I've read through all of the post thus far.
some good advise to be had here as well as some folks experience or repeats of what they heard.
Wild colonies are more delicate than what comes from an existing tank by another reefer for a few reasons though I will put my 2 cents in the pot here.
While I agree that a 2 month old tank is not anything I would ever consider stable, A person with lots of time and good equipment, test kits and the will to stay on top of such a tank will make the difference here.
Not on any planet would I use carbon dosing for a young tank.
From what I can see in your pictures is that you have an Acro wild and with really thick growth which more than likely came from a surge zone with Absurd amount of wave action / flow and high in oxygen.
This would be one of the most important things to this colony is high oxygen content and chaotic strong flow more than you would realize to maintain its happy place.
- Second would be your lights, Yes I use LED over my SPS tank though I've had more issues with corals needing to be acclimated to the light depending on how much they were getting where they were before, Wild or cultured does not matter here. LED is not a natural light source and can be really hard on corals to suddenly adapt to and with any wild, cultured coral you do not know its lighting requirements its always best to place them in lower light while they acclimate to your tank parameters then slowly over time move them into more intense light allowing Time for them to color back up.
- I will agree that most dips on the
market are harsh on SPS, I've lost more due to dipping with these products than I have with placing corals into sterile tanks with air stones for inspection then turning on power heads and keeping the coral in QT for a week or two carefully looking for pest or signs of pest.
Bayer dip, I've used without loosing a coral though some species I have not attempted this as most times they die once dipped in anything ( in my experience )
- Keeping your dkh at or near NSW levels has been the most important and rewarding aspect to my success with wild grown corals. Out of the two dozen frags and mini colonies I've collected this year only two have died after a few weeks in my tank and they were Not real healthy when I got them so likely the root problem with these two. All the others have maintained coloration, great growth tips and encrusting bases on most. A few that were a bit pale have started to get a rich coloration back and two of the blah colored ones have started to really come into their own, One with blue growth tips and the other going from blah tan to neon green.
My DKH is 7 and due to growth over time will dunk slowly into the 6.7 range then slowly raised back up over a weeks time to the 7 mark.
Fragging the coral or any coral that starts to do this is in order. Saving remaining pieces will work out or it will not, No guarantee here as we all have had it work great or every frag still dies.
After fragging the coral, I would place all the frags in high flow area with less direct lighting to give them a chance to rest / recover.
Yes some corals will die in this manner despite who gets them, what tank they are in Or any other determining factor. Some things are just unknown to us.
I would rather a coral brown out or loose its coloration a bit from lower light levels while it adjust to my tank parameters then chance shocking it with intense LED.
We have no way of knowing if a coral came from deeper water or shallow water.
