Honestly, I’m not sure what is lps versus sps. When I first got these corals, I didn’t even know their names.
Either way, I have a pattern of bads happening. The first to go wonky was my mint green frogspawn euphyllia. It opened up great within minutes. The dark green frogspawn look bad initially, but was beautiful in about 5 days and has had no problems. When the mint green one started to look bad, I thought it had died, because the dark green one looked so good. The LFS owner said it was in shock because it had been fragged from a much larger piece and I had gotten a drag that was on the bottom of the bigger coral. He said to give it a few weeks, but gave me a small mushrooms frag, in case it didn’t come back. The shock wore off, and now the mint green frogspawn looks amazing.
Next was those mushrooms. I hadn’t done anything but normal water changes. I posted a thread and was prompted to move it lower cause it was bleaching. I was also told to get food for it. I bought benepets reef food and have fed the corals about twice a week with it.
After the mushrooms went weird, I changed my light bulb - someone suggested it might not be getting the full spectrum of light. I have never changed the bulb and I’ve had the tank for nearly 4 years. It had been a fresh water tank until this year, when I switched to salt water. (I did consider just buying a bigger tank and starting with all new equipment, but thought it would be better to learn with something I already had before I made a bigger investment and made massive mistakes that would hurt my wallet more. [emoji39])
That’s when the cat’s paw started looking funny. I had some aipstasia and had just gotten the peppermint shrimp, so I blamed it on them, until someone here suggested it was RTN.
THEN yesterday, I noticed that my acans were looking funny. I moved them lower in the tank. They look even worse this morning.
The mushrooms were fine for a few days, but went downhill pretty quickly - I figured it was just bad luck with them. However, the cat’s paw and acans were growing very nicely. I’m so confused.
Recap on the things I have done over the weeks leading up to this:
-weekly 10% water changes
-I have dosed to increase ph/alkalinity, cause both of those were low. But I’ve only done this twice and 2 weeks apart with a very small amount: brought alkalinity up .5 each time and ph to 8.2 last and 8.0 the first time from 7.8.
-got peppermint shrimp for aipstasia
-put in a new light bulb
-mushrooms were a new addition (given to me)
-zoas on hitchhiker oyster was the last new addition (given to me)
I’m also going to attach my parameter graphs at the bottom. Maybe there’s something else I need to be testing or testing more frequently? Or maybe it’s just bad luck? Any ideas or positive vibes would be appreciated! [emoji5]