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- Apr 8, 2020
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The tank (BioCube 32 with Steve's Leds) is doing pretty well in general (other corals growing, fish happy) but a hammer seems to be having some trouble, and I thought I'd post.
This decent-sized colony was added on 7/10/2020 and did well. Here is 1/2021. In the months after that, it sent tentacles and mostly destroyed that moniti on the left side of the picture (so healthy enough for war).
March 2021 (sorry for the blue)
Since then it's fell on some hard times and lost the head on the right (space that gave way to some bubble algae as you can see):
Today I notice this sorta odd oval shape in between the heads (torn tissue?, alien baby?).
Water parameters have been steady.
Nitrate = 1-4
Phos = 0.01-0.04 (was on the low side this spring)
Triton test 4/4/21 was ok other than a little bit of zinc (7)
Dosing:
Red Sea Alk and Ca via Apex controlled dosing
Red Sea trace elements per directions (dosing based on Ca uptake -- but I do less than I'm supposed to since it seems silly).
Other changes (suspects)
- PAR on this coral is about 200. This is a bump from about 150 or so in late 2020
- I've increased the flow in the spring in a (mostly successful) effort to help grow some acros but not dramatically. Currently, 2 MP10s running Reef Crest at 42% and 54%. Once I went bare I had one of these on the bottom right (25%) and the other running top left (60%). In an effort to help the situation I moved both to the top and modified the intensity.
- Sand was removed around Jan 2020
- Changed to tropic marin salt (from a 50/50 mix of Red sea black and blue buckets) about a 2 months ago.
So the prime culprits for me are flow, PAR, and maybe some strange chemistry change from the tropic marin. I'll get a new triton test soon.
This decent-sized colony was added on 7/10/2020 and did well. Here is 1/2021. In the months after that, it sent tentacles and mostly destroyed that moniti on the left side of the picture (so healthy enough for war).
March 2021 (sorry for the blue)
Since then it's fell on some hard times and lost the head on the right (space that gave way to some bubble algae as you can see):
Today I notice this sorta odd oval shape in between the heads (torn tissue?, alien baby?).
Water parameters have been steady.
Nitrate = 1-4
Phos = 0.01-0.04 (was on the low side this spring)
Triton test 4/4/21 was ok other than a little bit of zinc (7)
Dosing:
Red Sea Alk and Ca via Apex controlled dosing
Red Sea trace elements per directions (dosing based on Ca uptake -- but I do less than I'm supposed to since it seems silly).
Other changes (suspects)
- PAR on this coral is about 200. This is a bump from about 150 or so in late 2020
- I've increased the flow in the spring in a (mostly successful) effort to help grow some acros but not dramatically. Currently, 2 MP10s running Reef Crest at 42% and 54%. Once I went bare I had one of these on the bottom right (25%) and the other running top left (60%). In an effort to help the situation I moved both to the top and modified the intensity.
- Sand was removed around Jan 2020
- Changed to tropic marin salt (from a 50/50 mix of Red sea black and blue buckets) about a 2 months ago.
So the prime culprits for me are flow, PAR, and maybe some strange chemistry change from the tropic marin. I'll get a new triton test soon.
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