Torch coral not growing

[ndz98]

Man I wish my lfs had 5 dollar frags. I think the one I had was like 27 bucks. They typically don't have anything below 24.

your probably at a good intensity to rule it out without double checking PAR.
One odd thing to keep in mind in reefing, sometimes "it doesnt like your tank". In my current 55 i put xenia in a couple times in the first year and they melted. ??????
it was a transfer, it was the same rock, it was the same water, they were my xenia. It led me to keep buying $5 frags to see what would happen over the course of the year.
seems esp dependent Imo on age. weather its a diverse matured bacterial population or constant dissolved organics from micro algae production and rotten food etc .
I talk to my friends at the LFS's about this quite a bit and try to pay attention to it here commenting or not. One friend has 6 frag tanks. and he has the same problem. Coral does bad, move to next tank, it does great.
He built them all at the same time, LR came from the same batch. weird.

With a coral like that I would look at its feeding strategy. Sweepers would indicate I believe a higher dependence on food than light. so spot feeding and plankton's as well as quality flow and light.. I could be wrong.
its weird.

 

[ndz98]

Two questions:

have you been moving it around a bit?

Where is it located in placement of powerheads?

I have moved it only because it wasn't doing good. When I move it I leave it for a couple weeks before I decide whether it helped or not and if I should move it again. It gets indirect flow from the power head.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Man I wish my lfs had 5 dollar frags. I think the one I had was like 27 bucks. They typically don't have anything below 24.

depending on where you are look into local clubs. it been an amazing resource for trying new corals.
Im giving away xenia today as suddenly they started dropping babies from the solitary confinement rock. cheap o zoas and such too.
I killed a $40 zoa once. that was enough. now i practice not killing .99c zoas.

and flow has been the toughest trick to learn. one tank 30 animals 10 preferred flow types. IME once you kill the dead spots place the corals where the right flow has been created.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

A happy accident.


Btw. Look a lux to par conversion at advanced aquarist. I use the mh choices as a base as t5 is easily scewed by bulb choice and led varies as much more more.