Established Garf Bonsai losing color from base

[Biff0rz]

The recession is a bit strange tbh with the defined white area and no color fading above. It’s not also like AEFW or bug damage, so that’s why I wonder if bacterial. I also noticed this critter. Is that a chiton? Lastly, I’ve noticed irritation of my acros with digitate hydroids. Other than that, I’m as perplexed as you. Maybe it is indeed shading.

chiton? I think so? I'll snap some pics tonight, but, I have TON of them on the rocks. They usually come out at night and are hard to get off the rock.

 

[Biff0rz]

Update, getting worse imo.

 

[Dburr1014]

Slowly receding.
Dies it look like this is also growing?







Looks like it is.

 

[Biff0rz]

Slowly receding.
Dies it look like this is also growing?

Does the coral look like it's growing? No. Just before this started it seemed to 'stall'. Does the white area seem to be growing, yes.

 

[Dburr1014]

Have you listed your lights your using? I don't see it.

 

[Biff0rz]

2x reefbreeders 50 v2 pro + 2x or3 blue sky light bars. Par is about 200-250 on sand, 30" deep. Par is 500ish near top rocks. This coral is placed 3/4 down about 5" from sandbed.

 

[Troylee]

The recession is a bit strange tbh with the defined white area and no color fading above. It’s not also like AEFW or bug damage, so that’s why I wonder if bacterial. I also noticed this critter. Is that a chiton? Lastly, I’ve noticed irritation of my acros with digitate hydroids. Other than that, I’m as perplexed as you. Maybe it is indeed shading.

Looks like stomatella it’s harmless and good for clean up!

 

[Pod_01]

Just reading through your description and I have been having similar/same issue over past year. Mainly acros they are growing well, happy and suddenly part of it goes white or all dies.

Anyways I suspect it is something to do with this:

-trace element dosing (reef moonshiners)

I am not doing moonshiners , but have large collection of trace element bottles and the problem started when I tried to get these perfect parameters. They were perfect and detectable by ICP but I keept loosing corals.

I suspect the combination of dosing traces to detectable levels and adding fish and coral foods that also contain trace elements may push some over and leads to this unpredictable behaviour.

I switched to original Balling method and only use TM A and K for traces now (recommended by Randy) and things seem to have improved.
Before that I played with light, flow etc…

Just an opinion, good luck.

 

[Biff0rz]

Just reading through your description and I have been having similar/same issue over past year. Mainly acros they are growing well, happy and suddenly part of it goes white or all dies.

Anyways I suspect it is something to do with this:



I am not doing moonshiners , but have large collection of trace element bottles and the problem started when I tried to get these perfect parameters. They were perfect and detectable by ICP but I keept loosing corals.

I suspect the combination of dosing traces to detectable levels and adding fish and coral foods that also contain trace elements may push some over and leads to this unpredictable behaviour.

I switched to original Balling method and only use TM A and K for traces now (recommended by Randy) and things seem to have improved.
Before that I played with light, flow etc…

Just an opinion, good luck.

I thought about this a bit and honestly, I don't feel like I can agree with you. There are a lot of folks that run RM and do not have this same issue, and similarly, there are those that do not run RM and have a similar issue. Sure, someone can overdose trace and cause issues, but if you're doing any of the popular methods you really won't do any harm to corals. I was having this issue prior to RM as well, if that helps.

 

[Pod_01]

I was having this issue prior to RM as well, if that helps.

Based on that you can safely assume your issue is not trace element based. I guess adding the trace elements didn’t help either.

I seen corals slowly die from the base when I had low or sinking phosphate. Your PO4 values look reasonable so I don’t think that is an issue.

Loosing acros can be frustrating…

 

[Biff0rz]

So, some of it has started to heal, some of it grew slowly, I'm hoping the rest of the white area stops spreading and more of the algea spreads to it. It also looks like there are two very small vermited snails nested in there