Hammer coral skeleton breaking down.

[maxwell50]

I got a hammer coral frag few months back. It’s doing great but it’s skeleton started to break down since I got it. Any idea what it could be? ph8+
alk7.8
Cal 415
Mag 1305

 

[King Turkey]

yeah what phosphate are you at? you have a nitrate reading? how old Is the system? do you run anything like carbon or gfo?

 

[maxwell50]

yeah what phosphate are you at? you have a nitrate reading? how old Is the system? do you run anything like carbon or gfo?

The tank is over 1 year mark. My phosphate is at .07 and nitrate about25 . I did start running GFO about a month ago because of cyano and I run carbon bag.

 

[King Turkey]

For nitrate that's sorta high for that old tank try to bring it down to 5. Phosphate .07 is not bad. Try some dr Tim's waste away it helped me alot getting my system in check. You could try a coral dip to help the skeleton out a little.

 

[King Turkey]

Do you have a skimmer or a refugium with macro algae?

 

[rkpetersen]

The dead part of the skeleton, not covered with tissue, isn't important. As long as the living tissue is healthy and expanded during the day, you're fine. You could cut it off the frag plug above the eroded area and reattach it to a new plug or rockwork, if you don't like the look. Also you should try an increase your alk some, up over 8, and I'd also raise your mag to 1350-1400.

 

[Thales]

That is the old skeleton, no reason to make changes based on this observation

 

[Billdogg]

The dead part of the skeleton, not covered with tissue, isn't important. As long as the living tissue is healthy and expanded during the day, you're fine. You could cut it off the frag plug above the eroded area and reattach it to a new plug or rockwork, if you don't like the look. Also you should try an increase your alk some, up over 8, and I'd also raise your mag to 1350-1400.

^^^This^^^

Other than your alkalinity being a bit low (still nowhere near low enough to affect the coral skeleton) your parameters seem to be fine. Lowering the Nitrates a bit won't hurt, but too low on either nitrates or phosphates and you will run in to cyano/diatom issues.

 

[maxwell50]

I run skimmer and had a five with chaeto but it didn’t grow well so I got chaeto reactor. I think 25 might be false test. I never had good luck with salifert nitrate test. I’m going to try to increase my dosing

 

[Thales]

I run skimmer and had a five with chaeto but it didn’t grow well so I got chaeto reactor. I think 25 might be false test. I never had good luck with salifert nitrate test. I’m going to try to increase my dosing

If you don’t trust your tests you should prolly not increase dosing.