Impact of elevated temps on SPS

[Wazzel]

At some point in late spring or early summer my hearer controller malfunctioned. Not totally sure when since there was no obvious signs something was wrong. Over the late spring early summer my tank took a down turn and I lost several colonies. The ones that did not die looked pail and stopped growing. A few weeks ago it totally fried and my tank got to feeling like bath water. I pulled the heated, added a $8 desk fan and replaced the heater. Since then they die off has ended, colors have improved and the half dead ones have started to regrow.

I really have no clue how hot my tank had been running since I did not have a secondary way to measure temp. A guess would be mid to upper 80's. I now have a secondary temp probe via GHL P4. Still need to move the heater to the power bar and put in a high temp cut off.

If you do not have a secondary way to check temp you should probably get one. Even an old school $3 thermometer would would have saved me a lot of grief.

 

[jda]

85 is as much as I would want to go, but my Medusa freaks out at 82 since I don't want to do much more than this.

Sorry to hear this.

 

[ca1ore]

I run apex, and a ranco for redundant measurement. Former was adjusted to match the latter. I run some heaters off the apex, others off the ranco. That way not all of my warm eggs are in a single basket ....... metaphor mangled.

 

[Wazzel]

85 is as much as I would want to go, but my Medusa freaks out at 82 since I don't want to do much more than this.

Sorry to hear this.

Not sure if it was the actual temp or the duration at the elevated temp that got me. The pieces I lost took weeks to go from healthy to dead. Loosing the pieces sucked. Some of them I really liked. I have actually acquired more pieces than I lost in the past few weeks.

 

[jda]

What is your new plan? I have Ranco or Medusa with Ehiem with their own thermostats. ...and I use six individual heaters on one tank and five on the other. Both a controller and probably four heaters would have to fail to make my tank heat up - never tested the exact number.

I float a cheap mercury thermometer in the wavebox to check the readouts.

 

[Wazzel]

I got a new heater-controller and I got a GHL profilux 4. So now I have redundancy on the heater and tempature monitoring. The desk fan is going to be replaced with the GHL propeller beeeze 4, when it gets here.

I should have done dual or triple heaters, but did not think that far ahead since I was in damage control mode.

 

[kainic]

At the beggining of this summer my temp went too high for about a week. My SSC and a birdnest bleached as well as my three RBTA. Completely white, no zoox left. I decreased my photoperiod and started to actively feed my corals and anemones. The anemones and the birdnest survived, my loved SSC died.

 

[Leopardshark]

88 is still ok but IMHO that´s the absolute limit.
With me, even at 88° F acros would still be ok.
regards

 

[Wazzel]

Just to follow up on this. Things are much better now. My colors are back to where I think they should be and things are growing again. This elevated temp issues set me back about 6 months in growth. My corals have grown more in the last few weeks than they did since about April.

The elevated temp also impacted my LPS. Lost a few heads of euphilla, but fortunately not the entire colonies. I did not realize my acans were also being impacted until I realized how nice they look now compared to how they did in July-Aug.

 

[jda]

You did really well, considering... I have seen Euphilla melt to goo at 85 degrees. I guess that you did not get that hot, but probably pretty close.

 

[Wazzel]

You did really well, considering... I have seen Euphilla melt to goo at 85 degrees. I guess that you did not get that hot, but probably pretty close.

When I put the new heater on my tank the temp registered at 82 and that was not at the brightest part of my light cycle or the hottest part of the day. I suspect I was really close to a total loss.

 

[murphreef]

Extended periods of high heat can def F up your corals.

Temp is something often over looked but can get out of control. I accidentally left my fan off on my MH and tank got to 83 before I noticed luckily no long term damage that I am aware of bnut could have been bad.

I keep my tank around 78-79

 

[watchguy123]

I have put my heaters on an annual replacement schedule because of my paranoia with them. They are one of the cheapest electrical components we have sitting in our tanks yet they manage a crucial parameter to our corals.

 

[nashorn]

I keep a few small wattage heaters in case one fails it may give me more time to notice and take action.
I also keep them on a ranco just in case.

 

[Potatohead]

That's great to hear you figured it out. I have always run on the cooler side, 77.5-78 or so, I start to get nervous anything over 80. 85+ would be mayhem I imagine.