Hi, folks.
My son and I are adding corals to what had been a FLOWLR tank. We recently picked up 6 new frags, that have been settling in in a QT for the past week. At first everyone seemed happy. But then yesterday (6days after arrival) we noticed our new Pyrokinesis Favites starting to develop a grayish spot on the top of him. It's really pronounced under the blue/moon light at nighttime. Day and night pics below.
1. Does this look like a sick coral to you? (Pls forgive the noob question, we don't want to overreact, but this looks bad to me.)
2. What's likely cause? Possible fix?
a. My first thought was " too much light?" When we first got the shipment we put the frag rack on a rock about 7" down from surface under the LED strip that came with our first Fluval AIO 32gal tank (which is now our QT). Started to see some color fade and polyp retraction, so we moved it down to bottom of tank after 2 days. This splotch showed up 3 days later.
b. Other possibilities require a bunch more data, I know. We've tested lots of stuff with Red Sea kits, and parameters all look like what were told is "good." (I'll list below if anyone wants to read through). The only other livestock in the tank are some snails. Tank is over a year old, no algae issues, only significant change is that once we put in corals what had been a 9.4dkh tank drifted down over a week to 8.1dkh. We added Red Sea Foundation to get it back to 9.0 last night, and will add a little more to get to 9.5 tonight. Are Favites super-sensitive to Alk variance? It's just odd that everyone else in tank seems fine...
Thanks for any insights.
32 gal AIO tank, 1.5years old
salinity 1.024
Temp 77
ammonia, nitrite both 0
Nitrate 10 (tank used to have three fish and a shrimp)
Alk 8.1, down from 9.4 last week
pH 8.0 (down from 8.4 last week)
CA 430
Mg 1360
My son and I are adding corals to what had been a FLOWLR tank. We recently picked up 6 new frags, that have been settling in in a QT for the past week. At first everyone seemed happy. But then yesterday (6days after arrival) we noticed our new Pyrokinesis Favites starting to develop a grayish spot on the top of him. It's really pronounced under the blue/moon light at nighttime. Day and night pics below.
1. Does this look like a sick coral to you? (Pls forgive the noob question, we don't want to overreact, but this looks bad to me.)
2. What's likely cause? Possible fix?
a. My first thought was " too much light?" When we first got the shipment we put the frag rack on a rock about 7" down from surface under the LED strip that came with our first Fluval AIO 32gal tank (which is now our QT). Started to see some color fade and polyp retraction, so we moved it down to bottom of tank after 2 days. This splotch showed up 3 days later.
b. Other possibilities require a bunch more data, I know. We've tested lots of stuff with Red Sea kits, and parameters all look like what were told is "good." (I'll list below if anyone wants to read through). The only other livestock in the tank are some snails. Tank is over a year old, no algae issues, only significant change is that once we put in corals what had been a 9.4dkh tank drifted down over a week to 8.1dkh. We added Red Sea Foundation to get it back to 9.0 last night, and will add a little more to get to 9.5 tonight. Are Favites super-sensitive to Alk variance? It's just odd that everyone else in tank seems fine...
Thanks for any insights.
32 gal AIO tank, 1.5years old
salinity 1.024
Temp 77
ammonia, nitrite both 0
Nitrate 10 (tank used to have three fish and a shrimp)
Alk 8.1, down from 9.4 last week
pH 8.0 (down from 8.4 last week)
CA 430
Mg 1360