My thoughts--
From the pic that looks like flatworm damage. The tiny babies you cant see hang out in the coralites and they eat the top of the skin, not underneath like the adults. First visual damage can sometimes be seen on the edge of coralites.
Corals don't usually show any signs of stress and will still grow.
Knowing the history of those frags I bet that is the damage you see. The skin probably was originally damaged(thin but not showing skeleton) and then the stress of the move, low po4, probably showed the thin skin damage. It makes sense that some frags are already showing recovery as you have probably removed the pests from that poor environment.
You really need to get a thriving frag from a good environment to see if your system is a cause of anything. I'm guessing it's not.
Hey BigE,
Thanks for looking over the frag. This specific frag was added at same time sourced from a LFS, not my buddies system. I also bought a beach bum monti and at that point, system has no other acros or sps. Within days, the monti started washing out, no pe, and color began fading. The acro started with corralite recession, and slow recession from encrusting edge, slowly working towards base. So while AEFW could still be a factor, I think it's worth pointing out that I do have around 5 emeralds in the system. Could they be eating polyps or tissue, or irritating an otherwise struggling coral, who knows... 2 weeks later, I picked up a seritipora, it too did the polyp recession, and began it's downhill decline... So, my point is, that no sps would really settle, and it would not take long at all to see a slow death begin, very frustrating.
So, following along, with my fail of a thread, and myriad of issues, I started the focus of diversity, and added a fuge, then mangroves to display, and threw my hands in the air, and started collecting easy corals, and watched the tank just do it's thing, just a whole new direction. The sps recently added, were just freebies added in from a mushroom purchase, no intention of keeping sps.
Moved mangroves to sump fuge, and lowere lights. I think the mangroves were competing with green hair, and while nutrients present, never really seemed happy, since moving, the mangroves do appear healthy, likely not competing with the dt, instead with prolifera in fuge, lit opposite cycle 14 hours.
Somewhere in this process, po4 started growing, keep in mind, that at one point, I was dosing 2ml of flourish per day, or the system would bottom out. Now, I am thinking that the new frags are able to use what I feel was unavailable.
This is what led me to begin use of AF Pro Bio S, and NP Pro, just so I can sort of keep control over rising p04, and 25ppm n03. Not to drive nutrients low or ULN, just to a point where I feel in the safe zone. Let's say 10-15ppm n03, and .08-.1 p04. I truly desire not to use any products for reduction, but to allow skimmer and fuge to do the heavy lifting.
KZ FWS, the decision on 1/2 dose is to provide vitality and health to inbound acros, same as 1/3 dose pohls extra special, which imo, has improved pe significantly, and I say this because the corals didn't start receiving this dose 4 days after placed in system, and 2 days later, I see accelerated pe, as well as feeders during daylight hours.
I kbow its a lot to take in, but something positive seems to be occurring, I see this with zoa mini colony and mushroom as well, everything is just perking up.
I just wanted to give you a glimpse of the rhought processing, fwiw.
Thank you very much for your time and I will be sure to update the good, bad, and ugly
Cheers
