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Goldenrod Anacropora - What is wrong?

Alexander1312

Alexander1312

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Attached the water parameters (all validated by ICP). PAR is approx 300 where this it is located. All other SPS do exceptionally well, except this one. I assume it getting white on the bottom is not a good sign, although it looks like growth tips.

Whoever has this too, can you let me know what PAR you running with it? I can move it to another area with up to 500 PAR but I was not sure if it wants more or less light.

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Mine is only getting around 200 PAR max, doing fine. I don’t think that’s a light issue though - maybe flow or some kind of pest? It’s definitely dying back from the base. Mine doesn’t really encrust much at all but it’s not receding like that either…odd!
 
My lime anacropora (not goldenrod) lost its color when I changed my light and moved its place from 150 to 250 par. It regained the color after 3-4 weeks. Your white base is worrisome. What par did it have before?
 
derek_SR said:
Mine is only getting around 200 PAR max, doing fine. I don’t think that’s a light issue though - maybe flow or some kind of pest? It’s definitely dying back from the base. Mine doesn’t really encrust much at all but it’s not receding like that either…odd!
Click to expand...

Mine are yellow highlighter colored, pale neon green-yellow. Polyps straight gray

They’re growing so idk.
 
Thank you all. My suspicion was too much light; I just did not understand how this could be for this type of coral. It really did quite well and grew until I started increasing the Reefis from around 200 or less to 250+ and then moving over to even stronger settings on the current light, where it is slightly above 300 now.
 
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Mine absolutely refuses to turn yellow. It's gotten as lime as Alexander's, right now it's quite green. It is growing very erratically - I started with a smaller frag so maybe it gets better as it gets larger?

My monti and goldenrod both had (and maybe still have?) this issue: as the coral grows, behind the polyps there are little comet-trails of pigment-less tissue. Almost as if the coral is unable to produce enough fluorescent proteins. The coral is pale.

My green goblin had something similar, so badly that even while growing well, it formed a "spliced" look where parts of it were just black, pigmentless, and the existing pigment just swirled in near the growth tip. After a few water changes this problem went away, but evidently not enough for the goldenrod.

I wonder if it's a trace element issue because water changes partially solved it, but I've been supplementing with Chaetogro, which while basic, contains a tiny amount of everything, and should prevent complete bottoming-out of trace. It is slightly cloudy so potentially some minerals may have precipitated

Also heard something about lower nitrates but I don't really know

Could also be a lighting thing - pics of it in heavy blue always seem to make it look greener. I can test the color temperature idea tomorrow.

Alk: 9.9dkH
Ca: 450-500 always within this range
Mg: hardly test it but I keep it between 1350 and 1500 whenever I check
Nitrates: 25ppm
Phosphates: 0.01ppm
Temp swings a bit at night or during the day, whenever temps drop below 64 or above 78 the heater can't keep up / there is no chiller to bring temp down
Gets about 200 par. I put another one in higher par, it ended up slightly more yellow, but still not yellow.
The flow is bad, very one-directional, but at an OK speed


I will get a better pic soon.

Pic 1 is of the "spliced" green goblin.
Pic 2 top: green goblin. Bottom: goldenrod. You can hardly see it in this pic but there are little comet streaks of paler tissue.

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I have moved it temporarily to a (signficantly) lower light area and will see what happens. I feel the base has started to improve already but this might be wishful thinking. I am not seeing any parasites on it but I am also only using my eyes, which should not give a lot of comfort to the accuacy my assessment.

A few weeks ago a piece of it broke off during tank maintance and I made another frag which I kept in the nano tank. This grew relatively nicely under half the par without any whitening on the base, and a little encrusting.

Since I rule out water parameters given my strong focus on dialing them in (except my lower nitrates or phosphates causing this), I consider overlighting to be the issue, yet it seems like @CaseyP has them under similar PAR which contradicts my light theory.

Although I rule out water parameters, I am running several traces at 0 detectable levels for the a few months now, including zinc, manganese, nickel, copper etc (manganese has most likely impacted my gonies). I wanted to increase them slowly, but they have not gone up for some time now, and I am waiting for my new ICP results any day. If they are still 0, I will force them higher and take the risk of overdosing. 0 zinc, in particular, can create significant light sensitivity issues, which I see in these two types of corals.
 
tribbitt said:
Mine absolutely refuses to turn yellow. It's gotten as lime as Alexander's, right now it's quite green. It is growing very erratically - I started with a smaller frag so maybe it gets better as it gets larger?

My monti and goldenrod both had (and maybe still have?) this issue: as the coral grows, behind the polyps there are little comet-trails of pigment-less tissue. Almost as if the coral is unable to produce enough fluorescent proteins. The coral is pale.

My green goblin had something similar, so badly that even while growing well, it formed a "spliced" look where parts of it were just black, pigmentless, and the existing pigment just swirled in near the growth tip. After a few water changes this problem went away, but evidently not enough for the goldenrod.

I wonder if it's a trace element issue because water changes partially solved it, but I've been supplementing with Chaetogro, which while basic, contains a tiny amount of everything, and should prevent complete bottoming-out of trace. It is slightly cloudy so potentially some minerals may have precipitated

Also heard something about lower nitrates but I don't really know

Could also be a lighting thing - pics of it in heavy blue always seem to make it look greener. I can test the color temperature idea tomorrow.

Alk: 9.9dkH
Ca: 450-500 always within this range
Mg: hardly test it but I keep it between 1350 and 1500 whenever I check
Nitrates: 25ppm
Phosphates: 0.01ppm
Temp swings a bit at night or during the day, whenever temps drop below 64 or above 78 the heater can't keep up / there is no chiller to bring temp down
Gets about 200 par. I put another one in higher par, it ended up slightly more yellow, but still not yellow.
The flow is bad, very one-directional, but at an OK speed


I will get a better pic soon.

Pic 1 is of the "spliced" green goblin.
Pic 2 top: green goblin. Bottom: goldenrod. You can hardly see it in this pic but there are little comet streaks of paler tissue.
Click to expand...

My nitrates are higher than yours, I doubt that's the issue. My guess would be traces too, especially in a small tank - you've got a lot of coral packed in there relative to the amount of water. Probably a higher ratio than my tank by a good margin. I'm not really seeing the issue in your pictures though? Are you overthinking it?

Alexander1312 said:
I have moved it temporarily to a (signficantly) lower light area and will see what happens. I feel the base has started to improve already but this might be wishful thinking. I am not seeing any parasites on it but I am also only using my eyes, which should not give a lot of comfort to the accuacy my assessment.

A few weeks ago a piece of it broke off during tank maintance and I made another frag which I kept in the nano tank. This grew relatively nicely under half the par without any whitening on the base, and a little encrusting.

Since I rule out water parameters given my strong focus on dialing them in (except my lower nitrates or phosphates causing this), I consider overlighting to be the issue, yet it seems like @CaseyP has them under similar PAR which contradicts my light theory.

Although I rule out water parameters, I am running several traces at 0 detectable levels for the a few months now, including zinc, manganese, nickel, copper etc (manganese has most likely impacted my gonies). I wanted to increase them slowly, but they have not gone up for some time now, and I am waiting for my new ICP results any day. If they are still 0, I will force them higher and take the risk of overdosing. 0 zinc, in particular, can create significant light sensitivity issues, which I see in these two types of corals.
Click to expand...

My ICP just came back, I am zero in a lot of the same things (though I am happy to report my Iodine has normalized). I am dosing TM A/K for traces but apparently it's not enough. What are you thinking of using to start supplementing your traces? Are you going to go the individual route or use a broader product?

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derek_SR said:
My nitrates are higher than yours, I doubt that's the issue. My guess would be traces too, especially in a small tank - you've got a lot of coral packed in there relative to the amount of water. Probably a higher ratio than my tank by a good margin. I'm not really seeing the issue in your pictures though? Are you overthinking it?



My ICP just came back, I am zero in a lot of the same things (though I am happy to report my Iodine has normalized. I am dosing TM A/K for traces but apparently it's not enough. What are you thinking of using to start supplementing your traces? Are you going to go the individual route or use a broader product?

View attachment 62190
Click to expand...
Looking at your ICP, it does not look like traces are the issue for my golden rod (but I believe it is for the gonies). Still, seeing Triton reports after some time again worries me as they indicate 0 values to be green, which is clearly not correct in all cases.

Balling light combines major and minor elements dosing, with the flexibility to increase (or decrease) major or minor elements individually based on the ICP test results. So adjusting the traces which go into the Alk and CA solution would be my first choice.

However, based on how Balling light is designed, this is not the best solution in all cases - they use iodine, molybdenum and strontium as lead indicator for the dosing amounts for each of the three individual minor elements bottles it comes with. So if they are at a certain level, it might not make sense to increase their dosing amount while still being deficient on some elements.

Therefore, if there are only a few traces which need adjustment I use individual Captiv8 elements for the 'top-up' based on the NSW parameters. However, it seems as if my refugium still takes out more of these elements than I am adding in, so I keep increasing the manual dosing every month without seeing more than 0 on certain amounts (which are measurable) on the ICPs - a common issue and not problematic for all issues, but e.g. zinc should show values.
 
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