encrusting monti color - Help!

1DeR9_3Hy

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DSCN1617.jpg


I have this piece of poker star monti that just wont color up! I have had it for about 3 months, its encrusted the plug and started growing off the plug...but i cant get it to regain any color.

I moved it to its current location in the semi-shaded area on the bottom of the tank about 2 weeks ago. Before then it was about 8" below the surface below 4 T5 HO's.

Give it more time?
 
I have a red cap, and a green cap. Both are lighter in color, but nothing like this. The "red" cap is more pink, and the "green" cap which is more neon green than dark green.

See FTS:

DSCN1613.jpg
 
Do you have any fish in there or do you feed your reef? To me it looks low nutrients.IMO. I had a cap given to me that was so white I didn't know which side to glue. I picked one and a month or so later I had a green with purple rim cap. Good luck.
 
Had a 6 line that cleaned up the flat worms, but he is MIA...

I dont add anything to the tank, and i do 5 gallon wc's weekly. I am having some algae issues at the moment (i suspect the 6 line is to blame...), but before then the tank was spotless for months.

A lfs has some baby clowns (.75"), i might get two of them for the tank and trade them in when they grow out.
 
I would say it is a lack of nutrients, or that you had it under too much light. How long was it 8" under the light? Did it bleach out quickly when it was that close to the light?

So, other than the water changes, you are not feeding anything to the tank?
 
That's bleached and I don't think it has anything to do with nutrients. Too close to the lights and my guess is you didn't slowly acclimate it to those light levels. If it recovers it'll probably take a while.
 
I would say it is a lack of nutrients, or that you had it under too much light. How long was it 8" under the light? Did it bleach out quickly when it was that close to the light?

So, other than the water changes, you are not feeding anything to the tank?

Nope, no feeding. Tank looked great for about 9 months, then it started getting dull (sounds like ULNS).

It was under 8" for around 3 months, i just moved it. It was acclimated over a week, but all did was put it on the bottom and reduce the photo period then bring the time up over the week. Probably not long enough huh?

It took about a month to look like it does here, and thats where it has stayed.
 
It does look bleached out but I had a monti cap that was about the same distance from the surface of the water, but the lights were only about 3-4" from the water's surface. 4 bulb T5 setup as well.

The only "acclimation" that coral had gotten was going from 6 to 7 to 8 then finally to 10 hrs of light a week.

You said it's still growing? Maybe you've created the first albino monti.
 
Just to clarify, it was bleached when it was 8" below the lights, or after you moved it lower?

It bleached when it was 8" under the lights. He moved it down there to see if it would help.

This^^^

I fragged it off a larger chunk in my frag tank, then brought it into work the next morning. All the growth you can see on the plug was achieved when it was 8" below the surface. I kept waiting for it too color up, and it kept growing. I finally gave up on waiting after 3 months, and decided it must be under too much light, thats when it went to the cave.

If it colors up much, ill post another pic.
 
Might seem like a strange question- but did/how did you acclimate it? How different is the lighting & the water parameters between the two tanks?

I just got 4 monti caps and 2 other corals & I drip lined them & put them about 8" from the surface on a 4x54w T5 fixture about 4" off the water. They came from a tank with a 8 bulb T5 fixture.

All of them but one seem to be fine. The one started loosing color so I moved it down.
 
I have yet to see a coral that has bleached from not feeding. You haven't even found out his water parameters are yet and you are telling him to feed his tanks
 
Can you tell us what your parameters are? Phosphate, nitrate, PH, KH,calcium, temperature.
What size tank is that, are you running skimmerless? Do you run carbon in the filter?

Waffleman
 
Might seem like a strange question- but did/how did you acclimate it? How different is the lighting & the water parameters between the two tanks?

I just got 4 monti caps and 2 other corals & I drip lined them & put them about 8" from the surface on a 4x54w T5 fixture about 4" off the water. They came from a tank with a 8 bulb T5 fixture.

All of them but one seem to be fine. The one started loosing color so I moved it down.

They came from a 8" deep frag tank, where they were about 4" below the surface on a rack. Above them were T5's as well.

Can you tell us what your parameters are? Phosphate, nitrate, PH, KH,calcium, temperature.
What size tank is that, are you running skimmerless? Do you run carbon in the filter?

Waffleman

looking at the picture again, there seems to be a lack of coralline algae. How long has this tank been running?

Waffleman

Params:

0

lol...no really, they are all 0. I do big water changes every week, and have nothing but atrea's and nassarius snails and sessile inverts. Its really just a glorified frag tank on my desk.

s.g: 1.026
pH: 8.0-8.1
temp: 78-81 (daily is about 1 degree swing, but the weekends the heat is turned down so it settles down to around 78 for the weekend...the above range is over 4 days including a weekend)
0 TDS make up water, 0 TDS top off water

Cal and alk are both dosed daily @ 10 ml/day. Between the big water changes and the daily additions cal/alk/mag are all kept up quite well. The tank is 15 gallons (24*12*12).

Coraline looks non existent because i scrape it off the glass. The left rock is about a month old, but the right rock is about 18 months old and covered in a few kinds of coraline. All growing pretty quick.

No skimmer, i run GFO and carbon in the hang on filter. That is changed out every month, but ive been leaving the GFO for every 2 months because its not getting exhausted in the 1 month time span.

Im willing to bet i was just cooking it...i was doubting the 4 T5's output, but evidently i was wrong.

I came in this morning and the pavona maldensis (in FTS, bottom left orange coral) is missing a 1/8" circle section of tissue.....damn it. I love that stuff and finally found some! I am turning the lights off for a few days in hopes that it is/was light shocked as well and that this will stop the stn. I cant really frag it because its so small and also because of the location of the tissue necrosis.
 
Cal and alk are both dosed daily @ 10 ml/day. Between the big water changes and the daily additions cal/alk/mag are all kept up quite well. The tank is 15 gallons (24*12*12).

How do you know? what is quite well? With the amount of water changes and the small amount of small corals, the calcium depletion should be negligible. Don't add stuff if you are not testing for it.

Coraline looks non existent because i scrape it off the glass. The left rock is about a month old, but the right rock is about 18 months old and covered in a few kinds of coraline. All growing pretty quick.
Plastic is the first thing that will get covered. I don't see any on the filter tube or on the Koralia.

Something is way off balance, there are some other corals in your tank that don't look so hot imo. Hence more stuff is dying. Maybe you do need to add a small fish or 2...

I do have to say that you have a lot of light for that small tank, but that depends on the efficiency of the reflectors you have. What fixture are you using?

Sorry if this post comes over as a bit harsh but I'm trying to help and want to understand the full system you are running.

Waffleman
 
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