Torch Coral

[LuckyReefer]

I am having some trouble with a brown torch coral, he was doing fine at first, but he seems to be shriveled up a bit. Anything inparticular that might be causing this. Perhaps a suplement that I am missing out on. Thanks in advance for the help.

[Nano_Steve]

luckyreefer,

first off:
WELCOME TO MAAST!!!

secondly:
u might wanna take a picture of the coral to let our resident member know exactly what is going on with it. give us some tank specs(size, lights, filtration, supplements ur adding, etc.) hopefully thatll give us a clearer picture of what is going on.

hope u have a fun time here in the club!

take kare, steve

[TAXMAN]

Yep. 1st welcome to MAAST.

Give some stats. Like listed above. How long you have had the coral. It might be a simple fix like moveing it. Maybe too much or too little light or flow. If you have an established tank with other livestock that is doing ok, then one of the above is probably it. I had a new coral that looked great for about a week, then it shrunk and started to bleach. Looked near dead. I moved it and about a few days to a week later it jumped back to life and now has tripled in size.

Good luck with it. And a picture would help a lot.

[LuckyReefer]

Here are the specs on the tank. Everything else seems to be doing great. There is a Condy, star polyps, 2 sun corals, and they are all in great shape, but the torch just doesnt seem to like it. I am going to try moving him into a little less current and hope that does it. Thanks alot for the help, and for the welcome.

46 gallon
222 Watts of PC
0 Nitrate
0 Ammonia
8.3 pH

[TAXMAN]

That will probably do the trick. You may have to move it a few times to get it right.

Also can you test Calcium and Alk? Calcium shouldnt be too much of an issue, but even softies need it.

[LuckyReefer]

I meant to ask about that earlier. Our calcium oscillates between 300 and 350. I can't seem to get it above that. Is that going to affect the growth on the sun corals?

[TAXMAN]

Ok. Tell us what you are doseing. And can you test your Alk? If your Alk is high then it makes it tougher to get your Calcium up. They kinda battle each other. And once we know what you are doseing, we can help a little more. Maybe it will help find the imbalance problem.

Your calcium should be between 400-450 even for the Coralline to grow on your rock and tank. The low calcium could be part of the coral problem as well.

[alexwolf]

i had the same prob with my calcium, but i ended up adding turbocalcium straight to the sump

[Tim Marvin]

Right! Kent turbo calcium will bring it up. You should be above 400ppm, 450ppm is is what most of us try to stay around..

[witecap4u]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/nov2002/chem.htm

This is a good article for calcium issues. Really easy to follow for the non-chemically inclined.

BTW, i went through about 1/4 of the jar of Turbo Calcium with minimal results and then started adding TechCB with it, and it started going up fast....Now im just using the Tech CB to see if it will maintain it...cs

[manny]

ESV Calcium Chloride worked really good for me to raise my calcium. Went from 350 to 445 in only a couple of days.