New to the coral thing

DRC Archive General Saltwater Discussion
1

ok so i’m new to the whole coral thing and starting to get a little bit nervous. About two or three weeks ago, i got a duncan coral in preparation for the fragswap. i found a really cheap frag after checking all params and decided to try it out as a test to make sure any coral i brought home from the frag swap would survive. It’s been doing absolutely amazing.

now to the part i’m worried about. yesterday at the frag swap (amazing by the way GolfC ) I walked away with four new frags. I also had a friend that GAVE me six frags, bless the man, just for the hell of it. also yesterday. now i brought the new coral home, did the whole acclimating thing over a period of half an hour. I finally got them in the tank and they were still pretty closed up. all of them. i figured it was the stress of travel and everything else that’d been going on. only problem is, 24 hours later, they’re still all closed up. I have zoa’s palys, mushrooms, trumpets, and a monti and they’re all still closed up. even the mushrooms look sickly. water still pristene. is it normal for them to remain off-looking and/or closed up for a day or two after transerral? I’m worried about chemical warfare that may be taking place inside the tank and will be doing a 10-20% water change today. unless told otherwise. any recommendations?

oh and by the way, the duncan went into hiding for a few hours after i added the other corals, but now is doing just as good as always.

2

Congrats YahoO

If the duncan looks ok thats a good sign… i would just keep an eye on the new stuff, its not uncommon for new frags to be a little ticked off… keep us posted

3

All of the below acclimation info applies to corals.

We often describe Ducans as being really “moody” corals. I would not read too much into it’s reactions especially if it is appearing close to normal now. Doing a 10-20% water change is not harmful 99% of the time and is recommended 99% of the time. The toxins corals release that harm each other is absorbed fairly quickly with activated carbon.(rinse well and follow manufacturer recommendations or cautiously use a little less if you don’t typically run carbon)

It is impossible to say if something is seriously wrong with the animals or if they are just “upset” from the transfer. It is not uncommon for the animals you received to be upset for several days after moving from one system to another.

I don’t think it would caused major issues, but likely wasted a bit of your time and would be better in the future if you float the bags for 5 minutes, dumped the transfer water and then introduced the animals to the tank. Corals release tons of toxins during transfer and because they’re in a very small confined area in a bag they are hurting themselves and the bag chemistry in a huge way. It is best to temperature acclimate and get the corals in good flow, low light conditions right away.

Two notes on this though. A slower (10-15 minute) water mixing acclimation may be necessary if your salinity is significantly different then the water the animals were grown under. Many LFS keep some corals alive under 1.023 or lower and as the “experts” share this knowledge(or lack of) with hobbyist. If you want to grow healthy corals I recommend 1.025. All that being said there are many different opinions on this and there for many aquariums at drastically different salinities. You should ALWAYS ask when buying corals. Even experienced hobbyist at times make mistakes and top off too much or haven’t topped off in a while.

All corals should be light acclimated, keep them in a dim lit area to begin with and slowly move them up. There is plenty of info on this if you google around.

5 minutes float for temperature if you know the salinity is fairly close. 10-15 water mixing if the salinity is significantly off. All hobbyist should be aware of and read up on dipping and quarantine enough to form and educated opinion on it.(I QT ALL animals coming into my systems)

4

I did the 20 min water mixing acclimation. I didn’t want to take any chances. i also hoped that mixing water would reduce the amount of toxins being released. will keep posted.

5

Completely understand you have good intentions and I can remember drip acclimating corals for over an hour when I started. I have acclimated probably one thousand corals in the past as well as talked with countless LFS employees, trans-shippers, wholesalers, biologist, authors, and speakers in the industry and the best thing you can do for corals is get them out of the bag asap.

Small water change and carbon will help. Keep us posted. Best of luck.

6

so kind of a sad update. the corals that were showing signs of suffering now seem to be completely dead. They’re a solid white color. I’m not sure if this just means they’re bleached, or dead but I’m going to guess dead. I read somewhere that the way to tell is by how strongly they smell, but I don’t know what they smelled like in the first place, so I can’t really judge. One is a monti. The other is this branchy one that I don’t know what it was. It looked like it could have possibly been a finger coral. The pic below shows what it looked like when i first got it, but its not all that great because i took it in the moon light with my phone. my legit camera has better pics but is at home. i can upload pics of all corals later. Now its all white. happened in two days.

Also, i have a few corals that aren’t looking so good. I got zoa’s from ken that still haven’t opened up yet, but my zoa’s that my friend gave me look great. I also got one from Jon. I forget what he said the name was (i really should write these down) but its like a purple carpet with tiny green polyps that come out. Well, it hasn’t lost any color, but the green polyps haven’t come out once. all mushrooms are doing fine, but I’m assuming that’s just because they’re mushrooms and they’ll live through just about anything. My duncan has never looked better. Every time i see it it just looks healthier and healthier. I don’t understand it. the finger coral really makes me sad though because that was my favorite of my new ones. Now of course I’m afraid if they really are dead, they’re dumping nasty stuff into my tank that’ll kill everything else. Tested water params yesterday and all are normal. I will be testing again today to make sure there hasn’t been too much leeching. Also, i’ve done a 10% water change in the last two days and will be doing another one in the next two in an attempt to save the two that seem to be following down the dak road to the afterlife.

Also, I just read this article. Didn’t make me feel any better. Now I’m just more worried/confused. GAHHHH. Damn sps corals.

I feel like i’ve let down my friend that gave me the coral and more importantly i’m worried my tank will crash now. :-(" :-(" :-(".


IMAG0013 by alexzobi, on Flickr

7

No doubt the corals are dead. The pic you are showing looks like an acro of some sort to me. It is a good idea to know before you get a new coral, if it is a soft coral or a hard coral. Simply because of the different neccessay requirements each one needs.
First,You haven’t given us any info on what size tank you have, the lights you are using and so on. Second, when you say you tested your water, …with what test kits, and exactly what were the results of these tests and what did you test for. And finally, IMO, when someone is just starting to place corals into their tank, I believe it should be done slowly. By that I mean one frag at a time and not adding 3,4,5 or more at the same time.
Please don’t be offended by any of this, But in order for any of us to be helpful, we need more info.

8

50 gal with 20 gal sump. eshopps protein skimmer rated for 100 gal tank. 4 bulb aquaticlife t-5 fixture with two super actinics and two bright whites. 7 hr cycle on the whites, 8 hr on the actinics. sump/fuge full of chaeto.

water params i use the api test kit which know most people hate, but i’ve never had an issue with it before as far as accuracy. dkh 9, calc 400, phosphates and nitrates WERE 0. Can’t say that’s the case after all this death, which is why i’m checking again today. temp never leaves the 75-77 range all day round. pH 8.0. spec gravity a little high at 1.028. Can this be the issue? I just can’t see how it would cause them to die that quickly esp when they were drip acclimated for a half hour. and the guy i got them from keeps his tank at 1.026.

I also always use coralife salt mix. I’ve never had a problem with it before and it’s always kept my parameters and trace elements steady.

I realized that adding so many at once was probably not the best idea but no one seemed to think it would cause an issue as long as THIS didn’t happen. but it did. Originally the other corals I was supposed to get a week or two before the frag swap but plans got messed up and of course it ended up being the day of. Typical for the way things like to work out.

9

First things that get my attention are temp… 75… that may be ok, but low for my liking…
and you need to test Mg… thats very important for sps, and i hear that salt is known for problems with Mg among other things… imo if you plan on keeping sps dont buy salt of any lesser quality then ref crystals
:TWOCENTS

10

" I read somewhere that the way to tell is by how strongly they smell, but I don’t know what they smelled like in the first place, so I can’t really judge"

Horrible advice, lift many healthy acros out of the water and they reak instantly.

What was Ken’s salinity and what is your salinity? Zoanthids hate sharp changes in salinity.

Purple carpet and green color = Green Star Polyps or GSP? I didn’t think I brought any purple mat GSP, but I could be wrong.

Corals, especially stony corals, are mostly skelton with a very thin fleshy later. There isn’t a lot of bad stuff to dump into your tank nutrient wise. Additionaly many corals can seemingly die 100% and come back from the dead(although very very slowly) If the coral becomes 100% covered in bad algae I would yank it. Otherwise give it a chance and see if it recovers.

What article did you just read?

Shoot for 78-82F, but don’t increase it more then 1-2F per day. May want to bring it up to 78F and leave it there for a while then bring it up to 80F so your middle range and have some wiggle room.

11

which zoos did you get from me? or was it from aother ken? was this from the swap? I only had some red zoos, some green and some dark ones. dont think i sold many of those. or was it GSP? let me know. i’ll fix you up with something else at the meeting monday.

12

Another great piece of advice is that EVERY new coral,frag,fish and whatever should be placed in QT, no matter how trusted the person or business can be. I realize that many people do not have the means of doing this. That is why it becomes a very important factor to be especially selective from where you get your items. Simply thinking that a frag is cheap, is not a good gauge of it’s quality. Even after paying top dollar for a frag from a well known source of having great quality corals, I will still dip each one and QT. And there still is no guarantee that I will not get any kind of pests or nuisance algae, but at least I have lessened the odds.

13

[quote=“houndsbayman, post:12, topic:3307”]
Another great piece of advice is that EVERY new coral,frag,fish and whatever should be placed in QT, no matter how trusted the person or business can be. I realize that many people do not have the means of doing this. That is why it becomes a very important factor to be especially selective from where you get your items. Simply thinking that a frag is cheap, is not a good gauge of it’s quality. Even after paying top dollar for a frag from a well known source of having great quality corals, I will still dip each one and QT. And there still is no guarantee that I will not get any kind of pests or nuisance algae, but at least I have lessened the odds.[/quote]

yeah I want to set up a qt tank, but then i’m worried that because it will be a smaller tank, I’ll have a harder time keeping it’s parameters in check. I’ll be looking more into it though shortly. I already have a small tank I could use for it.

[quote=“kaptken, post:11, topic:3307”]
which zoos did you get from me? or was it from aother ken? was this from the swap? I only had some red zoos, some green and some dark ones. dont think i sold many of those. or was it GSP? let me know. i’ll fix you up with something else at the meeting monday.[/quote]

Yeah ken it was one of your green zoa’s. I don’t expect you to do that especially becuase it clearly had nothing to do with anything on your end.

[quote=“Gordonious, post:10, topic:3307”]
" I read somewhere that the way to tell is by how strongly they smell, but I don’t know what they smelled like in the first place, so I can’t really judge"

Horrible advice, lift many healthy acros out of the water and they reak instantly.

What was Ken’s salinity and what is your salinity? Zoanthids hate sharp changes in salinity.

Purple carpet and green color = Green Star Polyps or GSP? I didn’t think I brought any purple mat GSP, but I could be wrong.

Corals, especially stony corals, are mostly skelton with a very thin fleshy later. There isn’t a lot of bad stuff to dump into your tank nutrient wise. Additionaly many corals can seemingly die 100% and come back from the dead(although very very slowly) If the coral becomes 100% covered in bad algae I would yank it. Otherwise give it a chance and see if it recovers.

What article did you just read?

Shoot for 78-82F, but don’t increase it more then 1-2F per day. May want to bring it up to 78F and leave it there for a while then bring it up to 80F so your middle range and have some wiggle room. [/quote]

I’ve already started bringing the temp up so we’ll see how this goes. It is in fact GSP. I don’t know how I managed to forget such a simple name but I’m pretty notorious for my absentmindedness. As for the sps, I’m glad you told me. I’ll keep it in there and see what happens. Is there a trick to helping it recover, aka, less/more flow or less/more light? It was about halfway up my tank and in a medium flow area so I moved it to the sand bed in a lower flow area. Let me know if I should be doing something differently. As for the water parameters, I need to get a test kit for mg, but I have been supplimenting with essential elements as directed by the bottle, so they should be decent.

The good news…woke up this am to find the gsp had one or two polyps poking their heads out. needless to say I’m quite happy about this. All mushrooms still look great. Duncan, per usual looks phenomenal, so things are at least starting to look a little better.

14

Good to hear things are starting to look better. As for the QT being small and worrying if it will be hard the main thing on small tanks I find is the water evaporation rate. I started in this hobby with a 12gallon tank. I was told the smaller the harder it is to keep things going, so i figured if I can keep a 12 gallon tank going I could do anything. I loved having a smaller tank. The water changes weekly were not huge. It cost me a lot less to maintain then going to a 20 or a 75g tank.

So don’t be to scared. keep a minimal bioload in the QT tank to keep the nitrates and all that other lovely stuff in check.

15

OH good. now i remember. i bagged the teal green GSP with a couple stow away polyps of bright green zoos stuck to it. that GPS is a little picky about when it opens up. takes its time adapting. should be fine, and those green zoos multiply fairly fast, as zoos go.

16

Most of your valuable trace elements will(should) be available in your salt through water changes, I would be concerned if you have to add substantial suppliments to only a 50gal tank. It is all too easy to add chemicals, but it’s a pain getting them back out (my first big blunder was trusting a test kit that kept reading the same numbers even though I kept adding suppliments)
Adding things too quickly will certainly cause a shock to your tank, and when you shock equilibrium there will be a “settling” period where bioload levels will fluctuate up and down before reaching equilibrium again.
Everyone makes mistakes, it’s part of the game. It’s good that you are asking for advice instead of stressing about it, and you will get some good advice here.
Best of luck on the recovery of your critters!

17

[quote=“dajohnson02, post:16, topic:3307”]
Most of your valuable trace elements will(should) be available in your salt through water changes, I would be concerned if you have to add substantial suppliments to only a 50gal tank[/quote]

I just wanted to underline the important words there. With stress on these words this is good advice to new hobbyist with a very young tank. A new hobbyist or someone who is too busy to hit the books and has had a tank running for year can run into trouble in the long run if they assume that water change do everything every time.

The trouble with trace elements in the long run is two fold. If you use cheap salts you can end up with a deficiency. If you use a “quality” salt that claims it has in it what is in the ocean and replaces any trace elements which your corals need to color up… so it has exactly as much as in the ocean, but has extra in it to replace what was lost…which is it?

Bottom line, typically unless you have a large quantity of actively growing coral you likely don’t have a large deficiency of any of these elements. If your levels are a bit low then your corals may not be as colorful or may not grow as quickly. It is extremely rare you’ll have and major issues, just not an ideal situation.

18

Update: the mushrooms are bigger than I ever thought they could be. They appear to be LOVING life. the zoos my friend gave me are crazy healthy and colorful. Not only that, but it looks like there’re already new polyps growing in. and It’s only been a week. I started off with four polyps and it looks like there’re two more starting to develope now. The zoos I got from ken still have their coloring at the base, but have yet to open. The palys and duncan are also ridiculously healthy looking. I’ll post pics tonight. the two sps’s don’t look any better unfortunately.

I’ve decided to graduate to a better test kit, as I’m sure would be the recommendation of anyone out there and looking for advice on which to go with. I’ve heard red sea is good, but its pretty expensive. Sea chem looks relatively reasonable. I’m also looking at a nutrafin master test kit. amazon has them on sale from $155 down to $87 and includes everything i can really see myself needing except magnesium which i’d buy separate. here’s the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Nutrafin-Master-Test-Contains-Parameters/dp/B0002568FO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1332254345&sr=8-3

anyone use nutrafin/heard about its reliability before? Any better/more cost effective recommendations?

19

IMO test kits are over rated and like salt. I think whatever you use you should stick with it. I started with low quality but shortly changed to salifert, for all tests. Then they ran out of magnesium so I got Elos and like it. Then Hanna came out and I’m sold for their po4 and alk. I will try to stay with this combo. But if you switch I recommend doing a test with your old brand to your new brand. And note the difference. Then you can chose which to believe. If your corals are doing great I’d stay with the number you have.

20

If you search around this forum and any other you will find plenty of people have issues with Salifert. They went for years with 0 tech support and 0 face on the company.(this speaks volumes on my opinion if your too ashamed of your product to even have a phone number or email address the public can use) I use Saliferts flat worm exit and this is the only product I use from that company.

I would not recommend Nutrifin.

Elos is my current staple and recommendation. dunk has a good point and solid advice on testing in comparison to your current kits and not making drastic changes if things are doing well. That being said if your tests are showing a certain element is dropping test after test FIRST read up on that element and try to find out why it may be dropping and then consider a dosing regiment or other method to offset it’s depletion.

Remember the numbers are alone meaningless. Try to find out what impact these numbers have on the animals and why they may be changing. Many people start off by trying to find the best way to fix the numbers and test them easily, but it helps immensely to understand what the numbers mean. Chris Brightwell’s “Marine Chemistry” is a good read.