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

No worries bud. you can have around 2200 MG before alot of corals go hasta la bye bye, but rising it so much so fast can really complicate matters. I would do a 50 percent water change and then let it wait if you have seen negative effects first. Changeing water back and forth might be worse than doing nothing as well. I've read alot of SPS keepers keep there MG between 1400-1600 for extended peiods of time. High MgSo4 has also been demonstraed to reduce micro algae production in tanks, so i would say the brown is a diatom bloom from equipment. Place anything recently in your tanks?

 

I can't really see any negative effects as of now. In fact, my corals seem to like it, and the salvaged ones seem to be opening more. But, like I said, I'm new at this hobby, so I rather ask the experts for advice before I do anything drastic.

As far as new equipment goes, I just added the sure flow mod to my maxi jet, and change all of my 4 bulbs for better lights. But I was acclimating the tank with Night-Rida's instructions. I had a 9 or 10 hour schedule at the time of the change, so, with the new bulbs, I went down to 7 hours, then been adding half an hour every day. My goal is 10 hours.
But this brown stuff.... I've only seen it before when cycling. It may be diatom. I'll check a few pics online and confirm. It's definitely not cyano, it's definitely not hair algae (I had those two before) This one's like a fine coffee colored powder.

Thanks for the reply!

EDIT: Yep! Pictures match. It is a diatom bloom. I have tons of chaeto in my fuge. I stopped dosing vodka about a week ago since didn't see any more of the algae I used to have. Maybe I'll restart vodka dosing. Water used to be clearer anyways when dosing.

 

the bloom is from the sureflo upgrade. Watch out, for my 55 the mod ended up being too much flow and now it mixes saltwater lol. The diatoms will die out in a day or two after they eat all the ready silicates in the new plastic.

 

Well, yesterday Night-Rida and I were trying to determine how much Mg was in my tank and after re-testing we got to the conclusion that I was very well above 2000 ppm. So I did a 5 gallon water change last night.

This morning I tested and come up with 1800 ppm of Mg in the water, so I had another 5 gallons of freshly made, oxygenated salt water and plan to do another one here in a few hours. My alkalinity has also been going up, so I'll have to keep that under my watchful eye.... (makes me feel like Sauron)

I think all together my tank is recovering. I never got to see any bad side effects to this Mg overdose. My corals did seem to like it, but I decided to be safe.

Of course, when the Mg went sky high, so did my CA and my dKH, so I'll be hoping that reducing the Mg will take care of the other ones as it did to begin with.... I'm hoping it will do this on its own, or I'll be in trouble buying buffers and such.

- Mag.

 

I didn't know that adding equipment could cause this. Will this happen with any equipment I add? I mean, the sure flow mod isn't much of a big piece of equipment, I don't want to imagine what this will look like if I'm adding bigger things

 

Yes. Any new plastic contains silicates and will cause a bloom. The good thing is that they usually aren't as big as the first one during cycle and don't last long before the silicates are used up.

 

Good then! That explains why the plastic head of the mod is all covered in this brown stuff.

Just cleaned my glass and it looks a bit better


Thanks for the help.

She's coming back tomorrow night, so I'll have the camera to take more pics and show you what I'm talking about with the magnesium O.D. I'm not sure if it's all the magnesium, the calcium or alkalinity... or all of them combined that made them perk up a bit... or maybe is all just my head. Can corals react to a new chemical change that quickly?

- Mag.

 

They can if there is something they needed. Mg facilitates the uptake of other minerals.

 

any update frag pics? any new improvements in the last couple weeks?

 

Unfortunately I haven't experienced a good change, Night-Rida. One of my acropora frags is dead and the rest are not doieng so well. I'm really not sure what's going on. My frogspawn slowly started retracting and it's ends are now skinny and with a much lighter green tone. The stylophoras from the rubblebin that were recovering at the beginning are now starting to turn white and I'm afraid more of my corals are deteriorating. I'm really not sure what is doing this. I Finally got my Mg stable at 1500 and my dKH was little high at around 16. PH is stable thanks to seachem 8.3 buffer, but I believe this keeps my alk rising. Some of my mushrooms are also getting pale and the only thing that seems to be doing well is the candy cane head. All acros and stylos are slowly getting worse.
I have those lights we ordered on a 10 hr schedule. I think they like the light because with my other lights they would not extend the polips so far out, but with this ones they go out a little more. The only thing is that I believe I'm going to end up losing them and without knowing why.

Some of the acros turned into a light purple tone at first and I thought that was because this was their "TRUE" color, but I'm starting to notice they keep getting lighter and lighter in color and even though the polyps come out, they don't come out as much as they used to.

I'm really worried. I don't know what to do and it is getting frustrating

Any advice?

- Mag.