Hello boys and girls! So.. where to begin..
When we last left off, I guess that was back in late June/early July, the reef was in top form, trucking along swimmingly (pun definitely intended!). Everything was nicely automated, fish were happy, corals were happy, all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the tank. Then of course summer rolled around and everything went to hell in a hand-woven basket.
I first noticed a couple of colonies acting funny. One was starting to burn at the tips and one was receding from the bottom. Okay, so something is up, let's check all the parameters. Parameters are all in check. Hmm, strange. Now, being SPS and having seen colonies do this before I figured fine, they aren't happy, everyone else seems happy so I'll just watch them and see what happens. Well, what happened next wasn't pretty. More and more colonies started to decline. Let's check the parameters again just to be sure. Yup, all in check. Maybe the lights? No, not the lights because colonies in both tanks are doing this and both tanks have completely different lighting systems (one is halide and one is T5s). Okay, time to clean the skimmer, the powerheads, return pumps, throw in some extra carbon and do some water changes. Nope, still no change. So, over the course of a couple of weeks colony after colony declined and withered away..
In the end I pulled out over half my collection
It was quite heartbreaking actually. Many of these colonies I grew from 1" frags over the course of the year. Also strange is that there was one colony that remained completely unaffected, an ORA Red Planet colony which isn't even mine! Go figure.
So here's what a few hundred dollars worth of SPS death looks like.
