chips flesh peeled away...

[WickedReefer]

like the title says I had a chips acro frag that did great for a few months. it started to encrust and the tentacles was all out too. then all of a sudden it just stop having its tentacles out and over night the flesh just peeled away leaving its skeleton. I'm wondering what could happen to it. all my other acros are doing great. i did have a 175 watt version of the aquactinics on there before but slowly cut back the lighting by 5 hours and I usually ran it from 9am-7pm when the 175watts were on there.

Parameters:
tank: 75 gal
Light: Aquactinics (2) 400 watt mh (2) 54 watt t-5
phos: nearly zero
calcium: 460
alk: 6 dkh
nitrate: 5.0

 

[sps1-2-b]

I had a chips acro colony rtn on me too. All other sps are fine. Wondering if the chips just does well for a while then perish. Mine was prolly a good year and a half b4 it rtn. Decent sized colony too.

 

[WickedReefer]

yea I wonder about that the place I got it has a pretty big colony but never had its tentacles out and I think they have for a few years now.

 

[Paulairduck]

alk is a little low, its ok if it remains stable but if you get a drop corals will get stressed

 

[Reef Bass]

If I understand your posting correctly, it seems like you dialed back your lighting and one of your sps wasn't ok with that. Of course, there could be numerous other causes such as water chemistry and / or pests.

 

[mark728]

Slowly get your alk up to 9 or 10 dkh then you should be fine 6 dkh is to low for a reef tank , it will take some time to recover but it will .

 

[WickedReefer]

If I understand your posting correctly, it seems like you dialed back your lighting and one of your sps wasn't ok with that. Of course, there could be numerous other causes such as water chemistry and / or pests.

yea I had it on 175 watts then got a 400watt so I cut back the lighting so it won't suffer from too much intensity at one time. yea I know the dkh is a bit low and working on it, but should the rest of my sps be hurting too??? they are doing fine.

 

[Reef Bass]

Ah, I didn't fully understand what you had posted. Thanks for clarifying. It does sound like perhaps Chips was more sensitive to the lighting change than your other sps. If the rest of them are still looking good (and should soon be looking even better!), I wouldn't be too concerned.

I do think it was a good idea to attempt to adjust the tank to your new lighting. Another way besides starting with a much shorter photoperiod would be to start with the lights higher up off the tank, with a slightly shorter photoperiod, say 2 hours less instead of 5. I run my 400w MHs 10 hours a day and my corals have awesome color.

 

[mark728]

This could be the start of problems some corals will start to stress before others but that alk being so low would make me nervous and throw a lighting change into the mix ,that will cause extra stress on the corals .just my 2 cents

 

[WickedReefer]

oh ok...well I'm now working on my alk and so far with the 400watts running for over 10 hours all my stuff are doing great. I'll just try another chips later in the future. Thanks everyone.