7/3/2020
The bad news: I'm an idiot. I was doing a water change, lost my attention for a split second, and ended up catching a bunch of my dragon soul torch's tentacles in the siphon and tearing them off.
The good news: coral is pretty hardy and - minus the shortened tentacles - it seems like it's going to make a full recovery.
The better news: dinos still haven't come back after over a week of my full lighting schedule (same one I was using prior to my outbreak), so I think I'm in the clear!
And speaking of better news, a thank you to
@Corallus for offering up his yellowtail damsel when we were trying to figure out what to add to the tank—along with a couple additional frags and an RBTA. Everything's settling in nicely so far, and I'm reasonably sure the damsel and our clownfish are friends now.
And an extra big thanks to him for my first SPS frag (though I've had many offers from others on here), a blue acro:
Funnily enough, I had the opposite problem that I had pre- and during-dinos: climbing phosphates. I encouraged my phosphates to climb to ~0.05 when I had dinos, but (I'm assuming) the remaining detritus kept releasing phosphates during that time and they eventually climbed to 0.14 ppm. I turkey basted the rocks, vacuumed the sand, did a partial water change, and added some GFO, and - a few days later - phosphates are at 0.07 ppm and falling. Trying to get it down to ~0.03 ppm to encourage the acro to re-color after the stress of transport, and if anyone has any other tips for coloration outside of 'stability', I'm all ears.
Final note of interest: after my 3-day blackout, I noticed that alkalinity usage had dropped considerably. Prior to the blackout my system was going through it at about 0.5 to 0.7 dkh/day; after adding the acro and testing daily to adjust for the new usage, it held steady at ~0.2 to 0.4 dkh/day. My guess was that this is due to the blackout causing some type of metabolic slowdown of coral growth, and the days afterwards were the corals re-adjusting and 'ramping up' growth again.
This prediction held true when the usage spiked over the course of a few days, and now seems to be at ~0.9 dkh/day. Here's hoping that lowered phosphates + stable alkalinity will lead to recolored and happy growth for my first stick.