Need help with a Monti

[jdewolftx]

I have had this dark blue Montipora with green polyps for almost 6 weeks and it seems like it is just slowly withering away. I have checked both day and night all around the piece to see if there were some hitch hikers that are causing the problem but it looks clean. I have a 90 gallon tank with 2 Radion x30's on it turned down to 55% with the coral radiance profile. My water parameters seem to be fine with KH at 3.75, Ca at 460, Mg at 1300. The only thing of note is my nitrates are at around 15 ppm and my PO4 is at 0.30 ppm.



https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5826/20850528163_a27524f44b_c.jpg

The other thing that is strange is that I have two orange monti's that are both growing well. They are at around the same height and get similar flow.

[IMG][url=https://flic.kr/p/xLup5H][img]https://farm1.staticflickr.com/579/20850526413_2c20601c3b_z.jpg[/IMG]

Any thoughts? Are the dark colored ones more sensitive to something? Should I turn up my lights or turn them down? I am running out of ideas.

-Jeff

 

[sahin]

Read up on Montipora Eating Nudibranchs. They are not always easy to spot. http://www.melevsreef.com/articles/montipora-eating-nudibranchs

More info here: http://www.qualitymarine.com/News/Feature-Articles/Revisited:-The-Montipora-Eating-Nudibranch-(02/04/11)

Your PO4 is rather high, so that could be an issue, but I'd eliminate possibility of pests first.

 

[jdewolftx]

Thanks. I'll take a second look for nudi's.

-Jeff

 

[jdewolftx]

Just a quick update....I lost 90% of that monti. The others are still fine but I noticed that they had almost stopped growing. (nolonger had nice white rim around them) I traced this to my phospate's. I have been dosing nopox for nearly 2 months as my nitrates have been between 15 and 25. My phospates have been at a very steady 0.4 ppm. I decided that maybe this was just too high for the monti's and I put on a GFO and Carbon reactor. The GFO brought the phospates down to 0.04 almost immediately. I did some water changes to bring the nitrates down to 15. I can already see the "healthy" monti's perk up a bit and start to grow again. My best guess is that even though my water wasn't terrible, the marginal water quality is what precipitated the decline of the blue monti.

On a positive note, I kept the monti in the aquarium (moved it just in case) as I remember several on the forum mentioning that monti's can recover if the right conditions exist. So we will see over the coming months if it is able to regain its former glory.

Thanks again for all your help.

-Jeff