came home today and noticed that all my sps are pale but not dead , colors are gone but still can see polyps, what hell can couse this??? all other lps and clam are doing fine, parameters, sal 1.024,ph 8.02 ,cal 420 ,alk 9 .mag950,
thank is crashing i think , please help
- Thread starter tangmaniac
- Start date
- Location
- Far Rockaway
Mag is low whats the temp at. And what your NO3 and NO4 at that could be your problem
- Location
- Far Rockaway
I dont think the mag but what are your nitrates at that can cause your problem
michael Jack
Advanced Reefer
- Location
- Long island
mag will do it to if its been that low for any length of time
- Location
- Far Rockaway
What test kit are you using . And you can only raise you mag 100ppm a day ..
its not mag, that has no effect on the corals directly and i havnt used mag in 5 years directly, you add it when you do water changes without even knowing it. it is the temperature, you said that it is 78 and steady but that is today, what about the other day when we got to 98 degrees or during the night, i know if i leave my fan on it cools down my tank too much. the drastic flux in temp changes causes corals to bleach which is the loss of the colors(release of algea in corals) and the polys stay outtrying to recover. the only thing to help save bleaching coals is cool the tank down and shade the corals unfortunately when sps bleach they dont last much longer due to their high light needs
- Location
- New York
Water change will help. Good luck.
- Location
- Union Square, NY
While it is unlikely that low mag would cause such a sudden change in coral color and growth, the notion that it has no effect on corals is simply not correct. You do need to test for Mg regularly and if necessary add a supplement. I recently had a problem with Mg where all my levels were fine but my corals were looking horrible, no color, sudden deaths, etc. I checked my Mg, which I hadn't done in a month or so and found that it was around 1000. I immediately started adding around 300ml ESV Mg per day (tank is 120g) until the level returned to normal (I am at around 1290 today).
As it turned out, my batch of IO salt seems to be missing a large percentage of Mg, so I've decided to go to ESV salt permanently.
This is not the first time I have been stung by a problem with low Mg, the last time was 10 years ago and I was having similar problems. I had a friend come over to my apartment and showed him how "white" the corals looked (they were not bleached, they had just lost a lot of their pop) and he instantly said that I had an Mg problem.
So I would immediately work on getting your Mg higher and try to determine why it got so low to begin with, the most likely culprit is the salt mix as corals don't take in Mg unless your Ca/Alk levels are off.
One final note, if you do dose Mg in large amounts you may notice that your snails act funny as if they are a little drunk. An expert recently told me that Mg is used to anesthetize gastropods so this behavior is normal and will pass after an hour or so.
i will try to bring my mag higher i use reefcristals salt never had problem with that brand , i hope that does bring colors back,
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