I think I found out why most of my SPS died.......

[raynist]

My 120g SPS tank used to be thriving, stuff grew so fast I had to frag constantly. In the last 2 months I have lost nearly 50% of my SPS. The tank looked like a coral graveyard.

Today I started pruning away all of the dead coral and decided to move my frags that survived onto the rocks and off of my acrylic frag holders. When I did, I noticed the plastic covers that cover the magnets in the frag rack were hanging off. They were actually being pushed off by the rusting magnets underneath! I have 4 of these frag racks in my 120, one in my 180 and one in my 40. Every one of them were rusted. The magnets used to have a coating on them, but it must have rotted away.

These frag holders were about 16 months old each.

I know many of you have these too, you may want to check on them. I threw all of them away.

I plan to do a big water change tomorrow.

I also had a Vortech MP40 magnet do this about a year ago too.

Here are some pictures:

Back Side

Front Side

 

[evsalty]

That sucks. Is that the Eshopps ones?

 

[TomNeely]

Wow. Sorry for your loss ray. At least you now know the cause... Do you remember what brand they were?

 

[raynist]

I don't know the brand, got them up in cleveland at their 2009 swap.

They have the neodymium magnets.

 

[cloakerpoked]

I'm pretty sure the eshopps ones are encased completely in acrylic. At least mine seem to be.

 

[NaClH2Opgh]

WOW!. I had the same problem before. Remember when you did the group buy for the magnets? The first rack I made I forgot to coat or enclose the magnets in anything and they did the same thing. My sps started looking stressed also. I lost like one frag but that particular rack was on the side of the tank I walked past everyday many times so I caught it early. Glad to see you figured it out.

I would change out the carbon every couple days also for a week or two.

 

[raynist]

These appeared to be fully encased when new. I noticed that there was a small clear plastic cover over them that was coming off.

I will change my carbon today and do a water change.

Hopefully what's left survives.

From now on I am going to drill my rocks to mount frags.

It is really depressing to see all of the coral skeletons I took out of the tank last night.

I will take a picture this evening of all the dead stuff....

 

[jverbosk]

Ray,

Sorry to hear about your loss. If you need an extra pair of hands to help with anything, please let me know.

John

 

[vr697getta]

sorry to hear about all the corals you lost. after i saw this post i took a better look at the frag rack i had in my tank. it was doing the same thing as Rays not sure if i had the same brand or not but thats not going back in any of my tanks.

 

[cloakerpoked]

After my Kalk accident, I remember pulling all my dead skeletons out and how depressing it was, so I can totally sympathize with what you're feeling. I guess I'll have to keep an eye on mine.

 

[rigleautomotive]

Ray,I had the same results from a magnet that came apart in a small power head that was in my frag tank.Baffled me for months.I would put a frag from a colony in that tank and with in days it looked like a terd,loss of color and STN on every acro in the tank.The corals looked great in the DT which is a separate system.When I finally discovered the rusty magnet during a cleaning I was relieved .I felt I finally found why my frag system could not support acroporas.Long and short of it is after removal and heavy carbon use with a few big water changes,all was well.GL, I believe you found the culprit.

 

[BeanAnimal]

I'm pretty sure the eshopps ones are encased completely in acrylic. At least mine seem to be.

Keep an eye on them... acrylic abosrbs water, so if they are not burried deep, them may be exposed over time as well.