first SPS - losing tissue already

[FishWife1]

Hi - I bought a beautiful orange monti cap the other day. I put it in my tank right near the top under a 150 W 14K HQI - I also have 2X 24" (forget the wattage - 48 I think) actinics running. I have lots of current on it.

I do have a small green cyano outbreak on the sand but nothing major. Params are alk 6, calcium 625, pH 8.2, temp 78-80. Photo period is actinics 2 hours, HQI 8 hours, actinics 2 hours. I have a few softies; Kenya tree, a couple of Ricordia and a couple of other 'shrooms, a few small pieces of xenia, a couple of medium sized zoa colonies, and the rest are lps and 2 BTAs. The xenias are right near the monti and sometimes touch it briefly.

Any ideas what could be happening? I'd like to catch this before it gets bad. I've had SPS in other tanks and never had any real luck but I thought I would try again since this is supposed to be a fairly easy on to raise.

Thanks for any advice.

Laurie

 

[Freed]

Wow, first thing you really should do is let your calcium come down quite a bit to around 400-450ppm. Your alk is a bit low but that is because your calcium is so high. You may want to do a water change but don't add any alk or calcium and see what it comes down to. The next thing is that when moving corals to a new tank even if the tank your new coral came out of may have had stronger light you ALWAYS want to start your corals down low and let them adjust to the new lighting scheme and also your water params. Also make sure you don't let any other corals touch it(xenias). Most any coral can sting another or bother it to the extent that it may just start losing tissue as in your case.