Problems with my montis

[Shaunv]

So, I am having problems with my montiporas. When I started my 40 in July and added coral in August, everything was growing like crazy. My Jedi mind trick tripled in size, my orange cap colored up nice and bright and was doing great, my Setosa was growing, everything was looking super. I did have a problem with low calcium and magnesium in which I lost a rainbow monti. I have remedied this problem. Since that was fixed, I added a mystic monti, a purple digitata, a Chili pepper monti, and a new rainbow. Over the last few months, my chili pepper has lost all of the bright green color and is a very dull green now, my Jedi is almost dead, my rainbow and my mystic are starting to RTN, my purple digital has some bleached spots, my setosa is dying, but my orange cap is thriving. All other corals and clam are growing. I don't know what is going on or what to do to fix it. Here are my parameters.

Temp 77
salinity 1.026
Calcium 420
Magnesium 1480
alk 8.6
ph 8.4
nitrites 0
nitrates 0
ammonia 0
phosphates 0.03
copper 0

My potassium was super low off the charts and have been adding a little every day for about 10 days. I will test again this weekend.

I use 2 T5 bulbs Geissman actinic and actinic + on for 12 hours and a Kessil 350w on for 10 hours with blues at 75% and whites at 30%

i have a refugium with Tina of chaeto and red dragon macro and a protein skimmer.

I dose calcium and magnesium by hand daily and have an ATO that I add my alkalinity increaser to.

I feed daily. Right now I am feeding LRS reef frenzy but just started that a few days ago. Before that I was using Hiroki Mysis, oyster feast, and reef chili. I have not been able to find any pests but have dipped in Coral Dip just in case.

for the most part, I use the water machine at the grocery store that puts the water through a carbon filter, a paper filter a charcoal filter, UV twice, and deionization.

any suggestions would be welcome. Please help. Thanks

 

[SynDen]

I would say unstable alk of low potassium or iodine are possible culprits here, but also maybe partly due to adding corals to the tank before it reach a well established point imo.

I have a starburst monti that I almost lost. It was growing great and looking pretty decent, but one day the middle of it started to slightly gray out. Over time the gray spread out radially. For awhile the gray was right up to the edge but the newest growth was still a good color. Eventually though it turned almost completely gray and parts of the center completely died off.
After doing some digging it appeared the it was either linked to unstable alk or low potassium/iodine in the tank. I had some Kent iodine, that also has potassium and started dosing 5ml in every ATO bucket. Ever since I started doing that, the starburst has fully recovered and back to one of my fast growing and brightest corals in the tank.

Others may have different opinions on this but if your potassium is really low I would start there. Get it to a NSW level and hold it there, I'd bet you would see a pretty dramtic turn around of your montis

 

[Rumen]

Check for monti eating nudibranch I

 

[Shaunv]

Thanks Synden. My Alk is super stable as my top off water keeps it at 8.6 consistently. The potassium is my biggest concern as it took 37 drops for me to register it when 25 drops was the lowest the test kit registered which equalled about about 225. My shrimp molted the day before I tested the potassium so maybe my iodine is ok. I don't have a test kit for it though so I'm not sure what it's at. I have seen more purple showing up in some of my corals so hopefully it's going up.

 

[Shaunv]

Check for monti eating nudibranch I

Can't find any nudibranchs. I have checked during the evening and at night when lights are out and early in the morning and during the day. No nudis. Add I dipped just in case.

 

[jda123]

More whiteish light. Replace one of those actinic T5 for something with more spectrum over 450nm in it.

 

[ValG]

I've been going through similar issues with my monties last year. Still not sure what the cause was. I know that my alk levels were not stable, magnesium was really high - was trying to fight bryopsis and possibly left it high for too long. So ended up losing green cap, forst fire, purple and orange digis completely. The rest lost all the color and started showing signs of STN. I have been trying to stabilize my alk, lower phosphates, switched salt from Kent to Aquamedic, smaller but more frequent water changes(now do 10% weekly) Things have been turning around slowly over the last couple of months. My flowerpot monti looks great now, so does rainbow(for whatever reason it didn't get affected that much), mystic sunset is growing again but has not regained all color. Keeping my fingers crossed. If you do identify the cause please share it and good luck! Hope you can turn it around!

 

[DyM]

"purple digital has some bleached spots" that sounds like a pest. Monti's are really easy, and really aren't impacted by the alk swings from my experience. I agree with Doug about ensuring you have full spectrum light, but man my monti's grow it seems like under any light and under any conditions from what I've seen. I don't know what monti nudibrachers exactly look like, but keep an eye on the RTN and spotted corals, as loosing color is one thing, dead spots is a whole other. Good luck.

 

[Shaunv]

What's weird is all of my other SPS looks great and is growing. The purple digi is growing too but has some bleached spots. I will keep looking for pests. I have not been able to find any though. I have read that low potassium can affect montis first. Not sure if this is the problem or not but I am increasing the potassium to see if that helps. It's also weird that my orange cap isn't affected at all. In fact it is growing very fast. In regards to the white light spectrum, wouldn't my Kessil be giving the white spectrum?

 

[DyM]

If you're in the hood, I have a potassium test kit I never use and you're welcome to take it to test. I'd say if your acro's are growing or looking good, your light is good.

 

[Shaunv]

If you're in the hood, I have a potassium test kit I never use and you're welcome to take it to test. I'd say if your acro's are growing or looking good, your light is good.

Thanks for for the offer Dave. I don't make it out your way very often but I am about ready to bring you some corals soon anyway. So, I may just hit you up for that.

Here's how some of my acros look.
[attachment=68590:name]

 

[jda123]

Unless you have been dosing potassium or iodine, or not using a reef-grade salt, then testing for those is probably going to be a red herring, so consider other options as well.

Most montis live near the surface and can do quite well with daylight settings. The Kessil is very weak out of the box (a350W about 1/6th the radiated watts of a pretty bad 250W MH running both channels at 100%), so turning white down to 35% is not very much light. Most deeper stuff can do OK with just blues, some stuff cannot.

 

[Shaunv]

I use Instant Ocean reef crystals and do 10 gallon water changes (~25%) bi weekly. I will try turning the whites up on the Kessil but I ran this Kessil for about 2 years as the only light in my 17 gallon and montis grew just fine with blues at 50% and whites at 20%. I will look at replacing one of the Geisseman bulbs with the daylight bulb and see if that helps at all.

 

[jda123]

Other than dry mixing up that IO really good before you mix it with water, give the more light a shot - a 17G is quite a cry from a 40 where the light requirements might double, or more.

 

[Shaunv]

Other than dry mixing up that IO really good before you mix it with water, give the more light a shot - a 17G is quite a cry from a 40 where the light requirements might double, or more.

Will do. I will crank up the Kessil too.

 

[jda123]

Raise the kessil up SLOW. I would not be afraid of just putting a new T5 bulb on and letting it go.

 

[Shaunv]

I am considering purchasing a second Aquatic Life 2 buld T5HO fixture and putting in the Geisseman Midday bulb and linking it to my other Aquatic Life 2 buld fixture

 

[Shaunv]

So, to be on the safe side, I took a few of my monti frags to Aquatic Art to keep them safe while I figure out what's going on in the tank. I still have my orange cap which is growing fine, my purple digitata, my Jedi mind trick and Setosa. I tested my potassiumast weekend and it is now at 400. Which is good. I have brought my calcium back up to 440 and have been turning up my whites very slowly and will continue to do so. I also added a bag of carbon and a polyfter. The polyfter has been in since Saturday and has not changed color so I don't believe there to be any contaminants causing my problems. My digitata still has a few white spots so I am going to dip it again just to be sure there are no nudi's on it but I haven't been able to see any. Hopefully things will turn around soon.

 

[SynDen]

Had an incident the other day that made me think of this thread, last Friday I woke up, checked my tank, and all looked good. Went to work, came home and that starburst that I had recovered suddenly had a bleach grayish white spot right in the middle again. Tested all the numbers and all looked good until I did the last one, Nitrates, and suddenly I had 20ppm nitrates in the tank.
Made me scramble to change the carbon and do a water change. Only had 5g on hand at the time though so had to make a new batch, so on Saturday I did another water change on the main tank, cleaned off the rocks again and vacuumed some of the sand. Numbers all look good again, and the monti hasn't bleached any further, so back to recovering it yet again.. sigh
Everything else in the tank looks pretty decent, not in full glory or anything but that monti is like my tank signal flare, anything gets out of whack and suddenly its screaming at you.

 

[Miah2bzy]

Any updates Shaun?