This is not a quick question, so let me start by explaining what has been going on with my tank.
I've had what I believe is a tri-colour acro in my tank for a number of years. It has grown like a week and been fragged many times over the years. The main piece was near the top of the tank and about a foot in size and almost growing out of the tank.
About 2 months ago my return pump broke and it took a while for my LFS to get a replacement pump installed. I was able to keep flow in the tank, but the water level was down exposing part of the coral to my lights and as a result the top of it bleached, but otherwise was still doing well.
Just after the pump got fixed the solenoid on my CA reactor broke, and the first replacement didn't work. I was dosing buffer and calcium but my levels did drop but everything was still alive.
After finally getting my reactor fixed and my alk and calcium levels stable (a little on the low side of where I wanted them but was more concerned about stability) I decided to finally frag the tricolour last weekend to cut out the dead part, and cut it back so it wasn't blocking the flow of water at the top of my tank.
After being away for a few days, I came back yesterday to see 2/3rds of the tricolour had turned white, as well as one branch of a milli next to it. Everything else in the tank is fine and everything was working fine on my tank while I was gone (I use a Aquatronica controller I can monitor things with while I'm away).
This morning I fragged off the branches that were still in good shape. I couldn't remove all the dead parts since it was so encrusted to a large rock, so I removed the entire rock, and luckily the reef didn't collapse when doing so.
I'm not that concerned about saving the tricolor since I have so much of it, and absent this it has done very well in my tank
Thus the questions I have are as follows:
Any idea what I did wrong? I presume I cut it back too much? In looking at the tricolour where it is white it almost looks like new white growth over top of the coral
What do I do with the rock I took out? For now I'm putting it in a Rubbermaid garbage can with salt water and a power head, but no lights.(its too big to fit in my frag tank) I would like to eventually get the rock back in my tank, and not cure it again. I have another garbage can of live rock curing with flow and a heater that I was going to sell (the pieces aren't as large or nice as this rock) but figured I would keep them separate to isolate the other pieces from whatever happened to this piece.
I've had what I believe is a tri-colour acro in my tank for a number of years. It has grown like a week and been fragged many times over the years. The main piece was near the top of the tank and about a foot in size and almost growing out of the tank.
About 2 months ago my return pump broke and it took a while for my LFS to get a replacement pump installed. I was able to keep flow in the tank, but the water level was down exposing part of the coral to my lights and as a result the top of it bleached, but otherwise was still doing well.
Just after the pump got fixed the solenoid on my CA reactor broke, and the first replacement didn't work. I was dosing buffer and calcium but my levels did drop but everything was still alive.
After finally getting my reactor fixed and my alk and calcium levels stable (a little on the low side of where I wanted them but was more concerned about stability) I decided to finally frag the tricolour last weekend to cut out the dead part, and cut it back so it wasn't blocking the flow of water at the top of my tank.
After being away for a few days, I came back yesterday to see 2/3rds of the tricolour had turned white, as well as one branch of a milli next to it. Everything else in the tank is fine and everything was working fine on my tank while I was gone (I use a Aquatronica controller I can monitor things with while I'm away).
This morning I fragged off the branches that were still in good shape. I couldn't remove all the dead parts since it was so encrusted to a large rock, so I removed the entire rock, and luckily the reef didn't collapse when doing so.
I'm not that concerned about saving the tricolor since I have so much of it, and absent this it has done very well in my tank
Thus the questions I have are as follows:
Any idea what I did wrong? I presume I cut it back too much? In looking at the tricolour where it is white it almost looks like new white growth over top of the coral
What do I do with the rock I took out? For now I'm putting it in a Rubbermaid garbage can with salt water and a power head, but no lights.(its too big to fit in my frag tank) I would like to eventually get the rock back in my tank, and not cure it again. I have another garbage can of live rock curing with flow and a heater that I was going to sell (the pieces aren't as large or nice as this rock) but figured I would keep them separate to isolate the other pieces from whatever happened to this piece.
