Fiji Cube 81G EXT: SPS Canyon - Two crashes in 3 months

[Ancelot]

23 hours ago, xiaoxiy said:

Guess who was a dummy and started bleaching his acros a second time... me.

 

Last time I bleached/crashed my acros was during Thanksgiving. Prior to the episode, I had dislodged my ricordeas from their baskets and added aquarium gravel (Este's Spectrastone White) to my Ricordea basket so that they wouldn't attach to the bottom of the container. 18 hours later, my tank started bleaching. If you remember, I also found a stray current during that episode, and chalked the bleaching up to the stray current. I had also removed the gravel though just in case.

 

Yesterday, I found that my ricordeas had attached fully to the bottom their basket, so I dislodged them and added aquarium gravel again. You guessed it, Este's Spectrastone White. 18 hours later, my acros are exhibiting diminished PE and mild bleaching again. Maybe the stray voltage from last time was the red herring, and the real culprit was the Spectrastone. Another culprit could be pissing off the ricordeas (but I've definitely done that before w/o issue). Time to do some massive water changes again and run polyfilter. 

 

I highly suspect that whatever process is occurring has been only going on for the past 24 hours. The growth shots for this week confirm this; the acros have clearly been growing this week. Also see the stag as an example of the mild bleaching.

 

I'll post regular growth lapse shots later today, after I finish water changes and driving to the LFS 1 hour away to grab polyfilter. 

Probably some chemicals leeching out from that gravel. 

Actually during this time, I will turn off activated carbon and other funky dosing and focus on water changes. I will think some levels of KH is still important since its fundamental to sps health.

[xiaoxiy]

5 hours ago, Ancelot said:

Probably some chemicals leeching out from that gravel. 

Actually during this time, I will turn off activated carbon and other funky dosing and focus on water changes. I will think some levels of KH is still important since its fundamental to sps health.

I'm doing massive water changes. So far I have gone through 74 gallons of water. Mixing up 20 more gallons as we speak (with a plan to make a total of 80 more gallons total). I'm swapped from manual WC back to AWC to minimize temp swings. It's hard doing massive water changes on a 100G+ system. Moments like this make me miss having a nano system where 20G water change is equivalent to 100%. 

 

I'm going to continue carbon and polyfilter though, in an attempt to facilitate removal of anything that leached into the water column. My Alk has risen from 7.35 precrash to 7.92, just from virtue of the water changes.

 

Things have continued to bleach overnight. Last time this happened, it took about 3-4 days before the bleaching halted and things recovered. Fingers crossed.

 

 

[xiaoxiy]

Bad news. I’ve lost 3 acros so far and the others remain bleached. 120 gallons of water changes, carbon and polyfilter seem to have not made much progress in halting this episode. This is gonna be a painful ride. 
 

Granulosa started peeling last night and 90% of the tissue was gone this morning. 

 

Pink Lemonade started peeling a bit at noon, and the damage continues. (Pic 1 is at noon and pic 2 is at 6pm)

 

[xiaoxiy]

The peeling got worse overnight, so I decided to do a last ditch effort. Broke out the gryphon saw and literally cut the peeling half off of the colony and discarded it. I tried making some smaller salvage frags from the non-peeling branches on the bad half though. We'll see what happens.

 

 

Two other pieces started peeling overnight too. I also last-ditch effort fragged them out.

 

 

I think it's fascinating that the RTN pieces are the ones that weren't as effected by the bleaching. I wonder if my rapid high volume water changes did more damage than good: mismatches in PH (significant mismatch because I had to use acid to decrease DKH of new water) and temp.

[mitten_reef]

2 hours ago, xiaoxiy said:

The peeling got worse overnight, so I decided to do a last ditch effort. Broke out the gryphon saw and literally cut the peeling half off of the colony and discarded it. I tried making some smaller salvage frags from the non-peeling branches on the bad half though. We'll see what happens.

 

 

Two other pieces started peeling overnight too. I also last-ditch effort fragged them out.

 

 

I think it's fascinating that the RTN pieces are the ones that weren't as effected by the bleaching. I wonder if my rapid high volume water changes did more damage than good: mismatches in PH (significant mismatch because I had to use acid to decrease DKH of new water) and temp.

ugh, I hate those ones.  a few of mine had literally melting flesh WHILE having full PE on the end of the branch....nothing much I could do at that point.  

 

hope to hear some success story with those emergency fragging.  

[xiaoxiy]

Pre vs Post crash. I think I’m starting to turn the corner with my acros. Lost 5 colonies, can you spot which ones? 
 

[mitten_reef]

27 minutes ago, xiaoxiy said:

Pre vs Post crash. I think I’m starting to turn the corner with my acros. Lost 5 colonies, can you spot which ones? 
 

Damn, those are some big ones. I only found 4; they were big!  But glad you got it turned around. 

[xiaoxiy]

1 hour ago, mitten_reef said:

Damn, those are some big ones. I only found 4; they were big!  But glad you got it turned around. 

The last one was the hawkins colony in the very back. :(.

 

I may have been able to save couple smaller frags of some of these lost colonies; we'll have to see whether the frags RTN.  I unfortunately 100% lost the red granulosa though...Glad I gave out several frags of it over the past year; I will have to grab a cut from once those local frags get bigger. 

[xiaoxiy]

Weekly Update: With all the freed up re-estate in my tank, I'm taking this opportunity to do a minor rescape of my tank.

 

I've mounted some Pink Cadillac frags where the Granulosa used to be. Maybe I'll be able to get them colored up; so they don't look absolutely like trash. 

 

I was able to salvage a bit of the pink lemonade, so I mounted it further back than it was originally. Also brought one of my bounce frags upstairs too.

 

Finally, I bought a clam to put on the rock space between the bounce and pink lemonade.

 

Obligatory Display FTS: Man, things look duller than they have in the past. It'll take some time to heal things back up again.

 

Frag Tank Top Down Shot: While my acros in the frag tank definitely bleached, fortunately none of them peeled/died.

 

Finally, here are the weekly growth lapses: As expected, minimal to no growth this week.