 State
of the Tank (cont.) |
| After all, I still
had no idea why this was happening.
It couldn't be the salt I thought;
after all, I had done everything correctly.
And from my checking of the boards,
hardly ANYONE was complaining that
their 'sps' were bleaching.
Not extending their polyps, yes. But
not bleaching. Heck, even Dr. Mac had
switched to CS! It just couldn't
be the salt. So after having Ray check
and test for everything under the sun,
I just had him sit tight, frag what
he had to, and, believe it or not,
do large and frequent water changes.
Not surprisingly (in hindsight anyway)
a few other acros began to bleach.
It was not the Spring Break I had hoped
for, |
| By the time I got
back, I'd say about 4-5 corals
had been affected; and many seemed
to be receding from the bottom upwards.
My query about this on Reef Central
was met by replies of everything from
a temperature spike to not enough water
flow. |
| But Ray swore there
was no spike. If the power had gone
out, my generator would've automatically
kicked on and my chillers are also
on the generator. It didn't seem
like water flow
was an issue either because the bleaching
seemed so erratic.
Some were in high flow areas of the
tank and some were not. Unaffected
corals surrounded many affected corals.
And most corals were thriving. So we
stayed the course; fragging when necessary, |
|
doing a lot of water changes (!)
and occasionally running carbon. For
awhile, it seemed like the incidents
of new bleaching were slowing down,
but things were still far from stable:
my Pectinia  was
drawn up tight and there seemed to
be a lot of snails dying…just
a lot of really weird things were happening.
Still though, the majority of the tank
(80%) was doing fine. And by the end
of spring, we really thought we had
turned the corner on this little crisis.
I’d say by now we had fragged
about 8-9 affected corals, even going
so far as to completely remove Acro
#15, temporarily ,
so we could frag a piece growing underneath
it! We were so confident the worst
was over, I even ADDED a new acro .
More about it (and others) in the “SPS” section. |
| As
summer drew near, we really worked
hard at getting things completely
stable. Soon, my daughter would
be out of school and that meant
we would be traveling again. On
the boards, it seemed as if hobbyists
had split into three camps: Those
who switched to CS and were having
problems, those who switched to
CS and were not, and those who
did not switch and were going (and
I paraphrase), "Neener-neener-neener".
It also seemed like this was the
only topic being discussed by the
entire reefing world… except
for the strangely silent 'Big
Dogs". Y' know, the
authors, |
|
|
|
