Coral Wars - My Monti Lost. :(

[Snow_Phoenix]

Need some pointers. My red pavona went to war with my green monticap last night. The pavona was sliming (this coral overlaps my monticap a little) and today morning, the point of contact between both corals has caused my green monti to die around the left rim. I broke off the pavona frag and reglued it a distance away from the green monticap, but I'm concerned over the monti.

 

How do I break off the dead section of the monticap without damaging/destroying the entire frag in the process? The monti has encrusted quite well to my LR, and the dead skeleton is surprisingly hard/tough, and cannot be broken by hand (I tried). Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

I just don't want the whole monti to STN or RTN later. It was doing very, very well and had a nice growth spurt, and even turned vivid green in my tank. Would like to salvage the most of it as much as possible. Thoughts?

 

Here's what I'm talking about:

 

 

 

 

[WV Reefer]

2 hours ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Need some pointers. My red pavona went to war with my green monticap last night. The pavona was sliming (this coral overlaps my monticap a little) and today morning, the point of contact between both corals has caused my green monti to die around the left rim. I broke off the pavona frag and reglued it a distance away from the green monticap, but I'm concerned over the monti.

 

How do I break off the dead section of the monticap without damaging/destroying the entire frag in the process? The monti has encrusted quite well to my LR, and the dead skeleton is surprisingly hard/tough, and cannot be broken by hand (I tried). Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

I just don't want the whole monti to STN or RTN later. It was doing very, very well and had a nice growth spurt, and even turned vivid green in my tank. Would like to salvage the most of it as much as possible. Thoughts?

 

Here's what I'm talking about:

 

 

 

 

 

Montis can be tricky because you never know how they will break once you start beating on them. 

 

I would find something sharp and chisel the dead piece off.  

[Snow_Phoenix]

17 minutes ago, WV Reefer said:

 

Montis can be tricky because you never know how they will break once you start beating on them. 

 

I would find something sharp and chisel the dead piece off.  

Like chisel it bit by bit - only the dead areas? Will this damage the healthy areas? I just want to stop the dead area from spreading. It doesn't look like it have, but I'm worried regardless. SPS can be a pain sometimes. 

[WV Reefer]

6 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Like chisel it bit by bit - only the dead areas? Will this damage the healthy areas? I just want to stop the dead area from spreading. It doesn't look like it have, but I'm worried regardless. SPS can be a pain sometimes. 

 

With the orange Monti in my 12, it could take damage and then grow right back over the damage. So maybe wait and see and if it’s spreading you could do surgery. 

[Snow_Phoenix]

3 minutes ago, WV Reefer said:

 

With the orange Monti in my 12, it could take damage and then grow right back over the damage. So maybe wait and see and if it’s spreading you could do surgery. 

Alrighty. Do you need a special coral cutter, or would an ordinary chisel do? (Coral cutters are quite frankly overpriced here).

[WV Reefer]

12 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Alrighty. Do you need a special coral cutter, or would an ordinary chisel do? (Coral cutters are quite frankly overpriced here).

 

I used my tongs/ tweezers and a couple of good whacks. If you try to cut it it will likely crumble. 

 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

11 minutes ago, WV Reefer said:

 

I used my tongs/ tweezers and a couple of good whacks. If you try to cut it it will likely crumble. 

 

 

I'll try that - hope it works and I don't accidently kill it. 😞 

[WV Reefer]

8 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

I'll try that - hope it works and I don't accidently kill it. 😞 

 

 

here is an old progress pic of mine. You can see in the top pic the entire middle died and in the bottom pic it came back stronger. 

 

 

 

[mcarroll]

 i'm in favor of the wait-and-see approach as well.

 

The only potential downside to doing nothing is that algae could start growing on the bear skeleton if conditions are not very good for coral growth. However, you can always chisel off the dead part later if it's actually needed and then you will know if your system is out of balance as well. 

[Snow_Phoenix]

3 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

 i'm in favor of the wait-and-see approach as well.

 

The only potential downside to doing nothing is that algae could start growing on the bear skeleton if conditions are not very good for coral growth. However, you can always chisel off the dead part later if it's actually needed and then you will know if your system is out of balance as well. 

It has been a long time since the last post, but good news is that it grew over the white bits and actually spread out a bit more. It did lose color completely though when I placed it in a QT bin while upgrading my tanks, but it is now slowly regaining the green coloring. Will probably take a few more weeks before it bounces back 100% in my 60G though. Thanks for the advice all the same. 😊

[mcarroll]

 good news!

 

(I don't know what QT bin means exactly, but that sounds like something you can avoid next time around, eh?)

[Snow_Phoenix]

1 hour ago, mcarroll said:

 good news!

 

(I don't know what QT bin means exactly, but that sounds like something you can avoid next time around, eh?)

Oh - I had a plastic storage bin that I used as a Quarantine Tank (QT). I used it to hold all my livestock when I was upgrading from a 20G nano to a 60G cube. I use bins from time to time to quarantine my fish (especially new ones) before introducing them into my main tank. Since the bin is plastic, it is easier for me to clean and lift (lighter) as compared to a glass tank. Hope that explains things. 🙂 

[mcarroll]

That doesn't sound like something that should cause a coral to bleach.

 

Was the coral in there for a really long time or something? 

[Snow_Phoenix]

5 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

That doesn't sound like something that should cause a coral to bleach.

 

Was the coral in there for a really long time or something? 

Long story short, I had my entire livestock - mixed reef (SPS, LPS, Zoas, Shrooms, Anemones) and fish, shrimp, snails, crabs & urchins in the QT bin. Sometime in the middle of the night, a part of my finger leather coral was sucked up my HOB filter intake. I dislodged the stuck pieces by accidently ripping it free from the intake, and didn't think much of it. I completely forgot leathers release toxins when stressed or dying, and I had stressed the mother colony of the finger leather out by ripping it. I lost 2 of my fish (1 mandarin + 1 pygmy perchlet), a few inverts and a few coral pieces. The surviving coral pieces either bleached or browned out over the course of a few days. I had to do an emergency transfer into my new 60G then to save whatever I could. Only good thing is that I had used pre-cycled  and mature LR pieces for my 60G, so the transfer went okay and almost everything that survived the bin could be saved. Only, some corals lost color and are now slowly regaining them back. This includes both my red and green monticaps. 

[mcarroll]

Wow. That is kind of a bummer. I'm glad most things were able to be saved though even if they are tweaked.