LPS fading

[usmc121581]

I have this EC that I have had for 8 yrs or longer. Has down good for all this time until Oct 15'. It stopped puffing up and the tentacles are not long and flowing. The flesh seems to puff up but not like it used to. It responds to feeding the fish. In Nov 15 I tested after its annual cleaning and WC and parameters were off the charts 2020 mag, alk 16, cal 600. Then in Nov I started the sand removal process and finished in Feb 16. No inprovement. Noticed that all Monti's died, sps frags I gone. Chalice's most stn but the 4 I have now are slowly bleaching. The other LPS like trumpets, hammer, Micromussa is doing normal. Parameters are and have been around these numbers for yrs:

Cal 500
Alk 10
Mag 1770
PO4
Nitrate 0
Salt 1.026

It will not take meaty foods like pieces of silvers ides anymore. Before Oct 15 I had fast growth on all corals and everything was doing great and happy. That maybe it was the sand removal but the issues happened before then. I would say,it started to go down hill Sept/Oct 15. I will have to post a pic tomorrow as I haven't been able to post a pic here in a yr from my phone.

Equipement 3-250W MH bulbs are now brand new before not 5 months old. Skimmer is a skimz monster and skim ate is very dark. Was running a GFO reactor however removed it since starting a ATS. Also 21 mangrove trees one is 3 ft tall the rest are less then 12". F I would add that I did have a basketball size cheato ball in my refug that is now shrunk to smaller then a baseball and is very brittle.

 

[steallife904]

im guessing the rise in parameters you had shocked everything and the stuff that survived it is still recovering or stressing. Where you dosing or anything to make that happen? What about the tank temp., any change to it?
You may also want to pull the stuff doing bad and give them a dip.

 

[steallife904]

Also with 2 shrimps its possible they are eating any food you feed them and stressing them out. I will no longer keep shrimps because of that issue. Last one I had would always craw on top of my corals (mainly LPS) and stress them and if I ever fed them or they caught food the shrimp would take it away. corals started to suffer a bit so I removed and then they turned around.

 

[jbvdhp]

How did your dosing get so high? I'm thinking it's the super high Alk. High magnesium doesn't seem to do too much, but the highest I've had it was 1700-1800. I don't junk high calcium could do it in either. I'm thinking it's the Alk. Hope you can recover


Sent using your IP address

 

[stef83]

In my home fading LPS (like lobo, trachy...) :
- Too hot water
- Too much light

But with feeding and back to normal parameters they come back in a few months.

I'm at work for now but my trachy give the best example : one part take direct light and are light fade and the most part is protect by montipora: colours are more deep at this state.

Stef