Fungia receding

[Xj reefing]

The hammer that is bailing has gotten worse. What should I do with it?

[mcarroll]

11 hours ago, Xj reefing said:

I don’t really have the funds at the moment for second higher end pump but I can probably find a smaller one for much cheaper on eBay. Would getting a small cheaper one of eBay be okay to put on the other side to decrease dead spots?

Should be fine.  👍

 

Might be worth considering that switch I mentioned if funds are tight.

 

The Nero5's sale could probably finance the whole purchase of two Tunze 6045's ($80/ea) and a set of appliance timers to alternate their flow every few hours.  

 

That's an excellent flow setup for a tank your size.  It's the same setup I had on my old 37 Gallon and the later 50 Gallon which I was describing earlier...it was excellent on both tanks.  When corals became too dense for the flow to be adequate, adding a third 6045 made the flow excellent again.  There was only about a gallon or two of open space left in the tank at this point, BTW....it was WAY overcrowded with branching and plating stony corals and badly in need of fragging.....I just never wanted to break my corals....was awesome to grow them so huge.  (So "unusual" circumstances made the third pump necessary....you may never need to add a third pump to your tank.)

23 minutes ago, Xj reefing said:

The hammer that is bailing has gotten worse. What should I do with it?

Not much you can do at this stage.....it's taking care of itself, trying to float away to better water.  It can't be stopped.

 

As long as conditions are made better there's a good chance it could survive post-bailout.

 

(I have to be honest that in the pic it doesn't look like bailout tho...it just looks like three unhappy polyps.   Probably just my point of view though – you're there with it in 3D! 😉)

[Tamberav]

Do you see any brown jelly like stuff on it? If so, toss it. I would probably toss it at that point anyways as a precaution to try and keep the other hammers safe from potential infection. 

 

I lost some hammers after ATO got stuck ON so they definitely can be unhappy about salinity swings. Unfortunately the stress triggered brown jelly so some I didn't lose till later. The healthiest colonies did fine. 

[Xj reefing]

One of the heads is just completely rotting away and the other one is following. I will throw it away tonight. I am really annoyed at this situation as this hammer has been doing great for over a year now. I need to consider swapping out wave makes for a little longer though and will try in the mean time to get a cheap one.

[mcarroll]

Corals can sometimes regrow from tissue remaining in the skeleton – Euphyllilas included....there have actually been one to two threads on this recently.   For this reason I wouldn't pitch out any skeletons right away.

 

Work on correcting the things that have been identified so far.  👍

[Murphs_Reef]

2 hours ago, mcarroll said:

Corals can sometimes regrow from tissue remaining in the skeleton – Euphyllilas included....there have actually been one to two threads on this recently.   For this reason I wouldn't pitch out any skeletons right away.

 

Work on correcting the things that have been identified so far.  👍

+ If it does die off.. nice interesting piece of rock. 👍🏼

[Xj reefing]

One of the other hammers that was not opening now is opening a fair bit before the lights come on and during the day one head is about a quarter open and the other one has polyps that look really deflated and closed up.

[Xj reefing]

Did some testing before a water change and the results are as follows

 

alkalinity-7.8

calcium-440

mag- 1420

Phosphate- 0.1

nitrate- 10-15

[mcarroll]

8 minutes ago, Xj reefing said:

Did some testing before a water change and the results are as follows

 

alkalinity-7.8

calcium-440

mag- 1420

Phosphate- 0.1

nitrate- 10-15

Seems like a good batch of numbers!  🤞

[Xj reefing]

19 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

Seems like a good batch of numbers!  🤞

One head of a hammer is still really deflated and closed up. Will this go back to normal or should I see if my lfs is able to frag it/look after it for me?

[Xj reefing]

I took the coral to my lfs and got them to cut of the unhappy head with bone cutters. It was already starting to fall out of its skeleton. The owner suggested getting a icp test done as there are a few more un happy corals and all the parameters I checked are good. I will be posting the sample on Monday 

[Xj reefing]

Right I got back the results from the icp. Phosphate way too high. Can I use chaeto to fix this?

[Tamberav]

A water change would be faster

short term solution if it really is 0.7

 

Long term… macro can help export but you also need to keep an eye on nitrate. Easily for it to hit 0 while still having excess phosphate. 

[mcarroll]

On 10/30/2021 at 5:35 PM, Xj reefing said:

The salinity is 1.026 although it was up around 1.030 a few weeks ago.

That salinity spike is the only real problem I've seen or heard about so far.  Don't underestimate the severity of a salinity spike like that.....1.030 is REALLY high.  You can kill a lot of your bacterial population (including nitrifies!) at levels that high...not to mention any potential effect (or side-effect) for higher organisms.

 

7 hours ago, Xj reefing said:

Right I got back the results from the icp. Phosphate way too high. Can I use chaeto to fix this?

There's nothing wrong with your numbers currently.  This test confirms that.  👍   Don't add cheato or anything like that.

 

Keep in mind that Triton has a product line and ideology to push and that's what their interpretations are based on and intended for.  Unless you are trying to use their system, you should focus on the numbers rather than their interpretations.  

 

Also keep in mind that ICP testing like this (as in: inexpensive hobby-style ICP testing) isn't as perfect as actual ICP testing.  A Triton test gives you more results (more tests) than drip tests (eg Salifert), but not necessarily better results.  A read.

 

I'm a little curious if you're doing anything specifically to boost Iodine?  It's pretty normal to have 0.00 (zero) in a functioning reef, but your test registered decent levels (48 µg/L) somehow.  Had you maybe just done a big water change before taking the water sample that you sent to them?

[Xj reefing]

I had done a 10% water change 2 days before.