Are elegance corals particularly sensitive to ALK/Calc/Mg changes?
Susceptible to disease related to algae bloom?
The TL;DNR:
8 days ago I added a "medium" sized elegance coral to my 3 month old tank.
About a half day or less after introduction, the coral appeared to thrive. Fully extended, and has colored up beautifully. Fantastic looking coral, all by itself on the bottom of the tank directly under a kessil A360WE, surrounded by rock but getting what appeared to me perfect flow for it.
Yesterday towards the end of the day after dosing (see below) I noticed that the tentacles looked a little off. "Sickly". Not something noticeable upon casual observation, but since I spend a lot of time looking at my tank and have a pretty good eye, it just looked like something wasn't right.
Today, so far, it is "out" but barely, meaning I can see the shell, etc. It has a slightly swollen look to it and the tentacles aren't extended as normal.
I have been slowly increasing my parameters which were low (ALK/Calc/Mg). I'm testing twice a day (before dosing and after dosing), at one point, my ALK did go up about .5 dkh. I've actually been trying to increase it that much per day, but always failing to reach that big a change (I'd rather fail than overshoot that). I've gone from 6.6 to 8.3 (targeting 9) over the course of a week. I have a number of beginner SPS (eg. purple stylophora), thus the quest for higher parameters. pH has gone from 8.15 to 8.25 over the week, salinity is stable (35), etc. AFAIC, everything looks good. As I have increased my parameters, the other corals have colored up well and showing some growth. At one point a forest fire digitada wasn't looking so happy, but that has come back to normal.
I've also had an algae bloom which had started shortly before introducing the elegance coral. Somewhat cloudy water during the middle part of the day, but in the last two days, all of this has gotten a lot better. The only thing I've done to combat the uglies has been to add 5 snails (had no CUC previously). The snails don't seem to do much IMO. Sure, they eat. But the bloom seems to be going away on its own. I haven't tested phosphate in awhile but that has always been low, nitrates were 10, last I checked a few days ago down to 2.5. My theory is the algae has burned off a lot of the nitrates.
Susceptible to disease related to algae bloom?
The TL;DNR:
8 days ago I added a "medium" sized elegance coral to my 3 month old tank.
About a half day or less after introduction, the coral appeared to thrive. Fully extended, and has colored up beautifully. Fantastic looking coral, all by itself on the bottom of the tank directly under a kessil A360WE, surrounded by rock but getting what appeared to me perfect flow for it.
Yesterday towards the end of the day after dosing (see below) I noticed that the tentacles looked a little off. "Sickly". Not something noticeable upon casual observation, but since I spend a lot of time looking at my tank and have a pretty good eye, it just looked like something wasn't right.
Today, so far, it is "out" but barely, meaning I can see the shell, etc. It has a slightly swollen look to it and the tentacles aren't extended as normal.
I have been slowly increasing my parameters which were low (ALK/Calc/Mg). I'm testing twice a day (before dosing and after dosing), at one point, my ALK did go up about .5 dkh. I've actually been trying to increase it that much per day, but always failing to reach that big a change (I'd rather fail than overshoot that). I've gone from 6.6 to 8.3 (targeting 9) over the course of a week. I have a number of beginner SPS (eg. purple stylophora), thus the quest for higher parameters. pH has gone from 8.15 to 8.25 over the week, salinity is stable (35), etc. AFAIC, everything looks good. As I have increased my parameters, the other corals have colored up well and showing some growth. At one point a forest fire digitada wasn't looking so happy, but that has come back to normal.
I've also had an algae bloom which had started shortly before introducing the elegance coral. Somewhat cloudy water during the middle part of the day, but in the last two days, all of this has gotten a lot better. The only thing I've done to combat the uglies has been to add 5 snails (had no CUC previously). The snails don't seem to do much IMO. Sure, they eat. But the bloom seems to be going away on its own. I haven't tested phosphate in awhile but that has always been low, nitrates were 10, last I checked a few days ago down to 2.5. My theory is the algae has burned off a lot of the nitrates.
It's actually looking better as time has gone on this afternoon- even since I posted. It's still just partially open but doesn't have this weird swollen thing going on, and I can't really describe but it but the tentacles and color looks a lot better- it doesn't have the sickly pale I was seeing throughout the day here previously.
