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any ideas why my acans look withered

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All my pramaters are fine (at least the ones I test for,alk,ca,salinity) but my acans looked withered . All my outer lps seems to be fine . I havent moved them or changed the light in any way and the colors look fine as well . its been hapining for about 2 weeks .

thanks for the input
 
If nothing else has changed, I'd say to rule out low Mg levels since you haven't tested for that.

Do you do anything for maintaining Mg?
 
Nothing is picking on them and they are not close to any other lps . I had a thought that about my mag levels , but I don't know anything about it and the roll it would play in this . Can you fill me in a little ?
 
How about flow? For some reason my acans don't like my main tank but do well in my frag tank. I think it is the flow in the tank. They are hooked up to the same system, sump, skimmer, everything.
 
If your CA and Alk is a normal reading and you don't have an issue with keeping them stable, I wouldn't worry about your Mg. I think Mg prevent these two params from over precipitating. In my experience, with Mg below 1000, attainning Alk and CA was almost impossible. In anycase, occasional testing of your Mg level is highly recommended, at least until you have a baseline of how much your system is consuming it. If you're using good quality salt to begin with, you shouldn't have to worry about it anyway as most have a significant level in the first place. Typically, it's one of the last ingredients to get depleted so when it goes early, it usually means CA and Alk is being adjusted in an unbalance ratio (this is one of the reason I am now sticking to two-parts only now).

Do you mind providing us some actual numbers of your test results? Maybe we can help you better that way.

Also, have you try dipping it with TMPCC? or Lugol's Solution? Maybe it's being irritated by something. I had a similar issue with my Micro and that's what I did and mine did get better after that.

Hope this helps.
 
Stonies need Ca, Mg, and Alk in order to lay down skeleton and grow.

If Mg is low, the coral has problems that eventually can show up as recession and/or bailout.

Mg problems tend to sneak up on people. It's not as commonly tested for or dosed, and you can be ok for a while with water changes if your coral load is low enough.

Then one day you notice that your LPS don't look so good, and you can't think of anything that's changed.

Not necessarily the problem in your situation, but should be looked into.

Do you run a Ca reactor with any Mg containing media?

Also, RC salt has been low in Mg. Barely over 1000ppm. You can target 1350-1400 range.

JenDub likes to keep her Mg at 1500ppm, but cautions to raise it gradually.
 
Every person, including LFS, that asked me about recession problems they had with euphyllids, blastos, pterogyra, etc. turned out to have low Mg. The corals recovered after raising the Mg to 1350ppm.
 
Norm, given your posts, a general (for other readers) question would be what is a safe way to raise Ca/Mg/Alk?
For example. Lets say my Mg was 900ppm and I wanted to raise it to 1300ppm and was able to spread out my dose over morning and night (1 dose per 12hrs). How much can I safely dose without shocking the system?

Mikey, may be unrelated, but I had issues recently where I MEASURED everything to be on target, but my test kits, while reproducibly gave me good numbers, gave me high numbers vs standards. For example, my refract was measuring 1.025 and Norm's standard (35ppm) which should read 1.025, measured at 1.028...ie, my tank actually was lower salinity then I thought it was.
 
100ppm Mg every 12 hours is probably fine.

I've done 200ppm in a single dose without problem.

Ca I've taken from low 300's up to 430ppm without problem.

Alk I've taken from 3.2 up to 4.2 meq/l in one shot with the alk portion of 2-part, but that's probably aggressive.

.5 meq/l per dose is probably better.
 
I just picked up a mag test kit.............800 . time to start ramping it up as fast as I can .

What do you guys use for mag test kits and how often ? what product do you guys use for dosing mag ?


THANK YOU !!!!!!
 
mag tests in general are pretty inaccurate. I use salifert though. To bump it up if you don't have access to mag flake just use some Epsom salt.
 
OMGZ... 800ppm Mg is like majorly low. Pretty impressive that nothing has died!

Just get some epsom salt from Long's drugs or Safeway for now. That's plenty good, and inexpensive too.

I would go to 1200 in one shot, then 1400 in this case. I don't think gradual change is as important as getting out of an excessively low level at 800ppm.

Use the tank chemistry calculator:

http://reef.diesyst.com/chemcalc/chemcalc.html

For example:

If you have 100g total system volume, enter 100 in the top box.

On the far right, enter 800 for current.

Enter 1200 for desired.

On the dropdown, select epsom salt.

Click "calculate", and it tell you you need 52oz.

Dissolve that in about 3-4qts of fw, then add to your tank.

The next day, repeat the process to figure out how much to add to go from 1200 to 1400.

Use your specific system volume, not 100g :D
 
I used to use Salifert. Awesome Mg kit. But I quit using their products after their quality control went to hell. But Salifert used to kick ass, especially their alk test. They may be ok by now, but screw it, y'know?

I use SeaChem Mg test now. A lot of non chemistry geeks dislike it, but it's a good test, and not all that difficult once you get used to it.

By design, it's more accurate than others. SeaChem is one of the Mg tests that factor out Ca interference by actually removing it as part of the test. The other kits fake it. SeaChem is more precise too, being a titration test that uses syringes.

If you're using Elos, make sure you don't have one with the misprint on the instructions. One batch needed a 25% correction factor, if I remember correctly.

If you tested with Elos, it's possible that your Mg is 1000 and not 800. Still low enough to show ill effects, but not quite so bad.

If I were to keep guessing, I'd figure it's a 50% chance that you have an Elos kit. 20% chance it's one with bad instructions. 50% chance you have RC salt with 1050ppm Mg. 80% chance that you have been doing regular water changes. So that could make sense that your corals are merely unhappy, but not dead.

But that's just me going way out there trying to come up with a reasonable scenario that makes sense.
 
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