spawn
Torch
Hammer
Various Mushrooms
Candy canes
Bubble
Star Pollyp

Have done 100l water changes 4 times from last week Saturday. One chamber in the sump was filled with bio rings and used allot of bio balls in the other 2 chambers. So I have removed half the bio balls Wednesday, and removed half the bio rings today and cleaned the middle chamber and added 2 kg of Seachem Pond matrix to the 1st chamber and replaced 1 lair of bio rings in the second chamber and moved 4 bags to the 3rd chamber to try and spread the rings so that muk do not build up again. I have been adding Special blend daily and have been adding Red Sea No3PO4-x daily for the last 12 days. I also moved the corals to the refugium and disconnected it form the main tank, this unfortunately did not help. I also added a nitrate reactor with sea chem denitrate stones in it, this has been running since yesterday.

Here are my questions,

1 How long will the 2kg Matrix take to be affective as I would like to remove more bio balls and bio rings? (less in the sump, so easier to clean going forward) The 2kg treats 800l
2 How long will the de nitrate reactor take to be affective?
3 Do I move the corals back to the main tank as I thing the issue is in the refugium as well?
4 Any ideas to speed the posses up?


Any advise are welcome.

Juan
 
Salinity is bit low.you must push it up to 0.025.

How much nopox are you dosing?I think the skimmers you are using are way too small for that size system to be honest..that coupled with the nopox dosing could be causing issues.

Any pics of tank and sump?
 
Alot of variables involved here which could be causing problems.you dosing bacteria but also running uv. Is your water cloudy?
 
Hi,

I am dosing 20ml nopox, (3ml per 100l as per instructions). Tank is about 480l + sump is about 50l and refugium is about 140l. +-650l total. I have a Boyu skimmer as well but that is running in refugium at the moment which is disconnected. According to the specs. Queen skimmer =200l, Prizm =150l and Boyu =200l, which = 550l. I was hoping the 3 of them would do the job. Was planning next year to upgrade the skimmer. This upgrade has seen many $$$ disappearing...

Since I started cleaning up the sump it has become cloudy. There was a lot of build-up in the middle chamber which I cleaned, suspect this was my problem. I have switched the UV off now. thx

The sump and refugium are in the garage (back to back with the tank in the house).
 
And your skimmers are undersized. Normally your skimmer should be rated for twice your total volume.

And those skimmers aren't good. They don't work well. You're gonna need a bigger, better skimmer.
 
I have 1 problem. Sump only have space for 310x310 foot print. Saw a Reeftek 2 that will fit. States it can handel 600l setup. My setup without any LR is 640l. I have about 60kg of live rock in main tank and about 20kg in refuguim. How is the Reeftek skimmers?
 
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