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purple monti cap.... problem help..

N

NJ_ychung1

Hi all. i just recently upgraded my lighting. with the new lighting, i thought it was a good step toward keeping not just softies but venture off to the hard corals. recently i got a piece of monti cap and also pocilloporas. i admit i did not do super diligence in acclimating them slow.... i did a rather fast acclimation.

anyway, the pocillopora is doing fine while the monti started to fade and the flesh started to come off bit by bit. last night i tried to save the remaining healthy piece by breaking it off and gluing it to a separate location. by this morninig, regretfully, all that's left is just the skeleton.

Question for the forum is what would melt away the monti cap so fast?
- too much light (actinics)
- water chem.. (everything else, softies and pocillpora are fine)
- temp swings night and day. PH drop over night.

all of the above. not sure. i want to give this a try again but i want to figure out what went wrong before attempting the monti caps again.

thx
Jay
 
panmanmatt

panmanmatt

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Can you tell us a bit more about your tank? Lighting, parameters, tank size? How many leathers do you have in the tank? If you have a lot of leathers in the tank it will make it very difficult to keep SPS corals from all the allelopathy (chemical warfare) the leathers produce.

Did you touch the polyped portion of the cap at all? Lot's of times if you touch the polyps it will kill them off.
 
N

NJ_ychung1

thanks matt. here's some detail.

tank - 30 gal long. 20 gal sump sitting behind the tank.

Lighting, - home made canopy 2x t5 4x t8 total of 6 bulb. mix of 10K, 8K, and 50/50 and supplemental actinics not inside canopy. this was a recent upgrade from eggcrate and some loose fixture method which has worked for all of my inhabitants so far.

parameters - i haven't measure recently but should be good. i just did a waterchange. i do a monthly waterchange and have been treating 2 part calcium. if anything, due to my recent endeavors, calc should be on high/saturation end. i could have over done this - possibly.


tank size? - 30 gal tank / 20 gal sump. total volume of 45 Gal approx.

How many leathers do you have in the tank? - lots of leather. this i have. due to my poor lighting in the beginning, i stocked and continued to add diff variety of leather. included are (devil's hand -from 2 diff frags, spaghetti green leather, kenya tree, brown toadstool, neon green toady, fiji yello toady). this not including all of the shrooms (7 diff) and xenias (4 diff).

Did you touch the polyped portion of the cap at all? - not really. might have brushed while placing in tank but not likely as i take caution.


given this info, is it likely to be chemical warfare? should i just give up on the idea of sps
 
panmanmatt

panmanmatt

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Sounds like it could be chemical warfare with all those leathers in a small tank like that.

Also please test your parameters. If you are dosing and not checking you very well could throw the values out of whack. Plus if you only have softies in the tank and do regular water changes you should not need to be adding calcium. Soft corals don't use the calcium like SPS and LPS do.

The pocillipora is a little hardier than the cap. My guess is that may start to see that recede soon also.

Running carbon will help to reduce the chemical warfare and may be enough to help.
 
N

NJ_ychung1

thanks dude. i'll try the carbon and see if it saves the poccillipora. what size tank and water volume would be enough to mix sps and softies....
 
panmanmatt

panmanmatt

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
You can mix them in a tank that size if you only have 1 or 2 leathers. It's more about the SPS to leather ratio than it is the volume. If you want to mix then you really need a SPS dominated tank with a few small leathers, not the other way around. LPS and leathers are fine together but SPS need more pristine waters.
 
N

NJ_ychung1

matt. thanx so much. i'm going to keep to lps see if i can mix in with the current population.

learning everyday and having the forum's experience is def helping. this my second try at reef. first time with a 10G nano was a disaster due to temp spikes and difficult control of params. this time around things are a quite a bit better but my eyes are larger than my stomach - as you can see i'm trying to mix sps with a large population of leather

take it easy. thx
 
panmanmatt

panmanmatt

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
I know what you're saying. I tried the mixing myself and it didn't work. I just set up another tank for my son so that he can keep the SPS for me. :D

Yes zoas will be fine.

Here's a pic of my tank from a few months ago to give ya an idea of why I had problems. It has since filled in a lot more since then.

Reeftank007.jpg
 
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