Live rock and shells are turning white!??

What would be considered sub par conditions? Is there anything I can do? Should I wait for a while to see if it turns around? It's making my stomach hurt! :-[

 

well there's phos

HI,
not sure why but when your phos is up coraline may go into a decline, things that raise phos are food, unwashed live food( thawing brine shrimp and not rinsing) low KH can also cause problems.
SO there's acouple test you need to check do some water changes, and slowly bring up the kh, I try to keep phos really low, I bought a cheep reactor for my tanks it help keep the alage under control too.
Doug
The iron based phos reactor reagents are the best some don't like the alumn based phos removers,.I ve used penguin filter for the phos reagent put some in the filter pads or use a pillow.
When you adjust kh do it real slow or you'll shock your tank, and things will start to go wrong .
Coraline can burn up your kh and the calcium pretty quick you may be only using a ca cl use a liquid 2 part calcium reagent the secone part is the buffer only if you check the kh first.
too high of KH and you'll have a precip event or snow all over the tank and pumps. thsi will drastically drop ca, mag,kh.. been there done that..
I ve done that once, I don't adjust anything without test you may be guessing wrong.
another concern may be you nitrates are a little high.
so I wold take a water sample to your favorite LPS adnd ask tem to check phos,KH, mag. nitrates can make inverts sick to. very important things
Do you have DSB in the loop it helps control some of those nitrates alittle.
I use all three live rock, dsb, and a small reforguim in the sump.
I also have a good working skimmer, once I did all three I haven't had any problems with my system for a while. It seems like a lot but replacing things is twice as expensive.
I used a used 20 gal for a sump put the skimmer in it, and a plastic shoe box with a little coral life light, it help with the phos and nitrogen cycle.
doug
One thing I read that really helped me understand saltwater is that our tanks are a biological soup of waste bacteria and waste biproducts if our systems can't handle the nitrogen cycle it will slowly kill everything in the tank. SO the more water you have using sumps dilutes the waste frequent water changes dilutes the polution. a algae bloom can be your first warning that something is off in the tank inverts that are quite or not feeding is your second warning, and then your fish will start getting sick with ich and you may even see that red algae in dead water thats your last warning that trouble is coming.

 

White patches on the rock could be a growth increase of your coraline, it will go white before forming any color first, If you keep your Ca and Alk within parameters, coraline if present in the tank will grow. Mg is also an important part of coraline growth. Mg is used by hard corals and coraline to bond the calcium into a skeleton. Mg will also help stabilize your alk and Ca so you are not dosing all the time.

 

Could It Be From Adding Too Much Calcium?

 

The same appears to be happening to my live rock. I just started a new 40 gallon tank last friday. Half the water was taken from a tank a friend was getting rid of so i started with water that had inhabitants in it already. All tests came back up to par on monday so i added a yellow tailed blue damsel to start cycling the tank. I noticed that my LR had started to turn white a bit ( As compared to when i put it in the tank ). Today when i got home from school in the afternoon there appears to be dead worms on the floor of my tank surrounding the LR... Any ideas?

 

How about live rock? Did you by it or from your friends tank?

 

Thread is from 2007.