Unhappy corals...

[stubbsz]

Hi.

I've noticed some fading (bleaching of some corals) and general lack luster growth in many of them recently. Some of the acros / montis are not extending their polyps that well either.

A piece of Idaho Grape that grew a lot is now a little paler and I don't see the darling blue polyps at the moment.
(6 inches below the surface, fairly direct light, flow medium)


A stuber stag, still has wonderful bright blue tips but the rest of it is losing color, it used to be a dark green/brown color and now is fading. Polyps have never been huge in my tank but are still extended a little.
(6 inches below surface, direct light, high flow)

A Alien eye chalice (pinky brown with vivid green "eyes" and growth ring ) that grew from a triangular frag into a nice circle... now has a faded greyish patch and green is less vived.
(This has low light... near bottom of tank with low flow)

Bali Green slimer. Showed growth and encrusted its base but is now going brown and not exenting polyps as much.
(High light, high flow)

Superman Monti. Polyps there but not as extended as they used to be. Growth has stopped.
(high light, medium high flow)

Cancy cane. Completely retracted all the time... tried to find the lowest flow I can...feeding tenticals at night but miserabble in the day. This one has darkened a lot where as other corals in my tank have faded a lot.

Various colonys of pagoda. Very little poylp extention. They have been in the tank a long time, two colonys for maybe 6 years. Used to have really big polyp extention.

Corals doing fine. Purple digi, green digi, Pocilliopora (a few), Orange cap, green caps, an acro or two. Various small zoo colony's, green paly's (a little out of control) Pom-Pom xenias everywhere. Colts


Salinity 1.0025
ph. 8.2 - 8.4
Alk 2.9 meq/L (145 ppm on my laMotte kit)
CA 450
Nitrates 0
Phosphates 0

No other kits.

I run Carbon/pura-complete through a phosban reactor.
I have smallish fuge with Cheato.

I dose C Balance A/B. Kalk via auto-topoff and have a CA reactor (which doesn't do a good enough job, hence the c-balance) I'm gathering the ingredients to do the Randy-home-brew Alk/CA/Mag recipes but not started that and won't til I understand my issue.

Lights
2*250 DE 14K phoenix. Replaced 6 weeks ago.. they were 7 months old.
100g tank. Forget dims but pretty standard??

6060 Tunze, 6080 Tunze..not really a chaotic flow.

I have a shallow Sand Bed. I don't clean it much but looks clean enough. My snails seem happy... keep laying eggs. Fish, of which I have very few all seem happy although my chromis looks a bit beaten up after his wild ride to the sump last week.

I don't overfeed fish and I don't feed my corals much. I keep meaning to give them some roti-feast when the lights go off but I've not done in very regularly lately.... I never used to feed at all.


HELP. Distinct feeling that things are going down hill and expecting other corals to get unhappy.

-Adrian

 

[SnowManSnow]

From my pt of view the only variable you have in the mix is your change of lighiting. Did you only change bulbs, or did you change kelvin rating and or wattage?

I had this issue recently with my tank. I had recently upgraded my lighting, which in turn caused my tank temp to be a little higher than normal. Over a period of a month or so things started to digress, much like you have described. I raised the light..added a fan, and now things look great.

If it isn't your change in light, or your temp I would follow normal trouble shooting protocol.

#1 up your water change frequency for a few weeks
#2 Clean substrate when you do the changes (my opion, but it has worked for me)
#3 If you think it may be your lighting you may consider reducing photoperiod for a few weeks, and gradually edging it back up.

Hope things turn around for you.

B

 

[stubbsz]

Thanks B,

My lighting was a replacement only. No change in anything except new bulbs vs 7 month old bulbs.

1) I will be doing water change this weekend.. might make it bigger than normal... maybe 20%.

2) Substrate.... yeah, I'll do some of the substrate... maybe do more areas on subsequent water changes.

3) If it's lighting... really don't know... maybe.... hoping others will chime in.

I was just reading a Eric B thread on a sponsers forum and someone with sps issues was told he was badly underfeeding his tank. I'm seriously considering upping the feeding as I feed very little.

Another possible issue my last couple of water changes have been with Reef Crystals where most of the tank water will be IO. Can't beleive that this would be a factor though but the timing is interesting.

-Adrian

 

[Anonymous]

This is jsut an observation, so treat it for what it is worth.

Corals just simply do not like changes. No changes. I don't care what it is that I do in my tank, if I leave it alone and don't mess with it as much as possible, my corals are happy as.. well, clams.

Changing salt mix is exactly the kinda thing I would expect to make differences in coloration but not health. So I would put $$ on that being your issue. Give them some time to adapt (about a month) and see if your colors don't come back.

underfeeding? I feed the fish once a day IF that and I never feed my corals. Now I do keep a "dirtier" system than most people do, but my corals are growing like mad and my fish are still fat and happy. I am even keeping a mandarin (5 months so far) and a copper banded butterfly (1 month so far) I also have a Maxima Clam that has been in the tank for more than 1 year and is doing awesome.

 

[stubbsz]

This is jsut an observation, so treat it for what it is worth.

Changing salt mix is exactly the kinda thing I would expect to make differences in coloration but not health. So I would put $$ on that being your issue. Give them some time to adapt (about a month) and see if your colors don't come back.

underfeeding? I feed the fish once a day IF that and I never feed my corals. Now I do keep a "dirtier" system than most people do, but my corals are growing like mad and my fish are still fat and happy. I am even keeping a mandarin (5 months so far) and a copper banded butterfly (1 month so far) I also have a Maxima Clam that has been in the tank for more than 1 year and is doing awesome.

But the thing about the Salt mix is that with only a couple of changes under my belt, so the tank is probably 80% IO still and the salt mixes are from the same people so my 20% reef crystals is probably not that much different from IO.... but it is the only "change".

I only have 4 fish in a 100g and we're talking 3 small fish and a yellow tang. I'm really stingy... so I feel my tank has become cleaner recently as I've not been feeding the coral.... so I guess that is another change?

Aaaa, what to do.

 

[Old Man Of The Sea]

Like cknowlto had mention, that corals not like changes> The thing with corals are is that when we need to change the bulbs, we not change all them in a one shot deal. Like when my tanks are finally with live stock, my MH bulbs will be changed one every two weeks until ever bulbs whatever if MH or VHO. Again as cknowlto said, this is just an observation, so treat it for what its worth>

 

[Anonymous]

This is jsut an observation, so treat it for what it is worth.

Changing salt mix is exactly the kinda thing I would expect to make differences in coloration but not health. So I would put $$ on that being your issue. Give them some time to adapt (about a month) and see if your colors don't come back.

underfeeding? I feed the fish once a day IF that and I never feed my corals. Now I do keep a "dirtier" system than most people do, but my corals are growing like mad and my fish are still fat and happy. I am even keeping a mandarin (5 months so far) and a copper banded butterfly (1 month so far) I also have a Maxima Clam that has been in the tank for more than 1 year and is doing awesome.

But the thing about the Salt mix is that with only a couple of changes under my belt, so the tank is probably 80% IO still and the salt mixes are from the same people so my 20% reef crystals is probably not that much different from IO.... but it is the only "change".

I only have 4 fish in a 100g and we're talking 3 small fish and a yellow tang. I'm really stingy... so I feel my tank has become cleaner recently as I've not been feeding the coral.... so I guess that is another change?

Aaaa, what to do.

Again, this is just my opinion, but unless you see coral deaths or tissue recession... I say do Nothing. Continue doing what you are doing (your husbandry habits look good to me) and let your tank get settled into the new salt. IMO the absolute worst thing you can do is make a drastic change fo fix another stress related issue.

Also, Air-->humans :: Water-->Fish/Corals

Making a 20% change in your air contents would probably make a significant difference to you.

 

[stubbsz]

Thanks for the inputs guys. I've been in the game long enough to have the "slow change is better than fast change gene". Hopefully, everything will recover, I'll carry on with good husbandry.


-Adrian

 

[rbursek]

FWIW, I and my buddy do 20-25% water changes every 10-14 days with RC which is slightly better for trace elements the IO, and we always see the corals perk up, espeicially the mushrooms. Actually I see a regression in the mushrooms just before a water change.

 

[stubbsz]

The difference between a reef tank and a money shreder is the shreder will trip the GFI

Nice quote; something to think about with my entire arm in the tank next time I clean the front....

Your comment about RC being IO with better trace elements was what I understood about RC. Hence, I didn't think that the salt change could be the issue... but who knows.

I did find one issue doing some tests yesterday. I noticed my in-tank salinity was a lower that I thought. 1.0023 rather than 1.0025. I don't know how this got lower or how fast but I guess if it happened in a hurry then it could be my "unknown change" here. I'll be very gradually bringing it back up and will keep an eye on my salinity a bit closer going forward.