Well I lost 3 leathers. Two were from the new batch. The first to go was a big giant yellow toadstool. It smelled coming out of the bag and the bag it was in was cloudy so I didn't have high hopes for it. But it seemed ok and all it's polyps came out. Then my husband noticed this brown jelly like stuff and I talked to steve-s about it. After syphoning, we saw that it was rotting really bad. So I go to take it out to try and
frag it and it falls on the 3 seperate rocks it was attached too...I had to grab it with both hands to keep it together, but I still ended up gettting chunks floating around. Nothing was left to
frag. Then my other new coral, the figner leather started looking like it was shedding, but it got real ugly real quick and when I woke up to
frag it it was covered in brown stuff too. I had a small leather
frag that I have had for quite some time that was close to it, and it was also covered in the brown stuff and was complete mush. Then my torch suffered a fate of my own ignorance. I had it proped up on a platform type rock, but steve told me it should not be touching anything, where it was rubbing it had brown jelly too (but that was bacterial I believe steve said). Only one branch was affected. I was able to syphon it clean since fragging it proved near impossible. Not my Xenia is coming unattached on certain stalks. My clove polyps have shriveled up. Only a few seem heathly. I took them out, dipped them and cleaned them gently but it does not appear that it had much effect. I still have my flowerpot, zoo's, paly's, mushrooms, ricordia, colt coral, small leather
frag (I think it's a baby toadstool) but it has periods that it doesn't look so great, orange sponge, plate coral (but it is getting a white tint 8O ), star polyps...and I think thats it. Here are my parameters.
ph 8.1 (this afternoon) however, I have been battling low
ph,
alk 5 meq/l, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrates 15ppm. Please note that I have been doing daily water changes of between 15-25 gallons of water
. I don't know why I have nitrates. I have a
DSB, a 30 fuge with rock rubble (It seems to be growing every algea known to man good or bad
) I am thinking of taking the rock rubble out of the bioball chamber to see if that helps...other than that I am clueless.
