Chalice question

XNavyDiver · Oct 16, 2017

What would cause a chalice to literally disassemble like this? The skin is flaking off like someone who had a sunburn.

saltyfilmfolks · Oct 16, 2017

IMO , a lot of things. Rapid alk drop or increase , ph swings , Chem warfare.

Extended low nutints.

Dana Riddle · Oct 16, 2017

Maybe two other things - some sort of predator in the later case. The first photo looks like (maybe) a bacterial infection after an injury. Did a loss of coloration precede these events? I had a chalice loss tissue after bleaching due to high light. I moved it to lower light and higher flow and it is doing nicely today.

XNavyDiver · Oct 16, 2017

I've taken a hands off approach for a couple of months now. No3 been around 10-20ppm for a couple of months now, po4 right around .1. Alk has been steady @ 8.5-9.0 for some time now. No dosing. .5tsp of kalkwasser I'm the 5 gallon ATO is about it. I test on a daily basis, been pretty diligent about that. Refugium has garf grunge and cheato. Cheato not growing though.
Coraline algae growth has been good. Lights peak at 45%, so tuned down.

XNavyDiver · Oct 16, 2017

Dana Riddle said:
Maybe two other things - some sort of predator in the later case. The first photo looks like (maybe) a bacterial infection after an injury. Did a loss of coloration precede these events? I had a chalice loss tissue after bleaching due to high light. I moved it to lower light and higher flow and it is doing nicely today.

The Hollywood chalice has been in the tank from the start and has been a trouper from the start. Looked at it just two days ago and the pics tell you what I saw. The other is a JF chalice and it's newer (about 1 month). Both are at the bottom at around 100 par. Neither is within reach of any other aggressive corals, so I can't see chemical warfare going on. Another curve ball thrown my way by this tank....
Forgot to say: no predators in the tank. Some chromis, a firefish, diamond goby, citron goby, royal gramma.

saltyfilmfolks · Oct 16, 2017

The chalice is the stumper. I've put those through heck.

Curve balls come free with the sale of any tank and coral.

XNavyDiver · Oct 16, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
The chalice is the stumper. I've put those through heck.

Curve balls come free with the sale of any tank and coral.

Just another stumper in a very long line of stumpers for me. I've heard the same thing salty about chalice corals, that's why I put a couple in as my tank will kill any acro (really the only kind of coral I'm interested in keeping in my tank really) and put them in for just some kind of color at the request of my wife. I thought, ok, I can't possibly kill a chalice coral.... wow. Really at this point I'm pretty sure xenia and aptasia would die in this tank.

Dana Riddle · Oct 16, 2017

I was thinking more of a predatory snail, nudi, copepods, etc. Perhaps an arrival with a recent addition. That spottiness looks like a trail of a snail/nudi. Maybe.

XNavyDiver · Oct 16, 2017

Dana Riddle said:
I was thinking more of a predatory snail, nudi, copepods, etc. Perhaps an arrival with a recent addition. That spottiness looks like a trail of a snail/nudi. Maybe.

Oh, well that didn't occur to me. I've never seen anything like that in my tank yet. Last addition was a couple JF frags, including that smaller chalice, all of which went through the usual Bayer dip. Could something like that survive a 15 minute dip of Bayer?

Salty1962 · Oct 16, 2017

I've had flat worms munch on chalices before. Found one, Leopard I think, in my ATS affluent cleaning it today. Fortunately the mess was too small for it to get out.

Dana Riddle · Oct 16, 2017

Eggs will sometimes survive treatments that kill adults. All speculation on my part, but that spottiness looks suspicious, at least to me.

saltyfilmfolks · Oct 16, 2017

@XNavyDiver hey pests aside, do you have a build thread? We could make a house call.

Ps. Try sacrificing a lamb. Studded with garlic. White wine reduction sauce with basil and rosemary. None of that mint jelly Voo Doo stuff. Bleh.

XNavyDiver · Oct 16, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
@XNavyDiver hey pests aside, do you have a build thread? We could make a house call.

Ps. Try sacrificing a lamb. Studded with garlic. White wine reduction sauce with basil and rosemary. None of that mint jelly Voo Doo stuff. Bleh.

I don't have build thread. I was under the impression that people posted build threads while still in the process of building their system.
I posted a few pics of my build when I first joined in the meet and greet I think back in April. Now I'm so embarrassed and discouraged that the thought of posting pictures of my disaster...er, I mean tank (excuse me, Freudian slip there!) makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
I'll keep limping along. I mean, what choice do I have? Give up? That's not an option. All I do is read this site. There hasn't been an advise thread or article on this site made in the last 6 to 7 months that I haven't read and absorbed. Seriously. I really think much of my problem has stemmed from my use of dry rock. What I was hoping to avoid was nasties like aptasia, which of course, invaded my tank anyway.
My tank has algae so it has nutrients. I test daily and test results say things are pretty stable. Yet nothing improves. This makes me suspicious of my test kits. So I buy more and different kits. I've got every test that red sea, salifert and Hanna makes including their calibration viles. I've replaced all rodi filters, twice in 6 months. Got a tds meter that has never read above 1 ever. The minute it did, I replaced all the 6 stages.
Today I sent in a sample of my water to Triton. I'm actually hoping to find some weird heavy metal in my water column. The magic bullet. But from my experience the odds of that are slim.
I feel like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, running for my life with a hole drilled through my front tooth. Not at all what I imagined when I began back in March. Lol!

saltyfilmfolks · Oct 16, 2017

XNavyDiver said:
I don't have build thread. I was under the impression that people posted build threads while still in the process of building their system.
I posted a few pics of my build when I first joined in the meet and greet I think back in April. Now I'm so embarrassed and discouraged that the thought of posting pictures of my disaster...er, I mean tank (excuse me, Freudian slip there!) makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
I'll keep limping along. I mean, what choice do I have? Give up? That's not an option. All I do is read this site. There hasn't been an advise thread or article on this site made in the last 6 to 7 months that I haven't read and absorbed. Seriously. I really think much of my problem has stemmed from my use of dry rock. What I was hoping to avoid was nasties like aptasia, which of course, invaded my tank anyway.
My tank has algae so it has nutrients. I test daily and test results say things are pretty stable. Yet nothing improves. This makes me suspicious of my test kits. So I buy more and different kits. I've got every test that red sea, salifert and Hanna makes including their calibration viles. I've replaced all rodi filters, twice in 6 months. Got a tds meter that has never read above 1 ever. The minute it did, I replaced all the 6 stages.
Today I sent in a sample of my water to Triton. I'm actually hoping to find some weird heavy metal in my water column. The magic bullet. But from my experience the odds of that are slim.
I feel like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man, running for my life with a hole drilled through my front tooth. Not at all what I imagined when I began back in March. Lol!

Hahaha.
I wanted a fish tank. I found myself staring at the computer at 3am looking at molecules.

If you want , revive the thread, or start a what the Heck thread and tag me. When it doesn't work is most fascinating to me. Alge got that, cyano got it, nothing?, weird.

Acros. Did nothing. One day, the beat down abused half gone victims I owned just starterd to grow. I did nothing different. Didn't even dose ca alk. NSW. Alk is 7.

It's much more complex than we realize.

Fishfinder · Oct 16, 2017

Did you grow that chalice out or buy the whole colony?

XNavyDiver · Oct 16, 2017

Fishfinder said:
Did you grow that chalice out or buy the whole colony?

The large Hollywood stunner was the first frag I ever bought. I thought it was a monti back then! What can I say, I'm an idiot. It has done well and grew out, until just a few days ago and is now commiting suicide along with the Jason Fox bling bling cyphastrea.