I just dont get my monti

[Duane Clark]

I'm at a loss. I am rather new to the hobby and have had my tank now for 3 months. It has a fairly standard/easy beginner community of coral frags (zoas, acans, frogspawn, Duncan, GSP, blue sympodium and a pocillipora)....all doing very well except my green monti. almost from day one I have struggled with it. In fact, the thing took such a nose dive about a month ago that I fragged the healthy portion and started over with it. found a good spot and it actually grew, added tissue and looked like it was out of the woods.

yesterday, however, it literally lost about a 1/4 in section of tissue (RTN) in less than 8 hours. My first thought was nudi's but I have looked (including late at night with light out) and see nothing. The tissue loss looks like it may have stopped (will know for sure later today I guess) but I cant explain what caused this. It's like I took one step forward and 2 steps back. My water parameters have been solid (ph - 8.1, alk - 9.3, calcium 460, magnesium 1260, sp gravity 1.025, temp 79). The only thing that changed was that the water flow from my return increased a bit after I cleaned the pump. Nothing is pointing directly at the coral so I cant imagine that being the cause. all the other corals look fine. I just don't get it.

 

[Krzydmnd]

Lighting? Do you have any pictures to share?

 

[Duane Clark]

Lighting? Do you have any pictures to share?

I will take one and post shortly. It may be. the frag was doing very well as I mentioned and then jut boom. lighting has not changed. The tank is a 14g nano with a nanobox mini tide M LED setup. I will add that some of the polyps in the dead area are starting to come back out this AM but the flesh around them of course is still gone. pics soon.

 

[Duane Clark]

Here is the pic. I have circled the area in question. sorry for quality...best I could get...its a small frag

 

[xilez]

Try bumping up your phosphate levels... when my montis start to go south its usually do to being near undetectable phos levels

 

[NickK]

Are you using Carbon or GFO?

It's really easy to strip all the nutrients out of the water with chemical filtration.

 

[Duane Clark]

Yeah I am using a chemipure elite which is carbon and gfo. I changed it out 2 weeks ago in fact. My phosphates are not detectable using a salifert test kit (lowest the kit goes is .o3). My nitrates are sitting at 5

 

[XNavyDiver]

Yeah I am using a chemipure elite which is carbon and gfo. I changed it out 2 weeks ago in fact. My phosphates are not detectable using a salifert test kit (lowest the kit goes is .o3). My nitrates are sitting at 5

My best guess is that this is your culprit.

 

[NickK]

My best guess is that this is your culprit.

I second that. Carbon and GFO can be too effective. Stop using the media and try Chaeto in your sump with a strong light on it. Chaeto seems to find that balance between leaving enough nutrients in your water for the SPS, but not enough for the microalgae.


You don't have to get crazy with the chaeto light. A compact florescent bulb with a cheap reflector will be fine for now.

 

[DSC reef]

How often do you feed the tank? Running GFO in a reactor compared to a bag of GFO are totally different as far as aggressive stripping of nutrients. Unless your nutrients have been low from the beggining, I can't see the bag of chemipure causing an issue. The coral looks like it could have caught a sweeper, are the euphyllia close by? Don't make changes to rapidly.

 

[Duane Clark]

How often do you feed the tank? Running GFO in a reactor compared to a bag of GFO are totally different as far as aggressive stripping of nutrients. Unless your nutrients have been low from the beggining, I can't see the bag of chemipure causing an issue. The coral looks like it could have caught a sweeper, are the euphyllia close by? Don't make changes to rapidly.

I dose 2.5 ml of phyto daily and feed the corals twice a week with reef frenzy. the euphyllia is across the tank (not a big tank mind you) but the flow that increased is sweeping in that direction. I don't know if it matters but the frogspawn is also splitting at the moment so I dont know if that makes them more aggressive or not. The closest neighbor to the monti is my yellowshade pocillipora which was added about a week ago.

 

[DSC reef]

Keep an eye on the pocillipora. They spread like crazy. You can remove the bag of chemipure but I don't think that's your issue IMO. Just keep feeding the tank normally and see how the montipora does.

 

[jda]

I don't find very low levels of phosphate all that troublesome unless they are being driven that low with GFO or LC. I would stop the GFO as well.

That monti does not need to eat any of that to thrive. Stressed corals probably won't try and feed anyway. That being said, none of it really hurts anything as long as your N and P on the backend stay reasonable.

 

[Duane Clark]

can change in flow cause such a rapid tissue loss? It occurred to me that I cleaned my return pump which increased flow in the tank quite a lot. as a result I adjusted my return nozzle and wave pump. The monti used to have quite a bit f flow over it but after my changes I noticed today that there was not much at all by the monti. for grins I have adjusted further and think I have a good set-up with more flow by the monti...I don't know. shot in the dark. more tissue has been lost today. its very rapid. everything else still looks great. ugh

 

[Duane Clark]

Well I think I am going to finally lose this monti. tissue death continues at a high rate. edges of tissue are brownish and then just white skeleton. It's been 3 months and this is my first casualty. I am going to try a red monti in the future but will take a break first before I try.

 

[Duane Clark]

I think I found the problem. The monti is still hanging around but lost quite a bit of tissue at the base. This is my fault and a lesson learned. I have not been calibrating my refractometer often enough and have been unwittingly slowly decreasing the specific gravity from 1.025 to 1.020 over the course of several weeks as a result. My guess is it is just the first coral that showed stress but ultimately other would follow. I decided to calibrate and it was reading high by .05! anyway, I have made the correction and am slowly raising the sp. gravity back over the next couple water changes.