Alaska_Phil

I had a Flame Angel do the same thing to a German blue-polyped M. digitata. I was mad at the LFS owner about his "bulletproof Montis" that kept dying in my tank in less than a day. I had to watch the tank for a bit to discover it was actually Phoenix's fault. Oops.

I think 4 years is plenty of time for your tank to handle a few more pieces when you feel comfortable adding them.

Actually, it's taken the reefer not the reef this long to mature.

I have the sump built, now just waiting for the overflow box to get here.

That's a great start! Just keep in mind....

"Once you go SPS you never go back!"

Originally Posted by melev

I had a Flame Angel do the same thing to a German blue-polyped M. digitata. I was mad at the LFS owner about his "bulletproof Montis" that kept dying in my tank in less than a day. I had to watch the tank for a bit to discover it was actually Phoenix's fault. Oops.

I have an empty 29 gal at home that may get set up as a FOWLR next winter, just to house a flame angel. I sure like those little guys, too bad they like corals.

You just never know with Dwarf Angels.

Well, my monti has taken a rapid turn for the worse. After showing rapid growth and great color for 6 weeks, it's started rapidly bleaching and loosing tissue on some of the tips. This started when I added sump last week, and my frog spawn isn't extending nearly as much as it used to. I've tested my water a couple times and everything is the same as it was before. I've filled a reactor with carbon in case there was some kind of contaminent in the plumbing. My skimmer has been producing next to nothing since adding the sump, but I've been told this is normal for a while since I've added almost 50% to the system volume with clean new water. I'll try to take a picture to post later. It's pretty sad right now.

SPS bleaching is often Alk. Test it and get ti tested by someone else or at least another test kit.

Sorry to hear this but SPS are VERY resilient... once we know what's wrong and correct it it can bounce right back.

Alk has been consistenly 8.5 to 9.0 and my toadstool has been happy most of the time, which is usually a good indicator that my Alk and pH are where they need to be. But I'll have Tuan check it with his kits too.

Running carbon is a very good plan. And Montipora specifically likes Magnesium.

Another thing to consider is the leather may be shedding, which in turn aggravated the monti. Again, carbon will help.

Anytime you run softies in a tank with SPS you run the risk of some "issues" with the softies sloughing and causing problems

I had a slight "Monti-issue" early last summer when a breaker tripped and the A/C didn't run. The tank went from 79ish to 83ish for a day and the Monti exhibited some slight bleaching on the outer edges but in a month's time you couldn't tell it.


As Marc said Carbon is GREAT and it's my "First Aide" for anything tank related except a leak! The Carbon doesn't absorb the water as fast as I would like LOL.

Marc, I haven't been testing Mg since my salt contains plenty and I've been keeping up with regular water changes. I'll test it tonight, I've got some Tech M on hand if needed.

Big Al, I hope you're right, it's looking almost completely bleached now.

Totally bleached already? Do you have another tank by any chance? I "think" if I were in your shoes I'd at least try to frag a piece of it out of the tank into another just in case. Here's how I do "Emergency" stuff:

A) Toss in bag(s) of Carbon
B) Check Temp & Flow
C) Test Test Test

if Rapid issue (as this sounds it is) I personally will frag a piece of the coral, do a IODINE dip and get it into another tank (not on the same System). This causes additional stress on the coral but it may be the only shot at saving a piece of it if you don't resolve the issue.

The CATCH here is that when you go to frag the coral it causes more stress and it may "slime" more than usual and affect other near-by coral.

Unfortunately, I don't have another saltwater tank set up at the moment. Not even a hospital tank.

So I'm going to test, adjust as necessary, run carbon and pray. The entire colony is affected, but it's not completely white yet. Most of the polyps still have some color, but are very very pale compared to last week.

I hope it hangs in there. I'd be willing to ship you some frags if you wanted some.

Here's how my monti looks today. Compare to the pictures above and you can see how much it grew in just a few weeks.

Originally Posted by melev

I hope it hangs in there. I'd be willing to ship you some frags if you wanted some.

Marc, I appreciate the offer, but I suspect I could purchase some on-line cheaper than shipping from Texas. Especially if I combine the order with a couple others to get free shipping.

Yeah, that looks pretty bad. I don't know what you can do to save it, and I wouldn't dip it or move it. Just hope some part of it survives.

Yeah, I'm just crossing my fingers and praying right now. What's weird is that it didn't start bleaching in one area and spread, the whole colony just started fading, so each day it had slightly less color. My frogspawn, toadstool and finger leathers are all looking unhappy right now, and the water is even a little cloudy. So I'm really praying I'm not headed for my first major crash.

Are you running the carbon actively in a Phosban reactor or similar device?

Yep, I've got a 2 Little Fishys reactor half full of carbon in the sump with a Mini Jet 606 running wide open.

Tonight I manually removed as much of the algae as I could and cleaned my two power heads. In the process I broke the mounting stem for my Koralia 3, so had to replace it with the Maxijet 1200 I normally use for doing water changes. That probably improved things as the koralia 3 was a bit too much for this tank.

Anyway, I'm going downstairs now to take stock of my plumbing fittings and try to build a turf scrubber. Maybe with one more change I can completely crash this system.