Is there a Method to this Madness

[Silverfish]

Hi Fellow Reefers,
I came back into the Reefing hobby after a 10 year hiatus and my present tank is approx. 1 1/2 years old.
I had mostly soft corals with a few hard corals in my last system. My tank now is 108 g display w 30 gal sump.

Well the crux of the matter is I hv corals that find success and some that don’t and die....then The corals That were successful get up and die! I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel of always replacing and replenishing!

As a Gardner I’ve come to the conclusion that plants live and die for all kinds of reasons as well but I don’t take it so personally and plants are not cheap either! So why is it that I get so frustrated. I mean I see dead or dying corals at vendors or other reefers tanks as well and seems to be “normal”?

I know I’m now trying to grow corals that I could only hv dreamed of when I first started but is this just part of the hobby?

So the question is.....assuming your parameters are well and stable, are some corals gonna live and some die as a matter of routine? Will the mortality rate decrease as the tank gets more mature and established? Will there ever be a time when I put a coral in a tank and know it’s absolutely going to do well?

I believe there are other reefers out there that might b wondering the same thing!
Please put my mind at ease and tell me there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Thank you


P.S Is this why there are so many companies selling corals?

 

[Salt & Peper]

All I can say is I have 3 nano tanks my house. All the equipment is different but comparable. I use the same water/salt dose the same products different quantities. And I've fraged softies and lps that were thriving moved them across the house and they melted away or just say there doing nothing. So yes some just die! Hope this helped!

 

[Silverfish]

Thanks! A little...Finicky little @#$&%....aren’t they?

 

[motortrendz]

So I went a year and a half roughly without loosing one frag all were growing very well. The year prior, the first year of this system, it was a 50/50 crap shoot. Once system was stable and maturing well. I was confident. Then I changed something and boom there goes a dozzen acros. Lol.

 

[Silverfish]

I’m feeling you....it seems I play with one thing n bam! But it’s tough with a mixed reef tank with flow. Put something new in and it’s getting blasted. Let me move a little something and Bam!
I sound like Emril!
I’m gonna do a better job of not messing with stuff!

 

[burnetb1]

I've seen this as well. Had two good size colonies of brain coral and one melted, the other grew like crazy. To be fair, the one only started melting after removing the sand bed and severely upsetting the balance of the tank. Same with a pair of trumpet corals, one died, the other lived. Very fickle beasts these corals.

 

[Silverfish]

I appreciate your replies. Keep them coming and we might get a bead on something. Maybe those with successful tanks can chime in and tell us about when they were able to make the turn!

 

[StatelineReefer]

Some corals die to adapt, softies and plate coral, for example, die so that their fraglets adapt better (I will edit in recent threads as I'm at work, but one that visibly and easily shows the new growing plate corals can be searched up)

Sps are stubborn when it comes to change, their motto is mostly that which does not kill me only kills me quicker.