Help my Monti's are dying but other SPS's are fine
 

So I have been having issues keeping montipora capricornis. I had a green, orange, and purple cap that slowly lost color and died. I had my orange cap for over a year which started out as a 2x6" frag and became a 12x8x12 piece and the green cap was a 8X12" frag and stayed about the same size since it was 4 months ago, the purple cap I added last month thinking it was a coral that stung it or something was stressing them out but in a week it started doing the same thing as the others. What I was able to save I gave to my LFS for them to save since they were great pieces before it all started. It seems as if the monti's are being bleached and then start growing algae around the edgles. I have a pink birds nest doing great along with a Hollywood stunner, purple hydnophora, krypto hydnophora, and a pink stylophora. Only the montipora has been affected and nothing has changed. I tested my water and the readings are as followed.

PH - 8.1
Alk - 9dkh
Cal - 480ppm
Nitrates - 5ppm
Nitrites - 0ppm
Amm - 0ppm
Mag - 1350ppm
temp - 78 degrees F
phosphates - .07ppm
Salinity - 1.025

I dose alk weekly with Seachem Carbonate and Reef Plus. Every month I dose Seachem Complete to maintain Cal at 480ppm. Its a 125g mixed reef with nothing touching each other. Lights are OceanRevive T247 and have been on for over a year now. The tank itself is 2 years old with a DIY purigen reactor, a 20g dedicated fuge running on a opposite light cycle, and I do 40g monthly water changes.

Have you checked when lights are out. Hopefully you do not have monti eating nudi's. Also how have you tested for n03, just wondering what kit. Also your saying you dose once a month for cal, is that correct?

Yeah I check when lights are out and even then my hoveen wrasse will eat anything that isn't supposed to be out and everything is dipped before being added. NO3 is around 0-5ppm. I use API but I also double check with my LFS which use RedSea. Cal is not really used up so by the end of the month my Cal drops to 460-470ppm so I just add enough to raise it up to 480ppm. My alk drops 1-2dkh a week so I dose once or twice a week. I used to use baking soda to raise alk but after talking to my LFS they told me baking soda is a temporary fix and does not contain everything required to maintain alk so I went back to SeaChem. Everything has been the same since the tank has been set up and I have been using rodi water.

That's not very stable and something you should look into changing. A good goal is to keep Alk from swinging as much as possible. A slow drop is not so bad, but a quick rise when you dose can cause a lot of stress and if something else is stressing the corals it could push them over the edge. IMO

sounds like your tank (corals) aren't really consuming much alk, cal and mag yet. Have you thought about not dosing and only doing water changed until you see growth and alk/cal/mag consumption? No reason not to run lower levels of these 3

Any pictures of your tank close up?

Yeah that's what my LFS told me so after I get my alk at 8dkh they told me to dose enough for 40g's of water to prevent the alk swing. Im going to add more to try to keep it stable, so I'm going to start to dose for 60g and go up from there until I find a mid point where its enough to keep it at 8dkh every week.

I have tried it before, I did WC every 2 months and let my Alk get to 7dkh, Cal at 420 and mag at 1200ppm but it was just the same issue. After adding Reef plus, the corals look better but it has not been much of a change with my SPS. When I get home I will try to take a pic of the orange Monti since its the only thing I have left after I fragged off the more survivable parts and gave them to my LFS.

Believe it or not, sometimes montis can be more sensitive than a lot of acros. When troubles brewing montis are sometimes the first to show signs of stress. By the sound of I would look into Alk or NO3 fluctuations. Are you running a fuge? If you are, your NO3 may be higher than your test kits suggest. It took my a long time to figure this out. Not saying this is your issue, but I would definitely look into those 2 things first.

I'll say a comment about nudis since I have first hand experience. They do not necessarily affect color until the infestation is really bad. I had a nice big red cap that was a beautiful red color. It was the first hit with nudis. It maintained the color the whole time, just the edges looked "eaten".

My bet is water chemistry and I'm sticking to it, LOL! GL!

That's not a horrible thing to be at those levels. Have a feeling its something else like nutrients or lighting.

Alk is the most important thing to keep stable in my opinion. I am super paranoid and usually test alk every day at the same time. I had a appleberry that was the first to bleach around the rim when my alk dropped. Some other acros werent happy but most damage to the monti.

I run a 20g dedicated fuge with cheato, 40lbs of sand, and LR rubble. The rubble is in there since I had a bobbit worm in the LR and chased it into the rock so I took the rock out and smashed it, after getting everything out I rinsed the rock and put it in there. The fuge is set up so water from the second chamber from the sump is pumped into the fuge and then returned into the last section of the sump. When I test its always from the middle of the display tank. I will look and see if I have the same issue or not.

I will see about nutrients but the lights have been on a stable light cycle for over a year. I'm running oceanrevive t247 and nothing has changed on them. I never had issues with nutrients being too high in my tank either. The only thing I don't get is why after having my orange monti after over a year did it decide to die off. My alk was going up and down a lot more then it is now.

How well is your chaeto growing? If its growing great and is super healthy, then you may have more nitrates than you think. Again, not diagnosing, just pointing at things to look at. My tank was reading 0 nitrates for the longest and my corals looked like crap. They looked like they were in a nutrient sink despite 0 nitrates. Well I put my tank on a diet, got my nutrients really low, corals improved, chaeto died, now I'm running no chaeto and am nowhere near 0 nitrate, LOL! Same routine as before too.

Same thing happens when people have algae outbreaks yet their test kits say their levels are fine.......

+1 also skimmer waste and algae on the glass are great indicators. Which makes we wonder how many fish you have.

Skimmer I always try to get as much dry skim as I can. I empty it out every week and clean the cup every 2 weeks. I have a BM NAC6. I scrap algae every week off the glass or when it becomes noticeable which will be every 7-10 days. Fish I have a hippo, yellow tang, blond naso, hoveen wrasse, foxface, green mandarin, and 2 clowns. Biggest fish in there is my foxface at 6" and then the next largest is 4". The tank gets fed every other day with just enough that almost nothing hits the floor but what does gets eaten by the CUC crew immediately and with nori every 4 days. I get what you mean rovster, my chaeto grows enough that I trim it back every 8 months and it is usually about 5-7lbs. I sell it to my LFS for credit and they weigh it to see how much to give me. My Nitrates do go up if I feed more often, don't blast my rocks to get the detritus out every month before a WC, or syphon the sand to get the detritus out of it. I never had issues with algae other then diatoms when I first started but after using bioplastics instead of a fuge, it all went away in the first 6 months after setting it up so then I added a fuge to get rid of the bioplastics and to grow pods for my mandarin.

Montis seem like the simplest coral to grow until you have rapid changes in alkalinity and then you find out they're very sensitive to it. Typically they show the stress of an event like an alk peak a week or 10 days later.

And dipping for nudis does nothing for any eggs that might be attached. If you can remove any of them and do a good visual exam for nudis it's worth your time. They love Caps.

1.) Your lfs is totally wrong. The only extra thing in seachem is boron, which isn't really something we want to build up in our tanks over time because it will throw off alkalinity test kit readings. Everything you need to maintain alkalinity is in baking soda, it's that simple. I'd be very skeptical of your lfs's advice since they seem to like to present things as fact that are totally false.

2.) Everything you describe sounds like a monti that's lacking nutrients. These are corals that struggle and lose color in overly low nutrient levels. If you're only needing to clean the glass every 7-10 days then I don't care what your test kits say, your nutrients are too low and you need to feed more.

Good luck!

I'm wondering too, we need pics of the setup and corals to understand better what is going on.

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...ps71a2333a.jpg

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...ps9c444179.jpg

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/...ps901d4db9.jpg

The first one is my hollywood stunner which is next to the monti and the second and third is the monti. Its the best picture i could take. The top left of the monti is where it turned brown but its all pale.

Check your K potassium and make sure it around 380 to 400. If not nudibranch then only low in potassium will kill your monti cap.

I've seen this one repeated ad nauseum over the years, and yet I've never seem a shred of evidence to support it, nor any other credible support for potassium dosing.

Never knew about potassium, I will go buy a test kit tomorrow and see what it's at. That might be why since that orange monti was in there for over a year and was growing fast until lately.

Or you could not waste your money :)

I dose potassium not just monti cap is healthier but coraline algae is exploded. Reefing is experiment if you don't try you wouldn't know. It doesn't hurt to test and keep potassium at sea level.

I agree with this and have experienced it first hand last year with some just wrong alk fluctuations in my tank. The montis were the first to look upset, the first to look better when alk was passing through "in range", and then the first to die as fluctuation continued. A few acros held in for a long time and then quit. However, most of them, including turaki, secale and tortuosa, survived. They browned some but growth and color are returning.