Chalice turning white

[Stelioshah]

I have had this chalice in that spots for a few months already. It has definitely been slowly growing. It used to be completely green (apart from the orange mouth). In the last week is turned into a whitish-yellowish-green color in a spot above and one next to the mouth. I have slowly raised the light intensity, with the last raise being recently. What do you think? Is this due to intense lighting or due to low nutrients? My nitrates are at around 1ppm currently and phosphates at ~0.02ppm. At the white spot I can definitely see a small "step" in its flesh (as if some has melted away). Do you think I burnt it? I am trying to slowly raise my nutrients but whenever I do algae explodes.

Note that all of my lps have been extremely hungry recently expecially this chalice, extending feeders all day long.

 

[Dburr1014]

Could it have gotten stung by that coral right above it?

PO4 @ 0.02 is to low. What type of algae blooms? Do you have algae now at 0.02?

 

[Stelioshah]

Could it have gotten stung by that coral right above it?

PO4 @ 0.02 is to low. What type of algae blooms? Do you have algae now at 0.02?

The coral above is a ricordea mushroom, I have never seen it act aggresive like expelling its organs. I currently do not have a lot of algae and it is not spreading much. I usually get brown and green hair algae. At this state only the brown film algae is spreading on the glass, at the same time I have some green algae on a spot on my glass (a small amount) which I cannot scrape as if my phosphate are at like 0.5ppm, but it does not spread, due to my nutrients being low. If I dose even the slightest amount of phosphates, this green algae outcompetes the brown, and then it is really difficult for me to clean the glass. That's my main issue, I do not get strings of algae on the rocks, just ugly algae on the glass which is difficult to scrape.

I turned off my refugium light to help with nutrient raise because I noticed that my caulerpa and chaeto had grown huge. I cleaned completely almost every spot of algae on the glass and it does not come back quickly, but there still are a few spots which I just cannot scrape the algae off, it is so strong (in my refugium for example).

 

[Stelioshah]

Regarding my nutrients I am stuck in a loop. My nutrients are too low? No algae but coral growth is stunned. Do I raise my nutrients? Algae grows and the nutrients go back to zero, now coral growth is not only stunned, corals do also starve and slowly die. I am trying to help by dosing aminos at this point, I cannot find a way out of this loop. That's the reason my lps also do better than my sps, since I can spot feed them many times a week.

 

[Dburr1014]

Coraline is green.

Have you tried to
1) keep the refuge light on and pull half of the algae.
2) feed more to raise nutrients. Reef roids will help in the po4.

 

[Stelioshah]

Coraline is green.

Have you tried to
1) keep the refuge light on and pull half of the algae.
2) feed more to raise nutrients. Reef roids will help in the po4.

I have both purple and green:

This is my issue (this is in the refugium, I have something similar in a green algae version in the front of my tank). I cannot scrape this thing:

 

[Stelioshah]

Coraline is green.

Have you tried to
1) keep the refuge light on and pull half of the algae.
2) feed more to raise nutrients. Reef roids will help in the po4.

I have not tried removing macroalgae yet, I was controlling everything by changing the hours of light that the refugium was getting. Do you think I should trim it?

 

[Dburr1014]

I have not tried removing macroalgae yet, I was controlling everything by changing the hours of light that the refugium was getting. Do you think I should trim it?

Once you trim algae and throw it away, those nutrients are out of the system.
This is how most(everyone?) does it.

Have you tried a credit card/razor to scape it? It looks like that green dusting you get but it's hard to scrape?

 

[Stelioshah]

Once you trim algae and throw it away, those nutrients are out of the system.
This is how most(everyone?) does it.

Have you tried a credit card/razor to scape it? It looks like that green dusting you get but it's hard to scrape?

I tried a razor once before and I immediately scratched my glass (even though it was meant for glass-cleaning). Have not tried a credit card yet, I will try it today. This is the algae currently in the fuge (it is in the back of the aquarium), I have also noticed that coral healths seems to get better after water changes, even though nothing measurable is out of safe values before the water change. I read recently that caulerpa sometimes can stun coral growth, do you know anything about that?:

 

[Stelioshah]

Once you trim algae and throw it away, those nutrients are out of the system.
This is how most(everyone?) does it.

Have you tried a credit card/razor to scape it? It looks like that green dusting you get but it's hard to scrape?

The credit card actually works great, I have never thought about thatm thank you.

 

[Stelioshah]

I just noticed that there is a tiny hole at the white part of the chalice.. Could it be a new eye?

 

[Dburr1014]

My chalices start new eyes at the end and grow around until it looks as if the eye is moving to the middle.

It's probably peeling. Keep algae off it.

 

[Stelioshah]

My chalices start new eyes at the end and grow around until it looks as if the eye is moving to the middle.

It's probably peeling. Keep algae off it.

I will keep feeding it daily. It does not look good to me either, at least the white part seems to not be spreading.

 

[Stelioshah]

I have had this chalice in that spots for a few months already. It has definitely been slowly growing. It used to be completely green (apart from the orange mouth). In the last week is turned into a whitish-yellowish-green color in a spot above and one next to the mouth. I have slowly raised the light intensity, with the last raise being recently. What do you think? Is this due to intense lighting or due to low nutrients? My nitrates are at around 1ppm currently and phosphates at ~0.02ppm. At the white spot I can definitely see a small "step" in its flesh (as if some has melted away). Do you think I burnt it? I am trying to slowly raise my nutrients but whenever I do algae explodes.

Note that all of my lps have been extremely hungry recently expecially this chalice, extending feeders all day long.

The skin seems to be getting browner every day and poking holes, as if it rotting. I had a lobophyllia next to this chalice. Does this look like a sting to you guys? (the mouth is open because I fed it, it is not the typical mouth wide open stress response). The wound has not spread much but the wounded area has turned worse.

 

[Stelioshah]

As a final update to this, I just returned from a one month summer vacation to come accross stung corals everywhere. I found out that I have digitate hydroids. I didn't know what they were before so I didn't pay much attention. There is one lurking next to this chalice.

 

[Stelioshah]

My chalices start new eyes at the end and grow around until it looks as if the eye is moving to the middle.

It's probably peeling. Keep algae off it.

For reference these spots actually ended up turning into new mouths! That's what these tiny holes I was seeing were.

There was definitely something wrong with the coral because it started receding, and I messed things up even further by iodine dipping it. But the spots now are mouths. It may well could be that the skin died in these spots and the new skin that formed turned into mouths.

 

[Stelioshah]

I know that it looks bad, but believe me it was wayyyy worse. For starters it had lost ALL of its green color and was deflated 24/7, it has recovered greatly. I can see some small feeders coming off of the right "wound" so it definitely is a mouth, I even watched it feed and there is a third mouth above the main mouth of a frag which is currently not visible (it is not fully developed yet but it responds to feeding as well).

 

[Dburr1014]

I know that it looks bad, but believe me it was wayyyy worse. For starters it had lost ALL of its green color and was deflated 24/7, it has recovered greatly. I can see some small feeders coming off of the right "wound" so it definitely is a mouth, I even watched it feed and there is a third mouth above the main mouth of a frag which is currently not visible (it is not fully developed yet but it responds to feeding as well).

Recovering is good. That means it's growing and should continue.
Nice job!