Reef Experts: Hard Question

[ejpreefer]

My water: 90 gallon reef with ATI fixture and t5 lighting,

Nitrate: 2ppm
Calcium: 480
Alkalinity: 3.31 meq/l which is DKH 9.268
Phosphate: Trace
Salinity: 1.025ppm

I got some awesome sps corals from another reefer. His tank has t5s as well so it is not a lighting issue. I put the coral in the same exact spot as he had it in his tank.

Everything is doing great a week later, bright blue stag, purple tort, and red planet but the only thing that died right away within 1 day was a hairy green milli large frag. It stunk my house up and it bleached out. I also got another frag of a hairy green milli well established in someone elses tank it also bleached out as well.

Why oh Why is it only the hairy sps corals?

 

[coralreefhq]

Did you get this as a wild piece?
Wild corals need a bit of time to adapt before high exposures of light is applied.

Was it touching another coral?
Sometimes corals tend to fight and you'll see parts of the loser with white spots around the region. Whereas the rest of the coralites are normal

 

[ejpreefer]

thanks for the response

thanks for the response

No not a wild colony and no it wasn't touching another coral.

Any other ideas? Flow is perfect for this coral. The only thing I can think of is maybe it was just to close to the light even though my t5 sit about 4 inches from the water and this coral was down about another 3 inches. Moderate flow perfect for it.

 

[gon08]

Did they bleach or RTN? If it stunk up the house it must have RTNed. What temperature do you keep the tank at? Did you have have a spike in temperature? What is your Ph?
Sometimes it doesn't take a lot to seriously stress a coral.

 

[klepto]

Any other ideas?

How old are your bulbs? and how many bulbs are you running/was your coral source running? What are you using to test KH and have you tested your KH with any other kits to verify the results?

You wrote that your salinity is 1.025 ppm. Just to clarify, you mean 1.025 specific gravity right? I trust you are familiar with the importance of regularly calibrating your refractometer?

 

[Achilles18]

whoaaaaaaaaaa that happened to me a year ago i didn't realized my refractormeter wasn't calibrate right or accurate & i rely on what so ever that gives me when i started my tank. i came home my room was so stink smell of sugar & i knew its all my corals are bleaching my friend who's closes to me as well had been into sps dominated tank coral luckly he help me out to save some of my dying sps coral a few got away from rtn problem on second thought i was going to check all my parameters & my buddy suggest me why not check your salinity first as soon as transfer from his tank my buddy checked my salinity he says so very low, but on my refractormeter its give me a right range i lost all my inverts that was a sad moment for me when i came home that night & i told to my self i would regulary check my refractormeter every now & then =)

 

[Reef Bass]

If that large hairy milli frag was healthy to start with, it would be unusual for it to die right away. Said another way, assuming it was healthy to start with, that it died so quickly could be a sign of a very significant difference in water chemistry compared with the tank it came from.

If your alk value is very different from the tank where the corals came from, that could cause immediate issues. You don't mention your mag level, which while not likely to be an immediate problem, is important for long term success.

Just because someone has the same type of lighting, doesn't mean the par value where you placed the frag in your tank is the same as the par value where the frag was located in your buddy's tank.

And unless your buddy is running the exact size and shape tank with the exact same pumps, etc, relative placement is unlikely to match. "high up" in his tank my be significantly different in light and flow than "high up" in your system.

Just to be clear, some people confuse suddenly seeing a coral's white skeleton (dead coral) with bleaching, where the still live coral expells its zooxanthellae and looks pale / white. A bleached coral is not a dead coral and shouldn't stink (any more than the usual acro aroma, which some people find quite nasty, though smells good to me!). Dead corals sloughing off tissue stink.

 

[ejpreefer]

thanks

thanks

Thanks for all the advice. I took my water into local store to have tested so I belive all my water conditions are near perfect.

My temperature is 76 to 78 degrees.

I run six t5s bulbs ATI fixutre the bulbs are two months old. It came from a tank with the exact same lighting, but like mentioned below his bulbs may have been much older.

The colony was very healty it is growing like a weed in the persons tank.

********

Just odd to me that everything else he gave me is in great shape and just the hairy green milli went down.

I will try a smaller piece and put much lower in the tank and see if I can get it to grow this time.

Thanks for all the help.....

 

[SPSEMPIRE]

did you drip acclimate these frags to your system?

 

[abrian]

I had an issue not long ago with my refractometer getting out of calibration. Over the next couple of water changes my display SG went up as I added over-salted water. My green millie was one of the first corals to go, and was actually the canary that tipped me off to something being out of whack in my tank. So, triple check that salinity is the moral of the story.

 

[EvilMel]

It died so quickly could be a sign of a very significant difference in water chemistry compared with the tank it came from.

If your alk value is very different from the tank where the corals came from, that could cause immediate issues. You don't mention your mag level, which while not likely to be an immediate problem, is important for long term success.

Just because someone has the same type of lighting, doesn't mean the par value where you placed the frag in your tank is the same as the par value where the frag was located in your buddy's tank.

I totally agree with Reef Bass.

I start all new corals on the bottom, regardless of how much lighting is on the tank from which they came. It won't hurt them at all to keep them low for a few days. I do that because I know I'm going to seriously burn corals with my bulbs (400W MH run through old magnetic ballasts that probably overdrive the bulbs) but it's a good rule of thumb for most people. The difference in par from your bulbs and his was probably huge, given that your bulbs are practically new. In addition, T5 bulb par is pretty seriously affected by the type of fixture/ballast and the type of bulb.

Guys, don't some of those cheap T5 fixtures put out much less par than others? I'm pretty sure that that's true.

In addition, I agree that if that coral died that quickly there most likely was some parameter that was way off between the two systems. Remember there's a lot things that are not easily measurable that make one tank much different from another. Do you have other milles (I think it was a mille you were talking about) that grow well in your tank? I mean, I used to have a pretty heavily SPS dominated tank and I could NOT for the LIFE of me grow a birdsnest. I tried probably 3-4 frags from several different people and eventually just accepted the fact that...there's something about my tank that birdsnest corals just do not like. I focused on different corals and had great success.

 

[chrischin29g]

Same thing happen to my millis a green and a redbull

I put them on my tank they where doing great nice polyp s
Extension and all then like a week after they started to die off

And all my other sps where doing fine

Use millis just don't like me

 

[wizardx322]

i agree with the guys about about starting corals low. i've always aclimate my corals to the light starting low and moving them up seems to help from the bleaching and burning tips even if someone has the same or more lighting then me corals need to get used to your lighting.