LPS not happy

[Reefjunkye]

Hi there. Tank is about 2 months old. I don’t know why everytime I introduced an lps (frogspawn,hammer,torch) the base starts to melt on me. But they do survive after lossing the base flesh. Frogspawn/torch and hammer survived (not fully happy) but candy cane melted completely do to flesh only coral note* I do have an space invader that is Happy and thriving ...What am I doing wrong? My water parameter is good. 
Ammonia=0
Nitrite=0.1
Nitrate=10
KH/Alk=8
Ca=420 
Mg=1395
Phos=6 ppb 

Ph=7.8

salinity=1.023

temp=79 

A few hours after I got him 

next day he’s doing okay 

[Matteo]

Do you have a build thread? What light you using? How much flow? 

[Reefjunkye]

I do have a build thread but not many ppl answer to that. So I stop posting on my journal. Ai prime on a peninsula 14g also have jebao sow4 point down as is bb. That is probably the cause of melting since it happened in the course of 2 hrs. What I am guess is that my salinity is quite low 1.023. I had it on 1.025, because my filter floss gets clogged and so that third chamber water level drops and ato kicks in.. so yeah.. I am trying to raise my salinity level through water change 

[luckie1966]

I have never had luck with torch or frogspawn corals long term and I have many years trying . Flow is very important and in my experience they are not a forgiving species to keep. It may say a beginner species but they are wrong. Try favia, scomia' s, and plate corals as beginners corals. Again it's  a coral so not easy but easier. 

[Matteo]

10 minutes ago, luckie1966 said:

I have never had luck with torch or frogspawn corals long term and I have many years trying . Flow is very important and in my experience they are not a forgiving species to keep. It may say a beginner species but they are wrong. Try favia, scomia' s, and plate corals as beginners corals. Again it's  a coral so not easy but easier. 

I disagree. Most euphillya are pretty hardy corals and given proper light and flow they thrive. Something spooky is happening in your tank if they're melting that quick. Also 1.023 isn't that low and would affect it. 

 

I'd argue acans and favias are less forgiving than most torches, hammers and frogspawns. 

[Matteo]

Nvm I read your phosphate levels wrong. 

[Reefjunkye]

3 hours ago, Matteo said:

I disagree. Most euphillya are pretty hardy corals and given proper light and flow they thrive. Something spooky is happening in your tank if they're melting that quick. Also 1.023 isn't that low and would affect it. 

 

I'd argue acans and favias are less forgiving than most torches, hammers and frogspawns. 

Totally, something must be going hay wire by the way I am using aquarorest reef salt. I heard they are bad...

[Matteo]

Hmmmm 🤔 I'm not sure! A change in salt and a fat water change could definitely help. 

[Clown79]

I find euphyllia not forgiving and many don't. Once they go downhill, many don't recover.

Some have success with euphyllia while others struggle.

 

 

Theres a possibility of lighting being too high for them, params seem fine, too much flow is another thought. Usually with too high of flow they tend to not expand whereas I have seen other corals "melt" over night under an Ai prime. 

 

Have you seen anything on them like flatworms, brown jelly substance, any chance you have a shrimp etc doing them harm?

 

 

[Reefjunkye]

Yeah, no. It happened during the course of two hours after introduced to the tank. Light was low at that time since was 2 hrs prior to to off. Other thing is that zoas aren’t fully open but my utter chaos and nuclear green is thriving. Sunny d, orange rainbow, money shots zoas are not fully open. This thing is driving me nuts. I just don’t get it. Maybe I should leave the tank along for another month and see what happens? 

[luckie1966]

On 11/17/2019 at 10:21 PM, Reefjunkye said:

Totally, something must be going hay wire by the way I am using aquarorest reef salt. I heard they are bad...

Ok, we will visit this post 6 months and C what's still alive? Odds on torch coral.... lol

[A.m.P]

My opinion, for what little it's worth. 

Euphyllia are easy in the sense that they will not heavily-impact your water parameters and perhaps certain strains of old-indo euphyllia were exceedingly-forgiving.
However essentially every strain I've come into contact with hasn't really been "forgiving", any slight-change in flow or lighting could leave them stressed for weeks; or worse yet they wouldn't react at all, despite being stressed, and then start rapidly-receding or bleaching weeks later.

Smaller colonies, IE Frags, when irritated or stressed have a penchant of starting to recede from the base and simply never recovering - instead either quickly or painfully-slowly wasting-away into nothing. It's not impossible to reverse this trend, I have, tons of other folks have, but even if you do everything "right" it feels like a roll that's not in your favor.

So they're easy until something goes wrong, I feel this is a problem exacerbated by the small-volume and somewhat less-consistent nature of nano-tanks, maybe not though /shrug.
 

[Clown79]

3 hours ago, Amphrites said:

My opinion, for what little it's worth. 

Euphyllia are easy in the sense that they will not heavily-impact your water parameters and perhaps certain strains of old-indo euphyllia were exceedingly-forgiving.
However essentially every strain I've come into contact with hasn't really been "forgiving", any slight-change in flow or lighting could leave them stressed for weeks; or worse yet they wouldn't react at all, despite being stressed, and then start rapidly-receding or bleaching weeks later.

Smaller colonies, IE Frags, when irritated or stressed have a penchant of starting to recede from the base and simply never recovering - instead either quickly or painfully-slowly wasting-away into nothing. It's not impossible to reverse this trend, I have, tons of other folks have, but even if you do everything "right" it feels like a roll that's not in your favor.

So they're easy until something goes wrong, I feel this is a problem exacerbated by the small-volume and somewhat less-consistent nature of nano-tanks, maybe not though /shrug.
 

Ya, I find SPS easier than euphyllia.

 

Pretty much everything you said is what I have experienced and you see it with many hobbyists

[mcarroll]

On 11/17/2019 at 2:48 PM, Reefjunkye said:

Phos=6 ppb

This is almost zero ppm, correct?  

 

Whatever is going on, that is not helping.

 

Especially with nitrates as high as they are.

 

Which is not to say that nitrates are all that high… They are only "high" relative to having no phosphates available.  (There should be no nitrates available.)

 

Your lights are also probably very intense which puts extra weight on that lack of phosphate and "access" nitrate.

 

I'm not sure any of that would cause a coral to melt in two hours (but it might), but a lack pf available phosphates is worth addressing nonetheless. 👍

 

A quick and efficient way to address the issue and tests whether it is a cause in your corals dilemma is to dose some liquid phosphate.  Seachem, Brightwell and others make appropriate phosphate products.  Target 0.10 ppm for a week or so (maintain that level with daily testing) and see if the state of all of your corals improves.

 

Is your salt one that has carbon dosing stuff built into it? If not don't worry. If it is, I would stop using that salt now and switch to something else.

 

Can you try a lux meter to measure how much light is hitting your tank?  A handheld meter is cheap – under $10 and up – but you can get an app for free for the time being.

 

Running a small Poly-Filter might not be the worst idea either.

[Clown79]

5 hours ago, mcarroll said:

This is almost zero ppm, correct?  

 

Whatever is going on, that is not helping.

 

Especially with nitrates as high as they are.

 

Which is not to say that nitrates are all that high… They are only "high" relative to having no phosphates available.  (There should be no nitrates available.)

 

Your lights are also probably very intense which puts extra weight on that lack of phosphate and "access" nitrate.

 

I'm not sure any of that would cause a coral to melt in two hours (but it might), but a lack pf available phosphates is worth addressing nonetheless. 👍

 

A quick and efficient way to address the issue and tests whether it is a cause in your corals dilemma is to dose some liquid phosphate.  Seachem, Brightwell and others make appropriate phosphate products.  Target 0.10 ppm for a week or so (maintain that level with daily testing) and see if the state of all of your corals improves.

 

Is your salt one that has carbon dosing stuff built into it? If not don't worry. If it is, I would stop using that salt now and switch to something else.

 

Can you try a lux meter to measure how much light is hitting your tank?  A handheld meter is cheap – under $10 and up – but you can get an app for free for the time being.

 

Running a small Poly-Filter might not be the worst idea either.

It equals to 0.018 so it's getting low