Probs with montis in general?

[reefdood]

Trying to figure out why I can't keep any montis happy. On advice from another member I'm posting this to find a solution and to share what we have in common.

I got two purple cap frags(Idaho grape?) a few months ago and they have been growing but loosing color, almost a pastel purple or weird pink. I have them low in my tank but centered under my 175w Hamilton 14k. They are getting flow and see no recession or predatation.

At the same time I also got two orange cap frags. They started to grow, but slowly faded color and eventually died. I tried different spots but all I could do was move them higher and this didn't help at all. They were getting flow.

Another encrusting monti I got at the same time(2-3 months ago) is what's called Incredible hulk monti. Purple with green polyps. It's alive and has shown polyps all along, but hasn't grown, encrusted or done anything at all. It looks tan with very light green polyps. He's partly in the MH path, about midway down.

And finally my Superman. Grey with red/orange polyps. Same symptoms as the hulk but a little higher up.

They all get enough flow as can be seen by the polyps moving about.

A week ago when I teted I got 9.0dKH, 440ca., 1350mag, and 0 ammonia. My pH fluctuates from 7.9-8.1. temp is 80*, 24/7 Alk never got above 12, now it's solid 9.

Lights... (2) 95w actinic and (1) 95w actinic white are on for 12 hrs. 175w 14k MH is n 5 hrs. a day, soon to be increased to 6. Lights are about 10" off the surface. Water is crystal clear. I run carbon 24/7.

I have no nippers for fish. No crabs. Acros are happy and growing well. Coraline is growing although I clean any I see off the glass. My rocks were cooked for a year and I never got a algae or cyano cycle. Tank has been up since Oct., last year.

So that's about it, I don't think I missed anything. Any ideas? I know other members have monti probs so maybe we can fnd a common denominator or find what other people achieve which we can't. Thanks.

[PUGroyale]

What brand lamps? I did a really large water change a couple weeks ago to refresh things and the clearer water caused me to bleach my orange caps. If your water is pristine, too much light might be the problem. Dana Riddle recently spoke at our local reef club and after listening to his info I've cut my lighting intensity in half and go for a slightly longer photoperiod. Seems to be working out favorably and the monti's have recovered.

FWIW the Idaho grape is "pastel purple or weird pink" with tiny ice blue polyps under MH... the only tank I've seen it look actually purple-ish in is Scott Morell's [where the Idaho grape originally came from] and he runs VHO's exclusively on his display.

[drstupid]

my monti problems are similar. digis never make it long, the best was an orange that was great for about 6 months then bleached over a period of days. my encrusting monits just do not thrive, they aren't spreading and always look like they're on the edge of bleaching. the orange caps have lightened from their parent colony, and have grown very thick, which could just be differences in flow between tanks.

the survivors all stay high in the tank with plenty of flow, that seems to keep them the happiest. "happiest" meaning "least dead the longest".

my params are in the standard ranges for the most part, alk stays 7-9 dKH ca 380-440ppm. i have a controller so temp and PH stay in a tight range (78-78.4 and 8.1-8.4).

one red flag is my mag always reads at the top of the salifert tests (1500ppm). i don't understand my magnesium imbalance and don't supplement therefore have blamed my test/testing.

i keep my salinity pretty high 1.0265-1.027 and am pretty good about weekly partial changes (6%-8%), so the system doesn't get a lot of extra supplementation. i dose kalk for top off, test ca/alk weekly (in the middle of my change routine) and dose either bionic or superbuffer if my ca/alk or just alk are down.

i do run lights on a long schedule, the acros and zoas seem to love it and are growing well. 2 x 54W T5 actintics for 12 hours, 2 x 250W halides each for 10 hours but staggered so there are only 8 hours when both are on. all bulbs are about 14" from the surface.

perhaps the lighting is just too much for the montis? the orange digi that flourished the longest was bathed in light though. maybe it's the 14K bulbs, my tank definitely leans towards blue. a friend with similar lighting on a smaller tank (he has a 2x250, 2x54 maristar) has amazing growth out of his montis, he runs 10K halides.

[VCoo71]

is your tank BB or DSB?

charlie

[drstupid]

DSB 5" average depth. fuge has the same for now, although i'm leaning towards removing that and turning it into a chaet-o-whirl.

[reefdood]

My 175w is a Hamilton 14k on a hamilton ballast. No reflector but I have polished aluminum sheet above it. It's less than a year old, ran 6 hrs/day.

I change 5 gallons/ week. 33 gallons total system volume.

My natural instincts originally had me thnking too much light. But how to tell if it's too much light or not enough? For instance, my ORA tort is mostly green with slight purple/blue tips. Is this a sign of too much light? My purple bonsai is encrusting with green polyps, but it refuses to go purple. It's been tan since I got it. Also I can't get any pink on my pink birdsnest. It's mostly white but growing.

I have less than an inch of sand, no sand in the front middle due to current. Idunno what to think or what steps to take to change the situation.

See I've read here that some people have (2) 175w halides over a 30 with Actinics. lol I was thinking of getting the iwasaki 14k but now I'm not sure.

[drstupid]

torts are another species i have trouble with.

the winners are staghorn, elkhorn, slimmers, stylos, poccis, various branching acros i can't name. a very happy clam. a yellow scroll coral that's doing great.

basically almost everything i've stuck in there but the montis has done fine. they just never look happy and eventually die. i've one big staghorn my hippo tang likes to pretend is a nori clip, that thing thrives the more she picks at it and as long as she ignores the others that seems like a fine arrangement.

you've had reefs for a long while, have you always had issues with this species, or just in your latest setup? what sort of lighting have you used in the past?

[PUGroyale]

Have you checked your PO4? A green tort usually indicates a DOC issue rather than a lighting issue.

[reefdood]

I had caps in my 90 but that was a totally different beast. That had a 6 foot skimmer, 4x110w VHO, and 2x250w Iwasaki 6500, 6" sandbed, and packed to the hilt. Everything thrived in there.

My setup before this one was almost the same as my current setup but no caps.. All I did when redoing this tank this last time was I raised the hood 6", painted the inside white, and now my temp is very stable. Also I NEVER worried about pH in the past, but now I monitor it. Also I NEVER used to adjust WC water parameters to match the tank. I used to just mix it and immediately change water, cloudy and all. Now I adjust the ca and mag, and mix up the new saltwater with a powerhead for a few days. Also I have 1/2 as much rock in the display now as before and less sand than ever. I have less headpressure now on my return pump compared to before so GPH is a little more but definately not too much.

IMO every difference between this 30 and my previous one should be an improvement.

I may start by swithching my VHO bulbe one by one. I honestly can't figure out how much runtime those have on'em. They're old but were not used 1/2 the time because all I had for a year was a 30 gallon glass box completely empty.

[reefdood]

I did have pH and high alk issues up until 2 weeks ago. Could this have caused my motis to reac poorly while acro and everything else seemed fine?

[drstupid]

i have low alk problems, i have a hard time keeping it elevated past 8 dKH for very long, and PH is always high thanks to the KW top off. my controller turns off the top off pump when the PH hits 8.4 until it's below 8.35 again, so it prevents the KW from spiking the PH too high.

so far the most unusual parameter we have in common seems to be 14K halides plus actinitics. we're both pretty blue. maybe montis want a lower wavelength than we're providing, or don't like too much on the high end. i'm curious to hear about experiences with mixed halide bulbs, like 10K plus 14K or 20K that seem common in larger tanks, and tanks with just 10K's (or even 6.5K's). this may be a good question for sanjay joshi, he's got experience with coral growth under a lot of different lighting combinations.

[reefdood]

Well I can say that my previous 30, when my Icecap blew and I went without VHO for 10 days, ALOT of stuff beached and I lost a few acros. So I am certain that the 175 14k by itself isn't enough light for most SPS in my setup. I'm running 2 actinic snd 1 actinic white n my 660. I could always add another actinic white or a daylight bulb and that would increase light some. Or I could add another 175 14k and that would add even more light. Adding light output for me would be simple enough without changing by MH spectrum, but would it in fact even help? and I'd need to be sure that they actually need more light rather than less light. Also I could increase my photoperiod a good bit if needed but I'd like to have my alides on for AT LEAST 4 hours for viewing pleasure. My tank bores me with the VHO only on.

[Sullyman]

What are your nitrate levels? The lighting is on the low end for sps but should be ok for Montis.
Even if your test kit shows 0 for po4, I'd run something for it. Tests show false negetives too often.

[ctreefer]

I had a similar issue with my montis in my tank. All the acros were showing great PE, but the montis hardly had any, faded and were receding. My system is a BB, so I thought part of it was due to that (color issues as well(pale colors on acros)) could also have attributed some of that to T5s. Well, after the tank was about 1 year old all of a sudden the montis started to thrive. Maybe its just a case of new tank syndrom.

[drstupid]

my nitrates test 0 on salifert, and i run a phosban reactor, media recently changed.

it's reefdood's thread, but we're trying to figure out what we've got in common.

[highquality]

Yes, how old are these tanks? Eventually it should get easier to keep these as tank gets older.

[drstupid]

mine's been running since july, about 1/3 of the rock came from a tank i'd had running for four years previously, the rest from a tank that'd been up for two years. there was no cycle and there have never been measurable ammonia or nitrite readings. or nitrate, either, which led me to buy a new test kit, but DSB's seem to do their thing. for both of us, many other species are doing fine, not the montis.

ironically, i was told montis are ideal beginners SPS since they're so easy to keep happy.

i've a friend with a tank about two months older than mine, frags from the same colonies are doing great in his. he'd had no experience with salt water previously, i know he's being more methodical with his maintenance and testing. no bad habits to unlearn.

one thing i know was wrong with my tank from the beginning was high salinity; i'd been relying on a floating glass hydrometer that had apparently lost some precision with age. a refractometer and a pinpoint monitor revealed to me that i'd been keeping my salinity at around 1.029, not the 1.026 i'd targeted. that's been corrected over the last month, the one monti addition since then is an encrusting variety that is not thriving, but isn't dying rapidly at least.

the high salinity in itself may not have been bad, but it could have caused problems acclimating additions.

if no one has any "aha!"s, i'm perfectly willing to assume it's the age of the tank and try again in a few months... digis grow like weeds in all of my friends' tanks, so there's no lack of free frags. i don't like killing corals, and would prefer to correct any problems or know what conditions to look for before introducing more montis.

[reefdood]

Mine has been running 6 months. I test at 0 nitrates. I don't measure phos though. I have no problem algae, didn't even get a cyano bloom so I figure it has to be very low.

[vessxpress1]

Man, we're in the same boat. I haven't been able to get good growth out of my orange cap frag at all. I attributed it to being in a mixed reef setup as opposed to mainly SPS. I thought maybe the chemicals were affecting it. I know what the guy means when he says it always looks like it's on the verge of bleaching.

This piece has been through hell since I got it too though. I'm shocked it's still alive. It's a small frag and it fell in some deep rock work a long time ago. I said forget it and left it for dead. Months later, I was pulling rocks out and I saw a peach colored something on the substrate. Didn't know what it was. I had forgotten about it. Well, low and behold, it was the monti frag, laying upside down on the substrate, had been in the dark with little to no flow and it was still clinging to life! So then I started nurturing it, and it roughly doubled in size and the polyps started coming out. The thing has never took off though.

It's starting to bleach again tonight because I have an annoying bryopsis problem and I just boiled scraped, wire brushed with dremel and kalk pasted the rock it's on to try to kill it off once and for all. I was careful not to touch it but I don't think they like being out of water for 5 minutes either.

I run a skimmer and a phosban reactor 24/7. 4x39w tek unit for lighting, running a blue plus, aquablue 11,000k , Geismann midday 6000k and an ATI pure actinic.

I just recently bought a blue tort frag that had an awesome color that was grown under VHOs. In my tank under the T-5s, it has lightened up to a dull purple color with brighter tips. Don't know if it's too much or too little light. Maybe too little? It's a shame though.

How heavy of flow should a cap be in?

[drstupid]

previously in this discussion, i'd stated my alk was 7-9 dKH and i have had a hard time keeping it there. that turns out to be incorrect. my lamotte test kit had gone bad on me.

last week, after my third big dose of reef builder in five days with no corresponding increase in alk 24 hours after dosing, i borrowed a friend's salifert and sure enough it read 12 dKH.

so i have no idea what my alk has been. it seems the kit failed "slowly", i.e. there was a slowly declining highest reading it could measure.

so i'm thinking that the inability to measure what my additive dosing was doing to my alk levels for god knows how long could definitely explain my problems with montis.