Porous coral tips. help!

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MyFishEatYourFish

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 15, 2008
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monsterville
about two months ago i noticed the tips of my sps, most noticably on my green digi, become porous and their growth slowed so much that all i can observe is the base further encrusting. the main body looks good and fine but the tips and rims look unhealthy, color is fine. they are now growing maybe 10% of what they used to :irked: what could this be attributed to?
alk. 3.5-4
Ca- 360-420
pH- 8.3
magnesium is untested but enough is added to maintain Ca
gravity 1.025
nitrate and phosphate are both undetecable

i know calcium is low but i have switched to kalk in the last two weeks and am fine tuning the daily amount, with a goal of Ca never going below 420.

any help or ideas would be great!
 
heres the digi. the last pic is with lights just turned off. in the first pic you can kind of see a few small bubbles that routinely form in small amounts. could that be decomposition or a chemical reaction of some kind?

DIGI_CLOSEUP.jpg

DIGI_CLOSEUP_2.jpg

DIGI_CLOSEUP_3.jpg
 
is there any other corals in near by? what other corals are housed in the system? fish? inverts? flow?

mr.reef24
 
hydnophora(small and 8" or so away), 2 kinds xenia, elkhorn, plate monti, colt coral, long tentacle, green white and yellow star polyps, zoas, green polyped leather. blue tang, yellow, gramma, lawnmower, flame angel, blue damsels, fire shrimp. lots of big bristleworms and those %$^&#$% pyramidelyd snails. i'm sure a few things are missing. all hard coral, cold coral, and leather coral growth has slowed to almost a stop, but coralline continues to flourish.
flow is medium and constant. i run a algae scrubber and no protein skimmer.
i should add my alkalinity was very low when this happened but has been back up for 2 months now. green star polyps and xenia still growing well.
the coral seems to be happy, it all eats and extends polyps further out at night or when i feed brine shrimp, it jsut won't grow any more. its like an important nutrient has been depleted that i am not replacing or something?

thanks for the help
 
there are two digis, both about six inches from a hydno, a few from elkhorn, and almost touching the xenia. i'm pretty sure it isn't a contact thing though since all my stonys are suffering. even my plate montipora is growing less than a quater of a centimeter every two weeks or so. i'm leaning towards water chem because they all grew well then abruptly this happened like something got depleted.
about the same time small growth bumps starting forming on the digi, you can see them in the second pic.
could an iron depletion cause this? i grow loads of macro but its growth has slowed tremendously as well. i've previously assumed it was because of my algae scrubber leaving no nitrogen or phosphates for it.

any other information that would help?
 
it could be chemical war fare among the corals, sweeper tentacles could be stinging the coral. Trying to think of all possible things that could be happening.

mr.reef24
 
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