Help my montipora!

[KMench]

Any ideas? The tank was fallow for 76 days up until last week due to ich. Could it just be low nutrients?

 

[XNavyDiver]

Any ideas? The tank was fallow for 76 days up until last week due to ich. Could it just be low nutrients?

It could be. How long has the tank been up?

 

[KMench]

Tanks been up since April. I started it with ~80 lbs of "live sand", 80 lb of dry rock, and 40 lb of live rock. I pruned my calperula in the sump yesterday pretty significantly, the fact that it continues to grow, as well as the algae in the tank shows there must be at least some nutrients. I gave a frag of the montipora to a fellow reef club member and his actually started to bleach too. He dipped it with no nudis or anything else.... His tank has also been up ~2 years, full of fish, good looking tank.

 

[XNavyDiver]

Looking at your pics of your frags, it almost looks like you've got cyano in spots that mat over what appears to be gha. I can't be sure from the pic, and I don't want to say the D word. Does your CUC eat it?

 

[KMench]

Yeah, my CUC eats the algae. I have lots of bristleworms, some hermits, turbo snail, and conch that tear it up.

 

[XNavyDiver]

Yeah, my CUC eats the algae. I have lots of bristleworms, some hermits, turbo snail, and conch that tear it up.

Ok, good news. My only guess really is that perhaps you po4 bottomed out during your fallow period or fluctuated enough to effect your monti.

 

[KMench]

I currently have one fish in there (leopard wrasse) and two more in QT who will be added in a few weeks. Is there anything else to do beside feed and add fish? I have't even been running my skimmer 24/7 because of the low nutrients. I've only been running it overnight to minimize pH swings due to photosynthesis and CO2 production.

 

[XNavyDiver]

Honestly I wouldn't do anything except what your doing. Adding more fish would be a good thing. I'm not experienced in dosing phosphate, but many do. And if you went that route, I'd think about upgrading to a Hanna ULR checker first. If there's anything left of your monti, you could try fragging it to save whats left.

 

[KMench]

I added the wrasse only on Sunday. I doubt one fish really makes an appreciable difference, but maybe it'll help considering I trimmed a lot of macroalgae too.

 

[KMench]

Thanks for your input @XNavyDiver , its always nice to have a second opinion.

 

[gashunk]

When was the last time you’d done a water change?

 

[KMench]

Biweekly. So I did one last weekend. 10G change into 90G total volume is about 11%. I always make sure to match SG and temp

 

[madweazl]

It isn't a lack of nutrients as you have plenty of algae growing; this idea seems to get largely blown out of proportion. Do you know what the alkalinity was prior to the water change? LiveAquaria's salt was mixing up at around 9.5 for me and other member with the same batch # (doesn't mean all were like this). Reef Crystals usually mixes at around 13 dKH as well so I suspect your test kits aren't telling you the full story.

In regard to lighting, did you notice any brownish material coming off of it initially (expelling zoothanthellae)? Mine (red monti caps) start puking it up around 250 PAR but are fine literally anywhere below that though.

 

[KMench]

I didn’t notice any brown discharge. The large monti that died was much lower in the tank. Definitely wasn’t getting 250+ par. I can recheck the dka when I get home. I thought eight seemed low based on reef crystals statements.

 

[KMench]

I wouldn’t imagine that a 10% change could cause enough of a dka swing to bleach corals? Especially when only biweekly. ;Bookworm

 

[madweazl]

I wouldn’t imagine that a 10% change could cause enough of a dka swing to bleach corals? Especially when only biweekly. ;Bookworm

At about 10%, Reef Crystals typically raises your dKH by about .3 which wouldn't impact the corals.

Edit: and there is nothing wrong with running 8.0 dKH; that is what a lot of people with SPS dominant tanks run. 7-11 seems to be generally accepted as fine.