Im too stupid to understand the basics help!

[Meowwwwmix]

Had this tank running for almost 2 years (though I moved a few months ago, and upgraded to a slightly larger tank with same media and rock and such if that matters) but I just do not understand the basics!
I do weekly or bi weekly water changes of 5 gallons on a 30 gallon tank, I have bryopsis that I can't seem to get rid of on the lower portion of my rock, it hasn't spread to the upper portion that I added when I moved, when I test idk if im doing it wrong but numbers are usually around the same
Nitrate-5
Phos-0
Alk is low at 6.0 so I added red sea alk stuff today will test again tomm, and keep trying to bring that up slowly
Magnesium always is above 1600
Calcium 410

I'm assuming the algae is eating my phosphates and nitrates
I take a turkey baster to try to yoink as much algae as I can out every day but I can't take the rock all the way out to scrub.

Can't keep coral alive for the life of me, I have an elegance thats doing somewhat okay, although it looks paler then it has been.
Duncan survives since I got the tank
Any hammers or frogspawn die within 2 weeks of being in the tank
Have a galaxea thats doing fine
Had a blasto since I started the tank and it got over run with algae, and not doing so hot, I pulled it out and used peroxide to try to get the algae off and probably killed it >.>
Every time I put clove polyps in my urchin yoinks them out and they dissappear forever.
Trumpet coral I had in too much light and flow so its barely hanging on but I moved it!

Fish are all doing fine, have 2 small clowns, a watchman goby and a starry blenny.

Inverts are doing fine, handful of hermits
Snails
Tuxedo urchin
Peppermint shrimp
Emerald crab
3 sexy shrimp
And a 2 year old pistol shrimp

I feed pellets sparingly and do 1/2 cube mysis once or twice a week to try to feed the corals

Have a coral box dc return pump on about 60% (AIO tank)
Use carbon and poly fil for filtering in basket
also use a fluval powerhead for more movement
Light is a Coralbox moonv3
Which tank was doing good when it was the 13.5 until I swapped my light to try to keep the tank cooler in the summer, then started killing off everything.

Water i use aquaforest salt and distilled water
Top off manually every day with distilled

I just have nooo idea where to start to figure out what I'm doing wrong and how to fix it. I keep debating if I should just get rid of my tank but I'm super attached to my fish. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[WVReefJunkie]

Can you post a pic of your tank?

 

[Uncle99]

When moving, this causes an instability in water chemistry even when we move our rock.
Your Alk should never get 6, should not vary more than say .5dkh in 24 hours, when Alk is moving, this affects all chemistry.
Just ensure every parameter is holding fast, in the zone, stabilize phosphate and bring into the 0.03-.15ppm range.
The system will recover quickly like this.
MG 1600ppm, snails hate that, too high, 1350-1460ppm better range IMM.
Bryopsis, I had no luck with. I pulled the rock.

 

[Meowwwwmix]

Tank lights are off ill grab a pic in the morning

 

[Meowwwwmix]

When moving, this causes an instability in water chemistry even when we move our rock.
Your Alk should never get 6, should not vary more than say .5dkh in 24 hours, when Alk is moving, this affects all chemistry.
Just ensure every parameter is holding fast, in the zone, stabilize phosphate and bring into the 0.03-.15ppm range.
The system will recover quickly like this.
MG 1600ppm, snails hate that, too high, 1350-1460ppm better range IMM.
Bryopsis, I had no luck with. I pulled the rock.

I've been having all these problems since before I moved the tank. Starting around the 6ish month mark, I put new sand in when I moved and everything was doing much better then it was in my previous tank, had that one sitting too close to a window and not enough flow so ended up with massive amounts of algae and cyano, which its only algae im still fighting. If I start trying to get phosphates up, won't that make the algae problem worse? Would low nitrates and phosphates along with low alk be causing my coral to die off?

 

[Uncle99]

I've been having all these problems since before I moved the tank. Starting around the 6ish month mark, I put new sand in when I moved and everything was doing much better then it was in my previous tank, had that one sitting too close to a window and not enough flow so ended up with massive amounts of algae and cyano, which its only algae im still fighting. If I start trying to get phosphates up, won't that make the algae problem worse? Would low nitrates and phosphates along with low alk be causing my coral to die off?

I think if you have excessive algae, your phosphate is too high to begin with. Maybe your testing is inaccurate, or maybe the algae just mops it all up resulting in a zero test.
Algae can only thrive when it has light and phosphate to consume.
Unstable Alk and Salinity can cause corals to be unhappy and bad guy algaes to outcompete the good guys.
Keep those two very stable, good to dose phytoplankton if you can, this will favor the good guys and slowly, they start to outcompete the bad.

 

[Reefer911]

Might want to keep an eye on the shrimp and crab. When I put my first coral in my tank, a torch, within seconds one of my peppermint shrimp ripped off the end of a polyp and went to town on it. Same with the emerald crab but not as quickly. They all went to the crustacean hotel in the sky after an extended stay in my sump.

 

[Meowwwwmix]

I think if you have excessive algae, your phosphate is too high to begin with. Maybe your testing is inaccurate, or maybe the algae just mops it all up resulting in a zero test.
Algae can only thrive when it has light and phosphate to consume.
Unstable Alk and Salinity can cause corals to be unhappy and bad guy algaes to outcompete the good guys.
Keep those two very stable, good to dose phytoplankton if you can, this will favor the good guys and slowly, they start to outcompete the bad.

Okay that makes sense, I've started dosing alk because my old tank was small I was doing 50% water changes per week thinking that would be fine. salinity is always bang on 1.025 i top it up morning and evening.

 

[Uncle99]

Okay that makes sense, I've started dosing alk because my old tank was small I was doing 50% water changes per week thinking that would be fine. salinity is always bang on 1.025 i top it up morning and evening.

Correct, a 50% water change may in fact create unstable chemistry when we are just trying to put back what the system uses, so dosing is better as we can make smaller changes to the chemistry.
I only make a WC when nitrates/phosphate trend consistently upwards, otherwise I keep my water.

 

[Meowwwwmix]

I think if you have excessive algae, your phosphate is too high to begin with. Maybe your testing is inaccurate, or maybe the algae just mops it all up resulting in a zero test.
Algae can only thrive when it has light and phosphate to consume.
Unstable Alk and Salinity can cause corals to be unhappy and bad guy algaes to outcompete the good guys.
Keep those two very stable, good to dose phytoplankton if you can, this will favor the good guys and slowly, they start to outcompete the bad.

Heyyy update! It was my alk, I never tested my new salt. Turns out the aquaforest salt was running 5.2 dhk, so large water changes made it very very bad. I stabilized, got new salt. Threw chemipure elite in there, and got a 2nd test kit but both are saying 0 so im assuming algae is eating it up? Nitrates are at 10. Coral seem to be doing much much better with a stable 8.5 alk, went with aquaforest again which is showing 7.5 and been adding alk to make it 8.5 before water changes! No new algae seems to be growing but existing stuff is obviously still there so slowly removing it manually