Hello all, total reef newbie here!
My question is about Acanthastrea and, to a lesser extent, Micromussa. I have tried a few frags of these corals, and they die pretty quickly on me. Symptoms are very consistent, with tissue receding back into the corallite, no slime or color changing, just a constant withdrawal into the corallite until there is nothing left but skeleton.
I have a few frags (~10) of some basic beginner stuff: Zoas, birds nest, Duncans, GSP, Xenia, trumpets, Leptastrea, Favia. They seem to be doing OK, though it's hard to tell as I don't have the experience background most of you have regarding coral health. Plus they have been in my possession for exactly 2 days (thanks BAR frag swap - I didn't bring any to trade, but picked them up from Your Reef and Legendary Corals, as well as the freebie table!).
Tank is 125g (around 100g water volume, including sump)
I have 11 small blue-green chromies, 1 baby false percula clown, 1 neon-blue goby, 1 small pajama cardinal, and 1 small bangaii cardinal. Also, one small (silver-dollar sized) RBTA. These have been in the tank for the last few months, added little by little.
For clean-up, I have 3 turbo snails ( I think Astrea), ~10 small hermits, ~10 Cerith snails, 2 emerald crabs, and 2 peppermint shrimp
I run Mars Aqua LED lights at very low settings, ~10 hours /day (I'd say 20% blue, 20% white - hard to tell with the dials the way they are...)
Tank parameters:
Mg: ~1400 ppm (Red Sea test kit)
Ca: ~440ppm (Red Sea test kit)
Alkalinity: currently 6.5 dKH (I say currently because this drops about 1dkH/day) (Red Sea test kit)
Nitrate: ~15ppm (no detectable ammonium or nitrite) (API test kit)
Phosphate: ~0.25 ppm (API test kit)
pH: ~8.2 to 8.3 (API test kit)
Currently I manually dose about +1dKH of Alkalinity buffer (sodium bicarbonate, currently at work so I don't have the brand handy...) once per day. I tried getting it up to ~9dKH, but haven't been able to maintain that yet (probably due to inexperience with dosing so much). Alkalinity seems to want to gravitate to 7ish dKH no matter what I do.
Thanks in advance for reading.... I really want to be able to keep and grow Acans - totally in love with them!
-Bryan
My question is about Acanthastrea and, to a lesser extent, Micromussa. I have tried a few frags of these corals, and they die pretty quickly on me. Symptoms are very consistent, with tissue receding back into the corallite, no slime or color changing, just a constant withdrawal into the corallite until there is nothing left but skeleton.
I have a few frags (~10) of some basic beginner stuff: Zoas, birds nest, Duncans, GSP, Xenia, trumpets, Leptastrea, Favia. They seem to be doing OK, though it's hard to tell as I don't have the experience background most of you have regarding coral health. Plus they have been in my possession for exactly 2 days (thanks BAR frag swap - I didn't bring any to trade, but picked them up from Your Reef and Legendary Corals, as well as the freebie table!).
Tank is 125g (around 100g water volume, including sump)
I have 11 small blue-green chromies, 1 baby false percula clown, 1 neon-blue goby, 1 small pajama cardinal, and 1 small bangaii cardinal. Also, one small (silver-dollar sized) RBTA. These have been in the tank for the last few months, added little by little.
For clean-up, I have 3 turbo snails ( I think Astrea), ~10 small hermits, ~10 Cerith snails, 2 emerald crabs, and 2 peppermint shrimp
I run Mars Aqua LED lights at very low settings, ~10 hours /day (I'd say 20% blue, 20% white - hard to tell with the dials the way they are...)
Tank parameters:
Mg: ~1400 ppm (Red Sea test kit)
Ca: ~440ppm (Red Sea test kit)
Alkalinity: currently 6.5 dKH (I say currently because this drops about 1dkH/day) (Red Sea test kit)
Nitrate: ~15ppm (no detectable ammonium or nitrite) (API test kit)
Phosphate: ~0.25 ppm (API test kit)
pH: ~8.2 to 8.3 (API test kit)
Currently I manually dose about +1dKH of Alkalinity buffer (sodium bicarbonate, currently at work so I don't have the brand handy...) once per day. I tried getting it up to ~9dKH, but haven't been able to maintain that yet (probably due to inexperience with dosing so much). Alkalinity seems to want to gravitate to 7ish dKH no matter what I do.
Thanks in advance for reading.... I really want to be able to keep and grow Acans - totally in love with them!
-Bryan