All of my girlfriend's chalices are receding.

[dtruitt]

Weve got four chalices in a mixed reef where everything else is doing okay to well. My acros are all starting to encrust, and we (meaning she) figured out where to place favias, lobos, favites, and a trachy without melting them.

These freaking chalices are all receding, though, and have been for some time.

We are placing them much like the various "brain" corals. Direct light on the sandbed, indirect light mounted low on an incline, or moderate shade for the roughest looking chalice. All appear to be echinophyllia to my untrained eye.

Parameters as follows:

1.025sg
80F
11.8dKH (but the issue was present for weeks at 10.0dKH)
435ppm Ca
1305ppm Mg
25ppm NO4
0.1ppm PO4

Lighting with Kessil A360NE at no more than 40% brightness for two hours. 13 hour photoperiod is primarily 100% blue, <20% intensity.

Looking at the parameters and considering the placement, I cant see any reason that every chalice she gets starts STN.

Do chalices have any unique care requirements I'm not thinking about? Are they bound to recede when they're treated like "brain" corals?

Only thing I can think of is that weve been feeding the corals a little less, but the chalices never extend their tentacles when I spot feed

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[MelReefer]

Pics?

 

[dtruitt]

Pics?

Just took these now. Pardon the messy tank, I need to do some vacuuming once weve re arranged the rockscape.

 

[Shirak]

More info on your tank dimensions and lighting might help. Have you done any par readings? Narrow focus Kessil tunablue? 13hours at <20% with two of those at 40% intensity? Am I understanding your lighting. Just the one spot fixture? Sounds to me like not enough light.. but that's only my best guess.

I never see any tentacles out on my chalices unless lights have been out for a couple hours

 

[dtruitt]

More info on your tank dimensions and lighting might help. Have you done any par readings? Narrow focus Kessil tunablue? 13hours at <20% with two of those at 40% intensity? Am I understanding your lighting. Just the one spot fixture? Sounds to me like not enough light.. but that's only my best guess.

I never see any tentacles out on my chalices unless lights have been out for a couple hours

Standard 65g. Two spotlights. You are understanding the lighting, yes.

Would insufficient light cause recession?? I've understood under lighting to be much safer than over lighting.

 

[Shirak]

How far off the water are the lights?

IMO yes insufficient light will cause slow tissue recession as the coral is not receiving enough light energy to metabolize food and grow.

 

[Shirak]

Just another thought... It may be in part due to the narrow angle version of the lights. They may be overkill for the depth of your tank and in doing so there are very bright hot par areas and not far away much lower par areas. I think without a par meter it would be very difficult to dial in the power output on the light vs the par readings within the tank and how it changes as you move across the sand bed side to side front to back and up/down etc. Either that or you would need to have them a couple feet above the tank to get more even spread and be able to turn up the power without frying everything directly under them. Might look into diffusers?

 

[DonDrummond]

dtruitt- ever figure out your chalice issue? I’m having same problem

 

[dtruitt]

dtruitt- ever figure out your chalice issue? I’m having same problem

Two or three things were at play.

I did not calibrate the refractometer often enough and started doing more WCs. This dropped the salinity in the tank, making all of the more sensitive corals more prone to other issues, or outright killing the most temperamental.

A number of these chalices were placed in such a way that flow, high or low, was especially irritating to the chalices. This caused them to pull and the skeleton was ripping through on a couple.

Feeding practices were sub optimal at this time. Reef roids paste was too dilute, and I was not totally killing the powerhead in the tank, so food wasnt able to adhere to the chalices' mucous. I would strongly emphasize how big of a difference I saw in feeding response since reducing the amount of liquid in food preparations, and killing *all* circulation for the five minutes it takes to spot feed all of our slower growing LPS.

All of the chalices are growing and coloring up well now, with the exception of a single piece which did not make it.

Do any of these scenarios sound possible?

I've found that they are *very* tolerant of a wide range of par. Many chalices in the tank now are getting 200+

 

[zuri]

looking at these pics top left and right not enough flow notice all the debris around them pic 3 bottom left way to close to the scoly pic four can you see the mountain of v snail's sitting right behind it those will slowly kill any coral. cept echinata that coral will will clear pretty much anything around it

 

[DonDrummond]

Awesome to hear they’ve made a comeback.
Mine are all 1-2 years old and were thriving. I think the culprit may be a bacterial thing from a newly acquired favia frag that started receding first. Debating on popping off all the chalice- which are all encrusted off their plugs now and try dipping them- which would suck and might make things worse. May just up the reef roids to biweekly feedings first— so frustrating. But maybe mine will follow yours on the road to recovery- fingers crossed

 

[dtruitt]

looking at these pics top left and right not enough flow notice all the debris around them pic 3 bottom left way to close to the scoly pic four can you see the mountain of v snail's sitting right behind it those will slowly kill any coral. cept echinata that coral will will clear pretty much anything around it

Thanks for the thoughts, but I actually got this resolved by reducing flow and fixing salinity!

 

[Rit6942]

You cant "overlight" with an a360...........at 20-40% your barely at 50 par. That light at 100% intensity is barely equal to a 150/175 watt mh radium bulb. That light should be cranked at full a good portion of the day........

...

 

[dtruitt]

You cant "overlight" with an a360...........at 20-40% your barely at 50 par. That light at 100% intensity is barely equal to a 150/175 watt mh radium bulb. That light should be cranked at full a good portion of the day........

...

It's an A360N, which has a lot more punch compared to the A360W. That said, it's sitting at 100% for twelve hours total a day and par readings are in the 200+ range where I'm putting chalices lately.

 

[zuri]

strange chalice receding with salinity wrong but acros encrusting.... well glad you worked it xD

 

[Jeffcb]

Kool

 

[dtruitt]

strange chalice receding with salinity wrong but acros encrusting.... well glad you worked it xD

The acros all kicked the bucket a couple weeks after I made the original post.

I think flow was the primary issue for the chalices. An MP40 in a small, poorly scaped tank can really rip some chalices up. After a strategic re rock, theres a lot more variance in flow. Plenty of pockets of low to mid flow to work with.

Acros probably would have survived around 30ppt, were it not for other compounding mistakes (not knowing how often GFO needs to be changed, and bad RO water).

 

[zuri]

i know how that goes lost a mag chasing numbers when it was happy good stuff learning right xD