Salvaged Acros and monti, think they'll make it?

I'd say you made out really really well!! I think it's a safe bet that every one of them in the pics you posted will make it! I'm very happy for you man!! (and a little jealous too!! ;D)

 

Thanks dude! I was really happy to see the polyps come out that nicely. Some of my own corals are changing their polyp colors too, so I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing. But these new ones are fully out. Even some of the acros are showing some flesh... Really happy with the find. I should ask them what day it is that they frag stuff and just go look at the bin

- Mag.

 

Corals will pick up stray zooxanthellae and incorporate it into their collection also water quality can cause them to change color.

 

be careful about using epsom to up your mg. Is MG sulfate and it can raise your free sulfate ions too high, most poeple use a mix of mg cloride and mag sulfide... food for thought

 

i had a few corals that started dying and made a few changes to my tank and they came back so good luck with your venture

 

looking good! there adjusting to your increase par levels since putting in the new bulbs.. good times to come!

 

i bought some sps corals, a pink birdsnest and a green ora birdsnest when I got them, they looked brown and black, no color what so ever. I put them under my t-5s at the time and they started to show some better color but they were still an off shade of brown, when I put MH over them, the PB fused together turned a bright pink, the green fused together and Have really great polyps and is a bright neon green.

 

Hmmm, whats that phrase i'm thinking of? Oh yeah, Pics or it never happened!

 

+1 Telgar

 

Well, I wanted to apologize for not posting my parameters earlier as I said I would. I do have a good excuse though...

I think I over dosed my magnesium. As some of you know, I've been having problems with my calcium staying up because my mg was low. Finally, I dosed epsom salts in what I thought would be enough in my tank to safely raise it 100 ppm per day and was going to do it in two doses since in the calculator it said to keep it at 100 ppm per day and no more.
I did change that, I ended up putting the mix of RO water plus dissolved epsom salts in my top-off water, and figured that since the ATO goes on around 3 times a day, using not more than 1 gallon total, it would be better this way.

I suppose the error I made was for underestimating how much mg are there in Epsom Salts. I've heard before that they are dangerous, IF you do not do any water changes. Mostly of what I've read is that as long as you keep the water changes constant (I change 5 gallons each weekend) there should not be a problem.

I believe to have dosed way too much mg. I've been trying to read my magnesium and calcium and get false reading every time. I have a nutrafin calcium test kit, and an API magnesium test kit, that had never failed to my knowledge, but now, I'm like 30 drops in of the reagent #3 on the calcium test, and the liquid stays as pink as it can be, and the magnesium, I poured a whole 1ml of the reagent and nothing, added 0.5 ml more, and finally switched from purple to gray, telling me that my magnesium is high as the sky. How high? I don't know really, but pretty high. I never had to use more than 1ml of the reagent for this test, and now, I did. In the chart that comes with it, it says pretty much that if you use 1ml of the reagent and the fluid in the test tube turns from purple to gray/blue, your mg is at 1500.

My dKH also went high to 14.8, alkalinity reads at 5.26... in fact, here are the readings I was able to make, all together:

Temp: 79f
pH: 8.3
amonia, nitrite, nitrate all at 0 (zero)
dKH: 14.8
Alk: 5.26
Magnesium: Off chart??
Calcium: Off chart??

I messed up, big time. I can only say that I put 11 cups of salts into 5 gallons of freshly made RO water. No other aditives were used.
I think I miscalculated. Reefmonkey has been helping me a lot with the chemistry and he gave me how much a cup of epsom salts weight with his postal scale so I could dose accordingly, and still, even I had that information, I miscalculated something.

Will that go down by itself? Do I need to do a major water change, or just be patient and let it balance by itself?

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance for any input/advice on this issue.

- Magnus.

EDIT: Another thing that may be unrelated, but who knows, right? Since I changed my bulbs to better bulbs, I've been getting this brown algae. It's not cyano, since it is brown and kind of like a dust. It started sticking to my glass and lately to my rock.
I had a light schedule of 10 hours at the time of the light upgrade, and when upgraded, I went down to 7 adding 30 minutes each day. I'm currently at 8.5 hrs.
Geez.... this is enough for 3 posts!! Sorry again! - Mag.