Hi Troub and FastUno, thanks guys but i'm pretty over the whole thing now and not too bummed as 95% of my acros healthy PE even though most are gloomy looking with a bit of pigment fading. Hard to describe but to me the display has lost the 'pop' it had. I'm very confident things will return to normal over the next few weeks
I'm in the rambling mood so don't so you weren't warned and i'm explaining stuff at length for guys who have no experience with SPS at all and if anyone disagrees with anything i say here i can produce quite a number of non existent scientific journal papers to back up my stuff...........
I'm glad you guys appreciated the video, i hope that's as close to seeing RTN as you ever get - most times we video the cool things or colorful successes we have and new guys think the bar is so high and how come some guys have good results keeping SPS and i don't no matter what i try. I think it's important to realise that EVERYONE has dramas and loses stuff - i never even considered that i would ever see RTN in one of my tanks nowdays and here i am videoing it happening. :worried:
You are pretty much spot on with your understanding of the higher or richer water allowing higher alk levels and/or lighting. That works to a point but i have never seen elevated growth and certainly not better colors with alk levels above that in the ocean. I run my alk at close to 8.0 which is only slightly above NSW - (natural sea water) levels simply to give myself a small buffer in case i miss a rise in alk draw between testing, not for any other perceived benefit. I can't speak for the guys who run their water very differently to me as under different conditions it may actually do something positive to run high alk - if it works for you i say keep doing it, Bello claims that doing all his tank maintenance totally nude improves the colors of his acros.......... he's a bit left of center is Bello :crazy1:
RTN spreads along the tissue which is why we normally frag or break up a colony or piece to separate healthy tissue from the tissue that is 'sloughing' away from the skeleton. In all cases i've seen and i've seen lots in LFS's and friends tanks and about 5 pieces in my own over the years - the event is always preceded by paling or loss of pigments. I've never seen a vibrant healthy looking acro just up and RTN, they have always been stressed and pale before the tissue began peeling away. Even though you may only have 24 hours to notice that sudden paling and loss of pigment you will always have time to take action even if it's just dropping a new acro to the bottom - the bottom of your tank is 'sanctuary' for any acro that starts to go dangerously pale with a sudden change of lighting or placement in the tank. Everything new sits on the bottom for a day or two or until i see PE - a basic guide is the longer a new acro takes to have polyp extension the more stressed it is. Some acros have PE in the bag when i look in the box at home and within 5 mins of being put on the display bottom. Others might have it the first night or within 24-48 hours in 90% of cases. The rest can be a week or more so they stay on the bottom until i see PE and i'm more cautious with how much light i give them when sticking them somewhere.
There are 4 bits of that acro in the tank and one other is looking bad with dead branches and deathly pale, it was also in high light and also stressed already from the 400W Radium.
I took a few top downs with my DIY viewer - worked bloody well so thanks for the great tip Sahin :beer:
This is the piece that is in low light away from the halide, it's down low and has lost saturation considerably but it has PE and just looks a bit grumpy - i'd be very surprised to see it RTN now. You'll probably think the colors are great but they're all off. SSC should not have pale whitish branches, the left acro is normally the same blue as the xmas tree worm you see that lives in the colony not drab purple. The 'thing' bottom left was purple with fluoro polyps - it aint now lol. The monti has a few small dead spots hidden by the SSC above it. The fluoro lime aculeus has some minor dead tip damage with algae already growing but other than that it's happy which surprised me. The color of it in this pic is very very close to exactly what you see in real life - the couple of larger bits i have are big blobs of glow in the dark paint so i'd urge everyone to try an aussie fluro because if you make them happy they look ridiculous. Under RB LED's they are known to cause seizures in pets so be careful - would i lie......... Bello probably has one hidden in his tank already as he's a sneaky bastard with his acro purchases
After i posted last night i remembered what i used to do to stop RTN when i was too lazy to frag something or it was already too small. I discovered it years ago when i chucked a new small colony in the sump that was really blowing up with RTN from the bottom up the night i bought it. It was only $20 because the store knew it was in a bad pale way. Anyway the move to my tank was the final straw and within hours it began to get 'that' look and a few hours later after lights out i saw the flesh peeling away. After it reached up halfway in about 30 mins i grabbed it out and literally dropped it into the sump/frag section with the sh*ts over losing it. It was going so fast i didn't think it was even worth fragging.
The next morning i turned the lights on and the colony is upside down where it landed on the 1" deep sand bed. Completely white as expected. I pulled it out to throw it and all the branch ends that were buried in the sand were still covered in tissue. I placed it back in the display the right way up and 24 hours later there were about 50% more dead tips but the rest recovered and i fragged the you know what out of it to make a new mini colony with all the good bits and a tube of super glue.
So last night i took the branch and completely buried it in the sand in the sump, it had gone a bit further than in the video but it also lost about 10% more tissue after being buried. Tonight i took it from the sand grave and low and behold it still has tissue. Within about 2 hours i could see a tiny amount of PE on some of the tips so i'll be surprised if it starts RTN'ing again. There will probably be some more slow die off on some branches but a good portion of it will recover in most cases. If you think 'why not just frag it instead of burying it' - because with this way if you catch it soon enough you can preserve the integrity on an entire piece or colony without destroying all of the growth it's taken you years to see. Also works on small frags - yes i have experimented just as i always do - you know me lol.
It really does work but you can still see the tissue loss restart and lose everything just as can happen to last ditch frags, don't just sit and watch an acro implode - frag it or bury the bloody thing. :thumbsup:
Here it is tonight. I only had the B+ lights on as it was bed time so i used the phone flash to light the shot. The yellow tang looks better than my acros at the moment which sh*ts me right up the wall tbh............
I'll cross my fingers now that i can show you picks of that suicidal acro alive a week from now, if it all dies i'm going to blame Sahin just because i can, it can't be Bello's fault all the time, the minute you put your first SPS in the tank Troub you'll be joining the list of mates i attribute my reef misfortunes to.........
My ytube channel would need to be called biggles blunders......
Alk is 8.3, cal 400 and Mg 1380, now i have to figure out the lower dosage because the draw is less with all the acros poopy to differing degrees, then as they recover i have to stuff around trying to keep up with the draw changes - goofs can be a real pain in the arse in more ways than one so best thing is to not stuff up, trouble is every single one of has and will in the future so think about what you would do if you did what i did and be confident you have a good idea what to do before stuff ups happen. Common mistakes or bad luck like heater malfunctions, lights staying on etc happen a lot or you can bet some other bloody thing will catch you off guard so when you read of idiotic stuff ups like i randomly make store it away so you're ready to deal with it asap.
My number one tip with an acro tank in trouble. When in doubt about why everything appears to be looking terrible suddenly - turn the bloody lights off before you start thinking about what's up because nothing puts the boot into your acros when they're down like a heap of strong lighting. Start testing the water etc AFTER you turn the lights off. It won't always help but it will in many scenarios such as over lighting or alk spikes where the time you take to act matters. Nothing in your tank will die from the lights going off but some things that you might be able to save will if you don't kill or drastically reduce the lights until you correct the issue. SPS are fine with nothing but dawn dusk lighting for days so improve your odds with the flick of a switch.
I don't know everything and don't mean to sound like it so sorry if i come across that way to anyone. I'm just trying to explain things in a way that even guys with no SPS experience but who want to try will understand. I'll video an acro feed going into the tank in the next day or two for you FastUno. :beer:
and the dead tips on the piece to the left is typical of the alk spike damage. Nothing to do but ride it out unfortunately. Typical that it's a favorite acro dying rather than a green one.......
