Reef thoughts

Yallnotfwme223

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You guys ever just feel like giving reefing up? Because I’m serious about done! I was about 16 when I had my first reef tank and I was superrrr new to the hobby and I thought I knew everything. This was not the case I failed horribly tank crashed and lost a few nice corals. So I decided to break down the tank and give myself sometime to really learn. So about 3 months ago I started again. I got my waterbox out and decided to do a torch tank. In the beginning it was absolutely amazing things were great I finally felt at peace with my tank and that all my hard work had paid off! Once again this was very short lived. Up until 3 days ago my tank was absolutely beautiful with 4 torches living their best life. Now one of them is half its size one lost a head and the other two are not as happy as they once were. I tested my water twice over a week everything was great had it tested at two lfs also great results. I never changed my lighting or flow I didn’t add anything uncommon to the tank but yet the torches were ticked. So here I am once again very disappointed and discouraged! I truly love this hobby and wish to be successful but I just don’t know anymore if this hobby is for me!

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kzenoni

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I’ve gone through the same trials. Could be brown jelly or water too clean, who knows. So I went with diversity, little bit of everything to see what works for me. Leathers are beautiful and easy, some sponges are bulletproof. Got Xenia that is very hardy. Tank has matured a little so now my torches are doing amazing. Don’t give up tho
 

Pistondog

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When my tank was less than a year, no luck with torches or sps.
Now, 3 plus years in, it is satisfying to be able to keep those, after the initial difficulty. Try to learn from mistakes.
 

Shirak

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What does great water mean?
I see one fish. The tank looks very clean otherwise. My torches need regular feeding several times a week or they will go in decline. They will look great and happy for weeks even while they are going downhill. Then one day boom

Are you looking to figure out what’s going wrong and correct it? Yes the hobby can be frustrating but if you stick with it to learn all the dynamics between water quality parameters, feeding, flow, and light you can be successful with it. 3 months however is nowhere near long enough of hands on experience no matter how much reading you did beforehand.
 

burningmime

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If it's brown jelly, cut off any dead or dying heads on them, and iodine dip aggressively then QT them (a bucket of saltwater with a heater and powerhead is probably enough for a couple days, add a light if it'll be longer than that). BJD is beatable, but you need to act fast and aggressively. Torches can bounce back; they're not super delicate like other species, better to be safe than sorry.

If it's not BJD, still do an iodine dip, just in case. There are other diseases it might help with. Also do a regular (CoralRX or what have you) dip and/or freshwater dip and check for nudes or other critters that could be irritating it.
 
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Yallnotfwme223

Yallnotfwme223

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What does great water mean?
I see one fish. The tank looks very clean otherwise. My torches need regular feeding several times a week or they will go in decline. They will look great and happy for weeks even while they are going downhill. Then one day boom

Are you looking to figure out what’s going wrong and correct it? Yes the hobby can be frustrating but if you stick with it to learn all the dynamics between water quality parameters, feeding, flow, and light you can be successful with it. 3 months however is nowhere near long enough of hands on experience no matter how much reading you did beforehand.
What do you feed your torches?
 
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Yallnotfwme223

Yallnotfwme223

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If it's brown jelly, cut off any dead or dying heads on them, and iodine dip aggressively then QT them (a bucket of saltwater with a heater and powerhead is probably enough for a couple days, add a light if it'll be longer than that). BJD is beatable, but you need to act fast and aggressively. Torches can bounce back; they're not super delicate like other species, better to be safe than sorry.

If it's not BJD, still do an iodine dip, just in case. There are other diseases it might help with. Also do a regular (CoralRX or what have you) dip and/or freshwater dip and check for nudes or other critters that could be irritating it.
image.jpg
 

Shirak

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What do you feed your torches?
A variety of things. Mine get small LPS pellets like Easy LPS pellets. I also shave PE Mysis shrimp frozen cubes while still frozen, so the mysis are all chopped up.

What have you been feeding and how often? Did you or the LFS test nutrients too? Can you post the numbers on Alk, Ca, Mg, PO4, NO3?

Looks like BJD to me. I would carefully remove the coral with the pumps off, and cut off the dead head so nothing spreads to the other torches.
Also if you look at the head behind it you can see some fresh white skeleton just below the coral tissue. The flesh is receding around the outside of the skeleton. It happens naturally as the torch coral grows but it should not be this visible.
 

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