Is this coral dead ?

Lost in the Sauce · May 9, 2022

MnFish1 said:
1. No I was not insinuating that the OP was a joke
2. No I was not insinuating that many of the replies the OP received were a joke.
3. Got your point. Thanks.

Now I'm going to illustrate what I meant. Your handle - 'Lost in the sauce' - and btw - you have many great posts - and you know I like them - so don't take this the wrong way. Lost in the sauce - if I was to 'jokingly say' if I disagreed with you 'are you drunk?' - apparently you are indeed 'lost in the sauce'. I could say - thats a comment - based on 'humor' right? (Rhetorical question). I wouldn't ever say that - its a totally made-up example. In this case - a guy - has a gray colored supposedly GSP. A small frag - to say the least. My comment related to the fact that though GSP are 'easy' - and many people want to get rid of them - that - perhaps its not the forum to be implying - you can do xyzzy to GSP as a 'joke'. We can agree to disagree.

Mn, we good homie. I chose this handle because it has a fun double entendre. Marine Corps roots vs being a Total rook in this.

To be Completely honest, people that disagree with me, or my presentation of my opinion often times claim I'm drunk here about twice a month.
They're not always wrong, and it doesn't also make what they didn't like, wrong.

I'm essentially allergic to getting offended. I take everything with a grain of salt and "Funny Wins" in my world. We've got an eclectic and varied group here. That's what makes it awesome.

GalaxyBenny · May 9, 2022

I just love how 90% of this thread is whether or not it was appropriate to make a joke about GSP…

Back to the OP’s questions. @813Reefs - It does seem like you have quite a bit of coral in the tank that will require more upkeep (testing and dosing) than maybe you have been doing so far. I will just say, many folks will say that you can’t have those corals in such a young tank, and I do think that’s really good advice since the tank isn’t mature (stable).

That being said, I’m actually pretty new to the hobby myself so I setup a new coral QT tank, cycled it, and then put some softies in the tank to QT. Well, because this darn hobby is so addicting it wasn’t long before I had some free monti sps frags from a friend, and then a few more sps and LPS. And look, I think the coral is doing well, it’s growing, using alk/ca etc. But what I can tell you is that it is NOT easy with such a young tank. I’m testing alk basically daily, calcium weekly. I’m adjusting the dosing as needed. I dealt with Dino’s because like a newb I let the nitrate/phosphate get too low since it was a coral only tank and so it wasn’t getting enough nutrients from fish food/fish waste etc. Thus I’m now testing nitrate and phosphate daily and dosing them as needed to get off 0.00/0.00. So while I expect it’s a lot easier to maintain coral like this in a more mature tank (probably why people say it’s too soon for you), I’d just argue that it isn’t necessarily too soon, it’s just going to be a LOT more work for you.

If you’re not willing to put in that work, then the animals (i.e. corals) will suffer, and that’s not fair to them. If that’s the case I’d suggest you see if a friendly local reefer or even your LFS would take the corals back until such time as you and your tank are ready. As an earlier poster said, if your LFS sold you all that coral and knew you only had a 3 month old tank, that seems a little irresponsible on their part. But I’m their defense, If they didn’t know the tank was new and you confidently asked to buy them, I can see them selling them to you, why wouldn’t they?

Anyway, if you decide to keep them I think that’s great. If you have any questions on how to test for all the required stuff to keep them healthy please keep posting. But again, be prepared to be testing at least calcium and alkalinity pretty frequently. And nitrate/phosphate as well. And be prepared to have to start dosing 2 part and potentially either feeding more or dosing nitrate/phosphate if your post saying your phosphate was “clear” meant 0.00. Because in that case you might not be far from a Dino outbreak, which you definitely do NOT want on top of being a new tank with new coral.

Best of luck my friend!