I stripped the flesh off part of my green slimer by placing it too close to an MP40, so it's possible. Can you get a pick of the bird so we can see the flesh loss. It's just odd your SPS continue to suffer odd bouts of sickness.
You used all reef safe silicone when putting things together, right? Parts and materials used while building the sump and plumbing were all reviewed?
I did get a picture of the birdsnest about 1/2 way to dead back when you asked about it. I just don't have it loaded up where I can post it yet and I only have a few spare minutes to pop in and update things. But now, the seri is pretty much a goner :sad2:
I still have no clue what killed it. It was in the same location (1/2 way down, partially shaded, no direct flow) it had been when it was perfectly happy looking. Alk and Ca have been stable. Mg was brought into line slowly over 2 weeks and has remained stable testing between 1280 and 1320 since I hit that level. The lighting was lowered back when we all discussed it and has remained at the same levels since.
Really the only changes were improving Mg levels and the new powerheads.
As for parts and materials. The tank, sump, equipment, hoses, zip ties, plastic hose clamps, and stuff were purchased brand new when I started the system. So unless the manufacturers used non-safe silicone or something, we should be all good there. We did re-use our 75 gallon freshwater tank that turned into our fuge. But that was emptied, cleaned, stored dry for months. Then was rinsed and went through the full 5 day fresh water leak test before draining and filling the system.
But all good thoughts for me to check on :thumbsup: Best to double check and eliminate anything that could be a possible problem.
How's everything coming along Troub? Hope things are better :thumbsup:
I have my seri in really really high flow (a foot away, but directly in front of a mp40), its fine. However, I don't know how a colony that's already under stress, will react to flow. Sorry not much help there
.
Thanks for checking in Bello. :bounce3: Things are better and worse all at the same time. LOL :facepalm: As I mentioned, our seri that seemed to be doing great is now a nice pretty white toothpick.
The orange digi, which was showing GREAT signs of improvement has gone the way of the seri. I don't get that at all. It had great polyp extension (on the parts that were still hanging on). Which we hadn't seen for a long time. And then the darker skin started to kill off green algae on the skeleton and grow between those polyps. Then after about a month of continually looking better, it was all gone one morning after looking great the night before.
And that's the same thing I saw with the candy cane trumpet that was regrowing. It was looking great with tons of improvement... then I come home from work one day and all of the new tissue is gone on 1/2 of the polyps that were recovering. The other half still seem to be the same and slowly expanding.
It seems everything likes to take one last glorious month or two long breath and then die overnight. :mad2:
But at the same time we have some other successes. Our oddly fragged blastos have been growing new tissue nicely and are expanding and showing new growth where the tissue was cut. The big polyp is almost back to completely round with it's spikey edge look around the entire polyp. Our other single blasto polyp has been growing slowly and definitely gotten bigger. :thumbsup:
AND our hammer has double in sized when it is expanded during the day. I noticed recently that the hammer has developed a second mouth. So I'm looking forward to watching that polyp split over time.
Another fun discovery happened during moon-light hours. I caught a glimpse of some neon orange down near the sandbed on a rock. It's that orange Ric that was bleaching and shrinking no matter where it got placed. We had moved it over to this rock and it vanished. I thought it melted when we decided to try more direct light at the bottom of the tank (because being under an overhang, it continued to bleach and shrink). Looks like it crawled down into the rock and has now moved back out to rock/sand boarder. It is no longer as white and small as it was when it vanished. I wouldn't say it's healthy and thriving. But I wouldn't say it's bleached and withering away anymore either. Looks bigger and meatier and now has a soft pale orange coloration with a bit darker center.
Back when I thought things were going well with the Seri and orange Digi. I picked up a $20 pink monti-cap because I thought all was good and stable for 3 months there. Well, it started to bleach slightly after a week or two. Even though it was under an overhang about 2/3s down the tank. So I grabbed it and shoved it into the sandbed. It gets direct light, but almost buried into the sand. I haven't decided, but last night it seemed that the color had stopped fading and gotten a deeper color. Although maybe that is it's last breath like the others? I'm hoping not though. I saw PE on it this morning before leaving for work.
We have a PAR meter rental on its way right now. So I should get some PAR readings for my lighting very soon!!! :bounce3: That may answer lots of our questions. At this point, I'm guessing I've just been blasting my tank with way to much light. I've pretty much put off adding anything at all until I get things figured out and the stuff I have looks good.
We have been running a round of QT on a new fish to add though. I think we decided to avoid wrasses since we have the mandarin. And I'm going to work on getting my female mandy nice and fat before adding a male. So in place of a wrasse, we picked up a Royal Gramma to add in as a single fish and a nice splash of purple. So far the fish has appeared perfectly healthy going through hypo. No issues at all yet. I just started a Prazi-Pro treatment on it. At the end of next weekend, we should be ready to start raising the SG up to transfer to the DT.
So I guess I've just been dragging my feet waiting to see what happened to everything in the tank while the RG went through QT and we waited on the PAR rental. The general rule of thumb appears to be about 1/3rd of our corals love our tank. But our fish, shrimp, conchs, snails are all enjoying things!
I'm still a bit frustrated, but I guess you take the bad with the good. I tend to try and focus on the things that are growing to make myself feel better about the things that are dying in the same conditions. . .
But outside of reef keeping, life has been going pretty well! So I have a good feeling about all this. Because if everything else in life is getting better, my reef can't be far behind!
.
