So... I'm not sure if this has anything to do with anything, but I took 71xlch's advice, went back to basics, and am now dosing equal amounts of a balanced alk a calcium supplement. I thought I'd see a massive spike in my calcium levels, but I didn't. In fact, things started growing so fast I've had to up my dosing rate of both by 20 mL/day a week for the last three weeks.
no new plasias have formed on my corals since I did this, and in fact... my worst hit colony (the one pictured on the first page) has branched off several brand new, completely healthy looking growth tips from one of the worst branches. My pink lemonade, which had one tip out of 20 swell up like a balloon a couple of days before I changed my dosing regimen, has returned to normal.
This is by no means a smoking bullet, and my 'Big three' levels were never really that much out of balance. However, I'm adding huge volumes of alk and calcium supplement to my tank relative to its size, and I was adding twice as much alk supplement per day as calcium supplement for the better part of a year. This means I was also adding twice as much sodium to the tank as chloride. Go figure things would only start improving when I'd do 3 or 4 large water changes in a row. It's not something we have a test for (sodium/chloride balance), but has anyone else experiencing this examined their dosing regimen? Do we know what the chemical consequences of adding twice as much sodium as chloride might be? Or what that might do to a coral?
