He did say there was a little bit of oil on the surface of the water....
Hows everything looking as of today with all your corals?
Things seem to be getting better. i have cut the remaining STN lines from my red planet, and all of the large frags of it i made and epoxied to the mag rock are reencrusting the epoxy. i have the same situation with my garf bonsai. i could not cut away the battle lines from it b/c i could not remove the rock from the tank. (rock it's on is huge) The STN is still occuring along those same lines as before; however all the frags i made are reencrusting well. Sadly i have lost about 75% of this coral and may lose more if this persists. i plan on fraging the remaining large branches this week end.
List of the casualties:
4" mini colony of Hawkins (very sad on this definetly my favorite coral)
95% of my bali green slimer (not sure if the remaining piece is going to make it or not yet)
acro pink with blue tips forgot the name (this coral was about 5" across with multiple branches very pretty) 2nd favorite
75% of my ORA green planet
50% of my ORA red planet
75% of my garf bonsai
lost a copps king tut acro, but it was a frag so there wasn't much there to die.
Strawberry shortcake frag that was doing well and had encrusted about the size of a 50cent piece with atleast 1" of growth. This and the hawkins were the first to go.
Larry Jackson this was the largest colony i lost. It had it's own rock and was about 7-8 inches across with multiple branches.
This is weird but about a year ago i was fragging this coral and dropped a frag, which ended up falling into a small hole in a rock that i couldn't get to so i left it there. Later on a small colony grewn from that area, and believe it or not but that colony has shown no ill effects. This small colony is only inches away from where my large mother colony has died. Try explaining this one. lol
90% of my tricolor valadia, but the only remaining frag is reencrusting. Very sad i'm left with a 1" frag.
Corals not affected:
Deep water acro don't remember the name.
Lost some tissue from my millis, but not enough to put into the prior category, and all appear to be on the mend.
Joe the coral lost a little encurstment but looks to be regaining that.
all montis, birdnest, setosa ,ofcourse LPS Sofites etc.. have been completely unaffected with normal growth.
Banana Lokani growth slowed but lost nothing.
Here are my thoughts:
After reading some threads on nutrients i think i may have my cause. About a 2 and a half months ago i traded in 3 large fish and replaced them with 2 much smaller ones. I think my corals might have been starving for awhile with the decrease in nutrients along with one of my light ballasts going bad. i never test for NO3 or PO4 unless i have issues as the test would normally come back the same results. (no3 1-2ppm and PO4 .05-.08ppm this is my sweet spot) I obviously don't know what my nitrate or phosphate was during that time frame but i do remember my ORP sensor giving my unusually high readings around that time. My ORP is normally between 350-390, but a few months ago i was reading 420 to 430. I have a lab grade probe which is only about 6mos old, and i had calibrated it around the time in question b/c i thought it might have been wrong but the readings after calibration were consistent. I didn't give it another thought b/c everything was doing fine at the time. This might have been a harbinger of things to come as i started seeing an issue with my corals about 2weeks after that. (i keep a really good log of tests or anything i do to my tank with dates and time included.)
Keep in mind this is pure theory on my part, but i got rid of 3 large fish, nutrients went way down corals starving so stopped growing. i notice a problem so i test no3 and po4. nitrate was good but phosphate was alittle high around .12, which prompted me to change phosphate media, dose vodka, and reduce feeding of frozen on the weekends in order to get my nutrients under control. This knee jerk reaction could have made things worse as i think i starved my already starving corals further. 2mos ago i was dosing 50ml of alk and 40ml of cal and had to dial the doser back to 35 and 25ml, b/c my levels were creapping up. i test ca and alk twice a week as a normal pratice so i have this in my log. i think around this time my corals stopped growing b/c they were starving, which prompted my ca and alk to rise as well as my po4. I am begining to subscribe to the theory that
SPS do need to feed and that lighting or in some circumstances fish poo may not be enough.
Here is what i have done since this issue started:
I cleaned my entire sump, all reactors, skimmer, return pump. (This resulted in a 25g water change. i did another 10g change this past weekend as well as my normal 5g twice a week regimen.
i reprogrammed my doser to spread dosing times out a little.
discontinued kalk (not sure if i'm gonna keep it this way old habits die hard)
Started feeding the fish more and the corals in particular over the last week. This is what i think has help more than anything else on this list. I increased my dosing of Seachem fuel by 50% a week and doubled the feeding of live phyto. i also bought 2 bags of live rotifers and fed one of them last saturday and the other last night. I finally checked my po4 last night after a week of heavy feeding only to find it much lower than i thought it would be. (.08) I will update this thread as the next weeks unfold.
Brent
