New Corals died...

[artful-dodger]

yeah, that could do it. 1.031 is awfully high in general but it is a huge sudden change from the store's 1.025 Bring it down gently by replacing quart or so of saltwater with purified freshwater on each of several days (or at least separated by several hours). Measure frequently.

You can pick up a good refractomer on sale from an online vendor pretty cheaply. I haven't looked recently, but MarineDepot and Drs. Foster and Smith have had good prices advertised on them. It is a good investment (along with good quality test kits) in keeping your animals healthy.

 

[sunfish11]

Wow, my hydrometer was off quite a bit as well. I thought I was keeping my salinity on the low site at 1.021 turned out it was at 1.025 when measured with a refractometer. Now I know how off the hydrometer is though and I just keep mixing for a 1.021 on my hydrometer.

And yes, you could boil the coral fairly quickly by floating them under 250w halides. I always float all fish and corals in the sump for just that reason.

Sorry for your loss, I never heard of that happening so fast

Lisa

 

[Emoezekielsr5]

This is just too weird. Those are preety hardy corals.

 

[tsquad]

I never acclimate my corals, just temperature. Their slime coating is their own acclimation IMO. Then again, the only corals I have/will buy are local reefer frags, so we all have pretty similar tanks.

 

[mr pink floyd]

i didnt acclimate my xenia, because however i put it it would flip upside down i nthe bag, and it wuold squish itself, but it turned out fine

 

[sttroyiii]

Dump some salt on a slug and I bet you will see the same slime coating that the corals have. I dont think that the slugs are 'acclimating', hehe. We have been doing experiments with hypertonic and hypotonic solutions on freshwater plants in my biology class by placing them in salt water. The plant cells shrivel very fast in salt water under a microscope. I test the water that comes from the LFS against mine, and decide if a water acclimation is needed...with a refractometer of course.

 

[Sheol]

Too high salinity, no real acclimation. Mystery solved. I had the same problem with my hydrometer. They are evil pieces of plastic junk! ( In my case, I lost fish already in the tank..)

Matthew

 

[tsquad]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6783518#post6783518 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sttroyiii
Dump some salt on a slug and I bet you will see the same slime coating that the corals have. I dont think that the slugs are 'acclimating', hehe. We have been doing experiments with hypertonic and hypotonic solutions on freshwater plants in my biology class by placing them in salt water. The plant cells shrivel very fast in salt water under a microscope. I test the water that comes from the LFS against mine, and decide if a water acclimation is needed...with a refractometer of course.

That's because of huge pressure differences and osmosis...fresh/salt is a big difference. When just buying a coral, the parameters other than temperature should not have changed that drastically, and I think it's best for the coral to be put in a favorable environment right away.

 

[kimoyo]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6773601#post6773601 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SaltyNewb
I keep my SG at 1.025 - 1.026

I did not water acclimate them at all, only floated the bags. Maybe when I floated the bags the halides were too intense at that moment, even though it was for only 10 minutes?

On my old tank i never acclimated corals...not sure what the sudden change could have been?

If your parameters are what you say they are then you could have heated the corals up too much when you were floating the bags. I know if I'm not carefully I can melt a bag if it gets to close to my halides. Bleaching has been shown to be caused by elevated temperatures or excessive light.

I never really acclimate, I worry more about temperature. But then again I'm getting healthy frags from local reefers. Out of the 50-60 frags I've gotten I've only had a problem with one and that was from a tank using the zeovit method, which I'm not. During low tide corals are out in the air for hours and are fine. I've seen local reefers leave their corals in the air during waterchanges for a few hours and be fine. IMO, those are some serious extremes. Assuming your parameters are accurate I don't think it was the water acclimation but maybe the temp acclimation. As long as your in the correct range (not extremes) of parameters corals don't need as much stability as people make it seem.

 

[Dubbin1]

I doubt that he lost all those corals from not acclimating them. I have always practiced the float and dump and I have never once lost a coral because of it.

 

[tsquad]

I always turn my halides off when I float my bags, and secure the bags under the lip of my canopy so they don't float into the area of the halides.

 

[21Reefman]

I would say you cooked them in the bags... the greenhouse effect is happening in the bag when floating under the lights.
The coral gets warm because of the light and then the heat stays trapped in the bag. Temps in a bag under MH can rise qiuck and in ten minutes could easily get above 98.6(feels warm to touch).
I know this is on the contrary and I used to drip acclimate for up to an hour, and still will with shrimp. I will temp adjust fish and maybe add a few 1/4cup additions of tank water if I really think it's fragile. CORALS?,.. I stopped acclimating, I said it, I don't acclimate any of my corals, maybe if nearly frozen(get some in the mail) I will temp acclimate by floating the bag in the sump or with the lights off. I know I will be hosed for this method, all I have to say is this is only what I do, and acclimating is a good idea though not in all cases.
Here are my tanks one is an SPS dominated 92gal the other os a 20gal mixed reef.
Nothing Acclimated......

 

[SaltyNewb]

looks great man! like i said my hydrometer was off, it said 1.025 when it was really 1.031 so maybe that had an effect?

 

[archie1709]

No, you won't be hosed. I know exactly what you are talking about. Floating them while the light is on creates (a) intense lighting and (b) high temps. I mean, the buoyancy of the bag pushes the coral as close as it can to the lighting. That will surely stress them out. Then the heat gets trapped in the bag. It's like leaving your kids in the car while you run inside the house for 10 minutes.

I don't acclimate the first few corals that I had too. Here are the pics. NONE of them were acclimated:

 

[kalare]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6784185#post6784185 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SaltyNewb
looks great man! like i said my hydrometer was off, it said 1.025 when it was really 1.031 so maybe that had an effect?

Could have, but I doubt they would have died all within a few hours. My guess is the same as above, if you floated with your hood down, you most likely cooked all the corals while in the bags. Not acclimating to water isn't a good pratice, but IMO will not kill a coral within several hours. Just yesterday, I dropped a frag container on the floor and spilled everthing and broke it off its plug. So i stuck it directly into the tank, it's doing fine.

Those little pockets of air in the bag that aren't being cooled by surrounding water would have heated up to a huge degree, thereby keeping the water at a very high temp. Don't float with your lights down.

 

[murfman]

at 80* your SG is actually 1.0274

http://www.algone.com/salinity.htm