Help with diagnosis

[Reefinabox]

I have had this coral for 2-3 weeks. It has been in the same spot high in the tank for the last week or so. In the last day it started exhibiting white tips. I have included pictures. Sorry they are blurry but I was hand holding the camera just trying to snap a few quick shots. Is this just bleaching from too much light? I am new to SPS so I want to catch any problems as early as possible. Thanks in advance for the help!

Tank details as follows:

34 gallon Solana - running for 2 years
250w Phoenix 14k 12" from water surface, bulb 1 month old
MP10 for flow
Phosphates - 0
No3 - <5
Calc - 450
Alk - 8 dkH
Mag - 1620

 

[triguy]

I'm by no means an expert, but you Mg seems high. I've also heard of alk burn causing something like this. Are you also sure it isn't new growth?

 

[joker295]

it doesnt look like new growth.. it looks like the tips are burning.. and mag is high..

 

[Reefinabox]

Yeah I knew the Mag was a little high. Got it down to 1500 with a water change today. I doubt it is new growth unless growth can basically explode in less than 24 hours. Also the white polyps that were on the tips had been getting good extension but now are nowhere to be found.

 

[SPSEMPIRE]

are you dosing anything?

Running any gfo or other phosphate binding media? If so, turn it off for a week or so.

 

[Reefinabox]

Dosing 2 part, top off with Kalk, running chemipure elite. I have been dosing manually until I can get pumps and timers.

 

[Gyr]

I've heard high ALK can burn tips, but at 8, I doubt that is the cause--I guess it depends on how 'ultra low' an ULN system is. What's your pH run?

You've already fixed the high Mg, but I don't know if that would burn tips or not. I biffed the calculation for raising my Mg once and overshot my goal by a couple hundred, got the Mg up to 1600-1650 range. I got it back down gradually over the following week and my SPS didn't seem to suffer any problems. Maybe a longer exposure to the high Mg would have.

I am of the opinion that moving the coral down/to a lower light intensity part of the tank for a while would be advisable.

Good luck, that's a nice looking specimen.

 

[Reefinabox]

pH goes from a low of 7.8 right before lights on up to a high of 8.2 right before lights out. I have moved it down about as low as I can in the tank. I have been dosing manually for a while, but maybe the past couple days have irritated it. I would guess that it is alk burn given I have been dosing right on the edge of safe trying to maintain and slightly raise the level. For some reason my alk drops a little over 1 dkH in 24 hours. I have a very minimal load of this acro, a small birdsnest, leather and a small 2 eye chalice. I also have 1 large BTA and 2 smaller BTAs that spawned from it. Not sure what would be pulling the alk down like that. I am picking up an Apex on Friday and hopefully getting dosing pumps as well so I can quit trying to "carefully" dump 2 part into my tank.

 

[Gyr]

Apex and dosing pumps would be nice. In the meantime, if you have an Automatic Top Off system, you could do it that way. I have determined how much alk my tank 'consumes' per day and how much RODI gets added per day by my ATO system and then I asked my 9 year old to do the math for me to figure out how much alk solution to add per gallon of RODI ATO water. That way my daily dose of alk gets spread out (and in a more dilute concentration) over the course of the day instead of dumping the whole volume into the sump at once.
That technique seemed to help stabilize my day/night pH swings a little as well, as alk is getting added during the night via the ATO system. Not as good as an Apex, I'm sure, but it'll be a while before I can budget one of those into my system.