This hobby is very confusing lol
possible my leather coral is ticking evrybody off with toxins??
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Might leather coral toxins affect montipora? I am currently succeeding with stylophora, birdsnests, and easy acros, but a number of montis that did well in my smaller tank have slowly bleached and died. The back left corner of my 120g is my Monti Cemetery.
Over the past 2 years my tank has become more and more softy dominated. I have a cabbage approaching dinner plate size, big sinularia, several toadstools that split every couple of months and kenya trees that produce up to 10 frags per week. I also have a few acros, other sps and lots of lps. While I have experienced slow growth in most sps they are indeed growing and maintaining colour just not at the pace I'd like. As for lps both meaty and encrusting I would say the leathers have 0 effect on them at all. Only sensitive corals appear to be inhibited at least from my experience, and some weird ones like birdsnest is growing very slow. I don't think the massive softy population has killed any corals other then stuff they have physically overgrown. Separated by inches is fine.
I would say only in extreme cases you have to worry about the toxins killing corals, moderate cases slowing down growth, and non sps mixed reef tanks not at all. I am starting to change my carbon more often as in the past I just ran it approximately once a month when I changed gfo. Now I'm changing it every 1-2 weeks however if you are in the 24/7 carbon camp you really need to be changing it every couple of days. Just because you are running it 24/7 doesn't mean anything once the carbon has been exhausted which usually happens very very fast. I may eventually get to the point where I change it every couple of days as an experiment but it will be a couple months before I get to that point as I'm not taking any chances shocking my system. This would also end up being very pricey as a permanent solution, especially if you are using high quality carbon such as rox .8.
I would say only in extreme cases you have to worry about the toxins killing corals, moderate cases slowing down growth, and non sps mixed reef tanks not at all. I am starting to change my carbon more often as in the past I just ran it approximately once a month when I changed gfo. Now I'm changing it every 1-2 weeks however if you are in the 24/7 carbon camp you really need to be changing it every couple of days. Just because you are running it 24/7 doesn't mean anything once the carbon has been exhausted which usually happens very very fast. I may eventually get to the point where I change it every couple of days as an experiment but it will be a couple months before I get to that point as I'm not taking any chances shocking my system. This would also end up being very pricey as a permanent solution, especially if you are using high quality carbon such as rox .8.
Yea this is really cool. Great post Andrew. What kind of carbon are you using???
I just got a gallon of aquamax rox.8 I believe it's the same source as BRS who have been out of stock for a while. I'm just starting to use more as I mentioned so we'll see. Potentially you could use a lower cost one if you are changing every couple of days but I'd still stay away from the cheap stuff. One other thing I will mention is if I am fragging I will for sure switch the carbon then, however most of my softies actually self propagate so I just collect the frags. If you are cutting into leathers you should be more concerned then just on a day to day basis.
Here is a thread I started a couple weeks ago on the subject
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/can-i-increase-sps-growth-in-my-softy-dominated-system.425093/
Not much became of it, but there are some pictures of my tank and some highlighted corals that relate to possible toxins.
Fourthwind
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Yes, the leathers do and will fight. I have more problems with sinulara than anything else. A good protein skimmer will help as the toxin is organic, but I have found that in my 90 gallon mixed that I have to run carbon or suffer the consequences.
EHerbert
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I have a mixed reef featuring leathers and lps with just a couple of spa. All of which are in close proximity and have been doing well together for about three years. The sps are a recent addition. Toadstool toxins is news to me so I'm following as I have three of them.
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I have a mixed reef featuring leathers and lps with just a couple of spa. All of which are in close proximity and have been doing well together for about three years. The sps are a recent addition. Toadstool toxins is news to me so I'm following as I have three of them.
dang that is one packed tank! all under just one LED array? wow...
RobertN
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I'm in the run carbon 24/7 camp. I personally would never keep leathers without running it. I keep a variety of softies and lps in my tank without issue. I did keep sps once upon a time, but my blennies destroyed it. I would try running a high-quality carbon for several weeks straight and see if anything changes.
Do you run it in a reactor or do you just have product that is already packaged in a bag? Also, how often do you change it? Thanks!
EHerbert
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Well, it's just 45 gallons.
Dr.Xipoles
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Hmm, i never knew that could happen.
I have a very large finger leather, bigger than 2 hands, and quite a few sps frags, red planet and miyagi included, and they are doing fine. But i do run carbon so i guess that helps.
Dr.Xipoles
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Do you think its a nutrient problem? I also have a mixed frag tank and the palys only do well when i feed heavy and the water is dirty, i mean brown dirty when doing a WC.
The parameters need to be good and the light needs to be specific cause my purple deaths change from purple to green to brown of the lighting or food is not perfect. They take months to color back to purple.
According to a talk recently by my friend Bob Fenner , the corals lose thier ability to produce toxins the farther away from the original wild coral that was imported. So a third gen leather will produce less toxins than a wild import. It’s diet. Same as poison dart frogs.
Similar toxin reports are also common with gorgonians as well as leathers.
That’s likely why some folks have no problems and some do with the same coral.
For allepothy issues he reccomends chemipure over carbons. Keep in mind carbon in a reactor is more effective than a bag in the sump or hob.
Similar toxin reports are also common with gorgonians as well as leathers.
That’s likely why some folks have no problems and some do with the same coral.
For allepothy issues he reccomends chemipure over carbons. Keep in mind carbon in a reactor is more effective than a bag in the sump or hob.
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