Mystery need help. All montiporas dying.

[ninjamyst]

All my montiporas are dying and loosing flesh and polyps. My acros are doing fine. LPS doing fine. Softies doing fine.

Recent changes:
- Uses phosphate-e to drop po4 from 1.2 to .4 over the span of a few weeks
- Started dosing elimi-np to keep po4 down

Parameters
Alk 8
Ca 490
PO4 .4
NO3 25
Salinity 1.025

My first thought is blame it on the PO4 drop but my acros are doing fine and even coloring up. Funny thing is I would move a frag of digitata to my nano tank with an even lower PO4 and the frag would have polyps out within 24 hours.

There has to be something that I am not able to test that is causing only montiporas to die??? My purple Stylo is also affected.

Tank been up for almost 2 years now.

 

[Uncle99]

All my montiporas are dying and loosing flesh and polyps. My acros are doing fine. LPS doing fine. Softies doing fine.

Recent changes:
- Uses phosphate-e to drop po4 from 1.2 to .4 over the span of a few weeks
- Started dosing elimi-np to keep po4 down

Parameters
Alk 8
Ca 490
PO4 .4
NO3 25
Salinity 1.025

My first thought is blame it on the PO4 drop but my acros are doing fine and even coloring up. Funny thing is I would move a frag of digitata to my nano tank with an even lower PO4 and the frag would have polyps out within 24 hours.

There has to be something that I am not able to test that is causing only montiporas to die??? My purple Stylo is also affected.

Tank been up for almost 2 years now.

Any chance you have a monti eating nudibranch?

 

[hyprc]

Montis really care about Mag and that wasn't listed in your test results?

 

[Tim'sReef]

Any chance you have a monti eating nudibranch?

Second this, if you can take some out maybe do a dip to confirm.

 

[ninjamyst]

Any chance you have a monti eating nudibranch?

I have sixline, yellow coris, and melanurus. I haven't added any new monti frag in months....

 

[ninjamyst]

Montis really care about Mag and that wasn't listed in your test results?

Good point. I never test mg since I dose two parts with ATI essentials and mg is part of the calcium. I figure if my calcium is high, mg should be too. Unless you think high mg will cause the issue?

 

[ninjamyst]

Second this, if you can take some out maybe do a dip to confirm.

The thing is that they are not turning bone white overnight. They go pale with no polyps and then slowly algae takes over.

 

[Oldreefer44]

Have had several similar episodes with Montis over the years with no real explanation. Just sort of came and went on its own. Water parameters were fine and no damage to other sps's.

 

[ninjamyst]

Have had several similar episodes with Montis over the years with no real explanation. Just sort of came and went on its own. Water parameters were fine and no damage to other sps's.

It's just crazy how I move frags from my 200g display to my neglected 20g nano and they bounce right back... There has to be something in the water =(. I just started running carbon this week to see if it's some toxin....

 

[Troylee]

Lights burning them? You didn’t mention your lighting

 

[ninjamyst]

Lights burning them? You didn’t mention your lighting

Lighting didnt change. 3 XR30 running 100% mostly blues with diffuser. I had these montiporas for over a year and haven't moved them. Some are huge colonies so they are not new frags

 

[williamreefer12909]

I’d compare tank to tank parameters including magnesium and then do a par reader for lighting and I have a pretty good feeling you should get your answers. Something is obviously different between the tanks so don’t over complicate it and start with a process of elimination. Your PO4 being changed slowly shouldn’t have such a big effect on them if it was done over a few weeks worth spend of time.

 

[ninjamyst]

Got a magnesium kit. Tested at 1450. At this point, I turned everything off and going to go back to the basics. No more dosing two part, no more elimi-np. My hunch is elimi-np is causing some water imbalance. I took out my colonies of purple Stylo and seasons greeting and chopped up what's not dead and put them in my nano.

I also tested parameter in my nano and they are about the same as my main display. Only difference is PO4 is lower at around 0.2 but not significant enough.

 

[williamreefer12909]

Got a magnesium kit. Tested at 1450. At this point, I turned everything off and going to go back to the basics. No more dosing two part, no more elimi-np. My hunch is elimi-np is causing some water imbalance. I took out my colonies of purple Stylo and seasons greeting and chopped up what's not dead and put them in my nano.

I also tested parameter in my nano and they are about the same as my main display. Only difference is PO4 is lower at around 0.2 but not significant enough.

Are you using Red Sea pro salt?

 

[ninjamyst]

Montiporas are bouncing back. All I did was stop dosing elimi-np along with two parts. I invested a lot into bacto balance and elimi-np and NP-plus but so far no success. I am just going to throw all that stuff away and go back to simpler maintenance. I am still using small doses of phosphate-e to just maintain phosphate at around 0.4. WWC has a special on macroalgae so I got some chaeto, dragons breath, and red gracillara. Plan to keep using phosphate-e to get phosphate down to 0.2 and then use refugium to maintain. I will invest in an algae scrubber during Black Friday sale. I will turn back two parts once calcium and magnesium falls down a little. They are a bit elevated.

Are you using Red Sea pro salt?

Nope. Using reef crystal