Hi all,
Wondering if you can guide me with respect to corals browning out. Most, but not all, of my corals are losing their colors and turning/ed brown. All the SPS frags (relatively new tank btw - 1yr old), have turned solid brown and lost all color. They aren't growing fast / at all. My LPS are changing colors - for example, my torch has lost all the yellow, and is now brown with it's blue tips. My rainbow colored acans are now just red and blue. One of my chalices has lost all it's rainbow colors and turned purplely brown. Some corals look as good as they ever did, an elegance, a frogspawn, two other chalices, and a monti cap. These, along with coraline algae, are growing like weeds.
I know this can be:
Nitrate - It's usually around 2ppm, but it's swung from 0-10 during fighting dinos
Phosphate - it's usually around 0.05, but it's swung from 0.03 to over 0.1 during the dino fight
ammonia and nitrites - undetectable since the cycle a year ago
Salinity is always at 35ppt
Mg - Always pretty stable at 1480
Ca - Always pretty stable at 460
I feed pellets once a day, sometimes I feed mysis.
Once a week, I spot feed my corals reef roids
I dose a small amount of phyto every day (not sure it does anything, but I've been doing it, and I'm afraid to make changes and have another dino outbreak)
I've measured my par with a seneye, my LPS get about 150PAR, and my SPS get about 225, give or take. It's a nano tank, so it's hard to crank up the lights for the sps and not overpower the lps. But I think I could go higher if I went slowly and not harm the lps.
Thanks for the help, been reading a lot and a little torn on what to do, if anything at all.
Wondering if you can guide me with respect to corals browning out. Most, but not all, of my corals are losing their colors and turning/ed brown. All the SPS frags (relatively new tank btw - 1yr old), have turned solid brown and lost all color. They aren't growing fast / at all. My LPS are changing colors - for example, my torch has lost all the yellow, and is now brown with it's blue tips. My rainbow colored acans are now just red and blue. One of my chalices has lost all it's rainbow colors and turned purplely brown. Some corals look as good as they ever did, an elegance, a frogspawn, two other chalices, and a monti cap. These, along with coraline algae, are growing like weeds.
I know this can be:
- High nutrients
- Not enough light
- instability
Nitrate - It's usually around 2ppm, but it's swung from 0-10 during fighting dinos
Phosphate - it's usually around 0.05, but it's swung from 0.03 to over 0.1 during the dino fight
ammonia and nitrites - undetectable since the cycle a year ago
Salinity is always at 35ppt
Mg - Always pretty stable at 1480
Ca - Always pretty stable at 460
I feed pellets once a day, sometimes I feed mysis.
Once a week, I spot feed my corals reef roids
I dose a small amount of phyto every day (not sure it does anything, but I've been doing it, and I'm afraid to make changes and have another dino outbreak)
I've measured my par with a seneye, my LPS get about 150PAR, and my SPS get about 225, give or take. It's a nano tank, so it's hard to crank up the lights for the sps and not overpower the lps. But I think I could go higher if I went slowly and not harm the lps.
Thanks for the help, been reading a lot and a little torn on what to do, if anything at all.