Is my pink birds nest smoked?

[deputydog95]

I got it as a tiny frag. I mean literally a one inch long stick...

I've had it for around a year. It's now about the size of a racquetball.

Lots of flow with 2 ecotech's. It's under 6 T5 ATI bulbs.

dkh averages between 9 and 10
pH averages around 8.2
temp average is 79
phos is very low and nitrates are zero

It's alway been very white looking. You could barely see the pink at all. Generally you'd have to turn the tank lights off to see the pink coloration.

Last night I noticed that the monti digitata had grown into it and had bleached where it came into contact with the the birds nest. So I decided to prune the dead spots off the monti.

This morning I came in and there's no sign of pink whatsoever. Again, it was always very white looking but growing rapidly. This looks painfully white now.

Is it done?

 

[StarF]

still looks like there is some small polyps from it, but its hard to tell...

 

[Moser]

Your digi looks like a Setosa to me?!. :celeb1:

Mo

 

[markalot]

Yea, nice setosa. Tear the bird off and place it down in the sandbed, then inspect with some 3X reading glasses to look for polyps. Birds usually don't encrust much.

I hope you have a tank thread, looking for more pictures of your tank! Looks great.

 

[ajcanale]

screw the birdsnest... most amazing and unique growing setosa I've ever seen! Doubt low alk is an issue.

 

[deputydog95]

I'm embarrassed that I don't know what half of my stuff in my tank is called. I just buy random frags cause they look cool.

My LFS was at my office looking at the tank and was going nuts over the "setosa" too. Didn't realize I had something special going on there.

There's an orange monti cap with yellow dots growing into it on the back side. They seem to be getting along and growing together. Kind of weird.

No tank thread unfortunately. Wish I had. Just pulled a bunch of leathers and some LPS out.

Oddly enough the tank went wonky after that. It was a couple weeks ago. Starting getting some RTN on my acros and the tips got really white.

Not sure what's going on. Phos is zero, nitrates zero. Mg is around 1300.

I have a pic I took about a month or so ago. The leathers are out now. The foxface killed the green scoli and the clam (bastard, need to get him out of there but can't...). Moved some stuff around too. Trying to move towards more SPS but now I'm having random epic fails.

I'm using a bubble magus doser and use Oceans Blend A and B for channels 1 and 2, and I dose Fuel on the 3rd channel. I thought I had this figured out, but apparently not

 

[Kenzo0]

It seems like it's dead! It's all white. doesn't it?

 

[deputydog95]

It was always mostly all white, but kept growing like crazy.

I put it in front of a power head last night and tissue starting coming off like crazy. There's my sign. RIP birds nest.

I did manage to find a couple small pieces that broke off a few weeks ago and set them up. I guess I'm starting over. Learned a lesson. If something is growing well in the tank, break it off and set it up somewhere else.

I had a giant monti cap RTN over 48 hours and didn't know what I was seeing. Wish I had spent the 5 mins to start fragging the healthy tissue.

Yesterday I took an acro colony that was showing some STN on the base and snapped very last piece off and planted them around the tank. Left the mother (base) where it was at, so we'll see what happens there.

Hopefully whatever is going on in my tank passes.... It's only about a year old so maybe it's just one of those maturation things where something went out of balance. Who knows....

 

[markalot]

You've been doing this a while haven't you? I know how you feel about figuring things out.

Get some good Alk and Calcium kits, like Salifert, if you don't have them already and see how stable the system is. Test every day, same time very day.

Foxface is a great fish for SPS tanks.

 

[deputydog95]

Yeah, I've been in the hobby for about 20 years now. In and out though and I've disappeared for years at a time. Tech and information keeps changing, for the better. This setup (Red Sea 62 gallon) has been up for about 1.5 years. That being said, I'm still new to automated dosing etc... as my last system was using a ca reactor.

I'm using Red Sea test kits. They're $$$, but seem to be really accurate and allow for more precise readings. I use API as my backup, to verify the Red Sea readings. However, they're a little more vague. Whereas the Red Sea kits can more or less pinpoint a dkh at say 10.2, the API only reads 10 or 11, as you're measuring large drops versus the tiny titrator the red sea uses.

I started the tank as a mixed, but I'm leaning heavily towards SPS with some LPS thrown in as the LPS seem to tolerate the SPS alk and ca. The softies in my tank seem to be in a constant state of ****ed off mode and the zoanthids rarely open. I think I'm going to ditch them all since they're clearly not happy in my tank where I'm running it.

Tested everything again yesterday.

dkh 10.2
ca 420
mg 1400
ph 8.3 (at about the end of the light cycle)
sg 1.026
phos 0
nit 0

6 ATI T5 bulbs that run for 10 hours per day. Stunner strip runs for 2 more hours at night.
2 ecotech pumps running in nutrient transport mode. Tons of flow.

Everything seems spot on.... Could use a touch more ca so I upped the dosing by 3ml a day. Still not sure what's happening. Head scratcher for sure.

 

[Kaman8]

I think you have a low nutrients issue. Try raise you nitrate and phosphate a little. The corals are starving.

 

[robs.mark]

Agreed, try feeding a little heavier for a week or so and see if you can note any changes, also if its dead i would imagine you would start to see algae growing on it before long..

 

[deputydog95]

That's the odd thing. I probably overfeed the tank. I'm constantly dumping in phyto, reef chili, and mysis/brine.

So weird... I do run chemi pure elite and my water changes of 10%, twice a week, are pretty consistent. Maybe I should back the 10% water change down to 1x a week.

 

[rfgonzo]

So your changing 80% a month? You could try cutting that in half and doing 10% weekly at 40% per month.

 

[deputydog95]

Ok, I'll dial it back some.