HELP!! Green/teal Birdsnest loosing polyps and maybe bleaching...

[mrvincent]

Hi guys, my new birdsnest start loosing his healty looking polyps, and thoses one in the middle are so tiny and all white... What does that mean ? And also I think the mid part of the coral is too much white...

Setup: 20gal with R420R 60w, 50g skimmer, 20p LR and 20P LS

Alk: stable at 8.5 dKH°
Ca: was low (350) at begining, but I just raised it to 430-450 now.
Mg: Unknown because for a stupid reason I broken my test.

I placed the coral where's there med/high water flow on top of my LR.

Some photos:

Any idea ? My frogspawn and zoas look happy.

 

[bribo12]

Did you light acclimate it? Could be getting fried if you didn't.

 

[bribo12]

It looks to be bleaching. I'd move it lower

 

[mrvincent]

No, the LFS are using the same light fixture than my... I i run it 8 hrs/day, and it peak at 80%W and 60%B, openine and closing with higher blue than whites.

Should I put it lower in high flow or in moderate ?

 

[bribo12]

Stick it lower in medium to high flow. Always light acclimate because even if it comes from the same lighting it could be higher or lower in the dealers tank and thus receiving different par. I know I've killed acros that were under 400 watt halides because I didn't light acclimate them to my leds.

 

[mrvincent]

Ok, I'll try this... I've put it on the sand, the white parts recieve shadows from the upper parts that seems happy. I've lowered overall % of the program on my lights.

Now looks like this

 

[mrvincent]

Do you know if peppermint shrimps are compatible with black brittle stars ? and do brittle stars move the rocks ?

 

[bribo12]

Yeah it didn't look to be dying just really bleaching. Leave it there and then move it up over a week-week and a half

 

[bribo12]

Do you know if peppermint shrimps are compatible with black brittle stars ? and do brittle stars move the rocks ?

Should be fine and no they don't

 

[mrvincent]

He look really poor colors, loosing little calcium strates with polyps on the middle... How much lighting time/day corals need ?

 

[bribo12]

I run my lights 11 hours a day, but I'm trying to lower it to 9-10 now.

 

[mrvincent]

Should be fine and no they don't

Ah ok... I plan for a peppermint soon, I've noticed few tiny tiny aiptaisia strigning my zoa frag. I killed the bigger one with aptasia-x, awesome product !

 

[mrvincent]

I run my lights 11 hours a day, but I'm trying to lower it to 9-10 now.

Kk me it's from 16:00 to 00:00

 

[mrvincent]

I think I will frag my frag, it's dying for sure, all the mid part is white, no polyps. How to frag it ?

Do i need to put it on a plug or not ? I plan to cut off the white part with cutters, and put some super glue on the sides without putting it on a frag... Will this work ? I'll send you a pictures in 4 hours...

 

[kdpuffer]

When did you raise your calcium and how fast. You need make sure you do things gradually especially with sps coral in the tank.

 

[mrvincent]

When did you raise your calcium and how fast. You need make sure you do things gradually especially with sps coral in the tank.

I'm not sure (I'm at work) but I think I use Kent Turbo-Calcium. I play a lot computer, and during loadings I just drop few little round calcium particles directly into the HOB protein skimmer, so it dissolve progressively. So Probably I raised my calcium from something like 380 to 500 in 6 hours. I know 500 is too much, and now I know I must dose less to maintain 450... Is it too much (the raising speed I mean).

That's a new tank, parameters are not so much stable, it's hard to keep same values between WCs... 20g... But for the first three days I had this SPS, the calcium was stable at 350, but the coral bleached.

I didn't know about light acclimatation, I just saw on the web: High lights, med-high flow... So I've put it in the middle of the tank, where's I think there's the more PAR.

It's a very small frag I bought, and I fragged it into 5 parts, throwing away the part with the white skeleton. Some parts seems to recover and some seems to be dying...

 

[mrvincent]

Some part I fragged start to recover the orange thing on the calcium skeleton, and some parts just lost all polyps. So I crushed dead parts and mixed it with the substrate for calcium. Good idea ?

 

[TommyP]

It seems like you raised it too much, too fast. Slow changes are best. Alk seems a little low. Want to be around 9-12dkh depending. But, it was steady. Did this bleach before or after you changed your calc?

 

[mrvincent]

It seems like you raised it too much, too fast. Slow changes are best. Alk seems a little low. Want to be around 9-12dkh depending. But, it was steady. Did this bleach before or after you changed your calc?

I bought it, added it to the tank at
Ca 350
Alk 8
MG 1400

Then I raised the alk+ca to 10 and ca to 500. I didn't know how much to add products, this is not written. Now I know how to dose.

Now alk is 9, and ca 450. I fragged he birdsnest, and crushed the parts that donesn't have no more polyps. I got 5 live frags from this fragging, 1 dying, and 4 that seems to recover...

What's the white skeleton made of ? What's exactly the skin color thing that cover that's skeleton ?

I have them for 2-3 weeks now...

 

[bribo12]

It seems like you raised it too much, too fast. Slow changes are best. Alk seems a little low. Want to be around 9-12dkh depending. But, it was steady. Did this bleach before or after you changed your calc?

I disagree, my alk remains between 7-8 and all 3 of my birdnest grow like crazy. After all natural sea water alkalinity is 7.