Hello, I'm new to nano-reefing and purchased an established tank a few months ago (14G biocube with stock lighting). All parameters good except Nitrates have been consistently high, but are gradually coming down from 100 to about 20 currently. Before I realized not to trust everything LFS says, I took their word the extremely elevated nitrates should be ok for fungia coral. I really like the fungia coral and they said it would be a good one to have. In retrospect my fault for not doing more research prior to purchasing (I thought they knew their stuff and wouldn't sell me sick coral). The fungia is 4inches across, has pink and brown coloring and had a couple of white areas that seemed part of coloring. There was also a dark brown nodular growth near the mouth when I purchased it. But it otherwise looked healthy to my newbie eyes and I took it home. It has actually been doing fairly well (expanding, tentacle exposure, and eating very well anything put near mouth), but two things I'm concerned about. First is the white colorings are becoming more abundant. I'm concerned about either over-exposure vs underexposure with lights and I can't seem to get a clear answer if the lighting I have would tend to cause one or the other. Second, the growth, that I assumed was a minor injury that it would recover from, has now morphed into a brown hairy growing thing (I've included pics below. You can see how the haairness is extending up from the focal point to left of mouth). This started changing about 3 days ago soon after I got a tubastrea and have been having to feed it daily. I then started feeding fungia coral every two days since food was right there. I have googled every possible description of this growth and nothing is coming up as similar. I'm not sure if I should try to remove it, do a dip of sorts or just watch it. Problem is it does get bigger every day. Besides this though, the coral appears unbothered by it and continues to swell, feed and extend tentacles. Not sure what to do. Any input very appreciated!!
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