am i starving my chalice?

[lars]

I have around twenty chalice in my 120 and from the looks of them they appear happy. They have great color but every so often one chalice by itself will start loosing flesh. One end will start peeling off real slow. The process will take days or weeks to peel completely off. I've only actually lost two chalice frags like this but it has happened to a few more that it only went so far on. Those chalice never loose color and keep feeding at night. The tank is mostly sps and all my parameters are right on. I will say I don't really feed them often. So do you think they just need to be fed? Thanks for any replys.

 

[fab1971]

The usual reasons behind chalices dying or receding, are sudden changes in alkalinity or too much light (bleaching). I know several people that don't directly feed their chalices and have problems, while on the other hand people that feed a lot and still have the same problems. So while feeding is beneficial and can help with growth, I don't think that withholding food would starve or kill them. As long as you have some fish in there, they should still be getting some nutrients from the waste and smaller organisms that occupy your tank. Maybe they are stinging eachother, or some kind of chemical warfare going on that you're not seeing. I have about 60-70 chalices in my tank and there are always one or two that just never do well, or sometimes unfortunately die. Sometimes they aren't aguacultured, so they fall succeptible to disease or can not adjust to life in our tanks. There's nothing you can do to prevent that. Since they are collected in different areas, their environment can vary greatly, from flow, lighting, temperature and other reasons. Good luck with the rest of yours and hope you find whatever is wrong.

 

[lars]

Thanks fab for the reply. I was starting to think I wouldn't get any replys even though the site seems to be full of chalice pros. I will keep a better eye on my alk through different times of the day to make sure its not fluctuating. I maypve th apart a bit also in case of a little chemical warfare. Thanks again.

 

[fab1971]

no problem. Any chemical warfare would be staged by softies. Usual suspects would be leathers, shrooms and such. I had a bad batch of alk at one time and since I was dosing late at night and testing during the day, I wasn't catching the fluctuations. A doser would have saved me a lot of trouble but I'm more of a hands on kind of guy. A controller would have also warned me but of course they are a bit too expensive for me. The alk was raising up to 10-11 and during the day was going back to 8.5-9. It wasn't until I tested in the middle of the night that I had found out and by then several of my smaller frags didn't survive. I changed to dosing several times throughout the day and now test more often, to avoid any further mistakes.