Jingle Bells Cyphastrea Lost all color

[Noahs Home Zoo]

Ladies and gents, I need some advice. I have a Jingle Bells Cyphastrea that went into the tank on Thursday with a ton of other coral. I have tried him in medium flow, high flow, low flow. The lights are at around 20% on both blues and white. I'm using a brand new 32 inch SBox basic for lighting at a foot off the tank. I have been running the blues for 6-7 hours and the whites for 3 hours each day. After acclimation it perked up for the first day and the colors were all evenly dispersed. Then yesterday I noticed that half of the green had turned to a brownish color. And today it has spread to the entire thing. It is the only one of 25 corals added yesterday that is having issues. I need help in knowing where to put it at.
Water flow in yellow, red is where I have tried him at. The far right spot doesn't have a ton of flow or light. Spot two gets medium light, and a side action water with out getting blasted directly. Spot three is direct flow. The information I have found says they like medium to high flow, with medium light. All parameters in the tank are normal. 78.5F, 460 calc, 1600 mg, 14 alk, 8.2 ph, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, 10ppm nitrate, and 1.0255 salinity. And to reiterate everything else in the tank is doing Awesome! I don't want to lose one.

Day one

Day two

Day Three (just now)

 

[John3]

Alk At 14 seems high. I like running my alk higher around 11. From past experience if I went above 12 I started to see bad reactions from my corals. Browning sometimes means not enough light. You might be dealing with more than 1 issue here.

 

[trido]

Parameters are far from normal. Alk of 14 and calcium of 460 is way too high. Your alk should be between 7-11. If you've added 25 corals yesterday and only one is doing poorly, you're doing just fine.

 

[Noahs Home Zoo]

Sounds like a 15% water change is in my future. And sadly the alkalinity is high due to the water I initially used to cycle the tank with a month and a half ago.its been steadily going down. I will go get more RO water tomorrow and do another change.

 

[smiley28]

can you test par? Sounds like a combo of parameters and par.

Looking a little more and I’m guessing the par has to be very low. Also it could take much longer for low par to effect other coral.

 

[Noahs Home Zoo]

No PAR meter And the nearest fish store is 2 hours away. Should I bump up the light intensity a bit more?

 

[smiley28]

Can you just place the frag higher?
Actually I see you got a lot of sps and I guess they will let you know in several days(browning) to a couple weeks(rtn). I’m curious what @saltyfilmfolks would think?

 

[Noahs Home Zoo]

Done. Its now at the highest point in the tank.

 

[happyhourhero]

So I find this coral to like LOW light and moderate flow. I also find it to be a pretty sensitive coral but it can be brought back. I would place it low and also try and get your alk down. Do it slowly but I don’t know many hard corals that enjoy alk that high.

 

[happyhourhero]

Just to add: here is a pic of mine. About 3” off the bottom. You can see the original plug is all dead. This is from when it was up higher and it did what yours did. It is also only growing down into the shadow (a lot) and off to the sides although the rock nem is likely playing a part here. There is al least as much of it actively growing in the shadow as you can see in this pic.

Edited to add I also run SB Reef lights.

 

[John3]

I think your a little early for adding corals in. As I have been told a lot by people in this hobby nothing good happens overnight. What are the other corals you added?

I don’t know anything about your light fixture but you should be able to go higher on the blues. You might be fine with the white intensity. You will prob want to review what others are doing with the same lights.

 

[Noahs Home Zoo]

I record everything
I added :
CC Blue Eye Leptastrea
PolypPalooza Uber Green Tor
PolypPalooza Green on Green Frogspawn
PolypPalooza Pinkurple Hammer
PolypPalooza Pink Eye Favia
PolypPalooza Green Star Polyp
CC Mr. Freeze Leptoseris
PolypPalooza CC Jingle Bells Cyphastrea
PolypPalooza Minty Fresh Maze Brain
PolypPalooza Ultra Blasto
PolypPalooza Blue Sympodium
PolypPalooza CC Sinatras
PolypPalooza Geminis
PolypPalooza Awesome Orange Paly
PolypPalooza Tyree Red Dragon
Setosa Monti
PolypPalooza Milka Stylo
PolypPalooza CC Superfuzz Horrida
PolypPalooza CC Superfuzz Horrida
PolypPalooza CC Needle in a Haystack
PolypPalooza ORA Pink and Green Damicornis
PolypPalooza ORA Pink and Green Damicornis
PolypPalooza ORA Spongodes
Chemical Bahama Combo

 

[Noahs Home Zoo]

I fell pray to the quick bid and low prices....And then spent a lot of time figuring out how to arrange these in the tank to maximize survival. And yes I agree that I was to quick. And should have waited for winter to end before taking a trip to the nearest reef store. I should have stayed away from the Sponsor section of this site before Christmas...since then I have been measuring everything every day. The alkalinity was higher and has been slowly coming down. I have been doing a 10% water change every 4 to 5 days. My calcium levels were at 380 before I dosed...and my inexperience ended up raising it higher then it should have been. So another water change should pull the calcium levels down for now. And will need to continue water change till the alkalinity comes down.

 

[XNavyDiver]

I agree with those saying lower light. My cyphastrea likes lower light. I would not turn the intensity up on the lights. I would let the alk slowly drop to 7-8 dKH. I looks like a very new tank and needs to mature. It also looks like you started it with dry rock, which makes it even more imparitive you let your tank mature. Sps doesn't react well to young unstable tanks with dry rock. I know this from experience. For comparison, it was at least 7 months before most sps and especially acropora would simply survive in my tank much less thrive. It wasn't until every surface of my pukani rock was covered in coralline algae that sps corals survived in my tank for more than a few weeks.
I'm not sure how old your tank is but looks like a very young tank that hasn't yet gone through its ugly phase yet. Until then don't let you nutrients drop to undetectable and lower your alk would be my suggestion.
Best of luck to you!

 

[Z-man]

Personally, in my opinion, adding 25 pieces into what appears to be a new tank is suicide for the pieces. What size tank? Is there an equal # of live rock/ gallons? How long has it been running? I don't believe this is the problem with the Jingle Bells specifically. I have had the best success with cyphastrea close to the top with medium flow. I run 14k MH and ReefBrite XHO.

 

[smiley28]

The thing is I’m concerned with the par levels in general.

 

[Noahs Home Zoo]

now I have that queasy feeling in my gut. The tank is 1 and a half months old. And now I haven't gone through the "Ugly" phase. Watching the big 7 right now Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, PH, MG, ALk, Calcium. Is there anything else I can test for?

 

[Noahs Home Zoo]

Personally, in my opinion, adding 25 pieces into what appears to be a new tank is suicide for the pieces. What size tank? Is there an equal # of live rock/ gallons? How long has it been running? I don't believe this is the problem with the Jingle Bells specifically. I have had the best success with cyphastrea close to the top with medium flow. I run 14k MH and ReefBrite XHO.

A 40G Breeder with a 20 gallon Sump. 20lbs of live rock. Month and a half.

 

[Z-man]

A 40G Breeder with a 20 gallon Sump. 20lbs of live rock. Month and a half.

Again, just my opinion, too much too fast without enough live rock. I would add another 20# of LIVE rock and not add anything for 2 months at this point. Add minimal amounts of supplements and just let the tank equalize. As XNavyDiver said, it takes a tank about 7 months to a year to stabilize well enough to allow sps to thrive.

Best advice I can give is patience...A lot of patience

 

[John3]

For water your going to need to find the numbers you want and then work on keeping them stable. Personally calcium at 460 is fine but for others that may be too high. I only keep some of the easier sps and mostly lps.

As I said I dont know your light. 20% just seems low to me. How are the other corals doing? Specifically how about the other sps corals?

Something to think about. If your calcium was 380 and you dosed it up to 460 that means your alk was likely a lot higher than 14 before you dosed since dosing the calcium would lower the alk. The instability in the water parameters alone are going to give your corals a fit.

I wish there was an easy fix but there really isn’t. What I can tell you is that you will learn a lot from this experience and this forum is such a huge wealth of knowledge. So your in the right place.