Trumpet Coral

[jeasko]

damn mines somwhere 2.5" to 3" so gues i need to dose while im away, but I can start feeding from tuesday as im here until late monday and keep an eye on it until then, or am i better just feeding it and hope its not detrimental to the trumpet?

 

[Musho3210]

no... ski is right, but there is already loads of food in the water column, with or without you feeding. Give it more light (bring it higher up towards the light) and you are good to go. This whole feeding every day probably overloaded your system and caused the problem that your trumpet is going through.

If you really want to, feed it weekly-every other week.

 

[jeasko]

dont particlarly want to risk trying to move clam as its happy where it is, bear in mind its under a 250w halide so im guessing light is no prob.

was thinking of puting a small dose in on monday before i go then asking someone to put a small dose in on thursday and then i can see wats going on when i get back, does this sound a good idea? or should i just leave it be?

 

[SkiFletch]

A 250watt halide? Nice, it should be OK. I'm used to giving that kind of advice to people with PCs that are trying to keep clams . A 250watt halide is some pretty no-BS light. As long as its somewhat centered under the halide (which it looks like it is), it should be OK without feeding. Just do it a favor and get your calc/alk/mg balance up higher than normal before you go to give the clam enough chemicals to use for its skeleton while you're gone

 

[jeasko]

thats what ive started doing over the last week, the only downside is im due for a 20% water change monday but may leave it another week, as i susspect it will be detrimental to my work of building levels up this week.

the calm is almost central in the tank so is directly under the 250w halide so no probs there.

take it that i feeding in a few days then getting someone to feed thursday would be a good idea?

 

[steelhealr]

CORAL
kenya bush softie
3x zoa colony softie
1 blue mushroom softie
1 green fury mushroom softie
2 pussey coral softie
1 leather finger coral softie
1 metalic xenia softie
1 trumpet
1 derasa clam
1 brain
1 LPS plate

I suspect that your trumpet might be under attack. Always good to research corals carefully. If you put an LPS coral in an overwhelming number of softies, they can be hurt. It may not be the case here but looking at that pic, it sure seems suspicious. Devil's Hand and Yellow Fiji's are pretty well known for this.

Terpenoid compounds

The soft corals generally compete with the hard corals by releasing 'terpenoid' or 'sarcophine' compounds into the water to injure or impede the growth of neighboring corals, and then overgrow these impeded individuals in a process called "allelopathy" (Delbeek and Sprung, 1994). Like their name implies, these compounds are similar to turpentine in chemical structure and in most instances, are just as toxic. By releasing these compounds, the soft coral injures these neighboring stony corals and can thus grow above them, eventually blocking out the light that they are both dependent upon and thereby killing the underlying hard coral.

SH

 

[jeasko]

good to see you still browse through here SH

never gave it a thought as the positioning i thought was substanially far enough apart, but does make perfect sense, not a great deal i can do to help though now I guess

i was concerned about introducing hard corals as there was only softies till about 6 weeks back, but the brain and the LPS plate have both done great and continue to do so, and at a guess i would have thought that the other hard corals would have suffered 2 if this was the case? maybe its just my logic as i cant see how only one coral can be targeted but im only at the begining of my very steep learning curve so am likely missing something obvious,

 

[Musho3210]

do you use carbon?

 

[jeasko]

have always used carbon and rowaphos in my external filter.

 

[steelhealr]

I think that there is a great underestimation about the safety of recommending that we all put zoos, mushrooms, softies, etc in our tank. I believe that there is a lot more coral demise from coral wars than we would give creedence to. Softies DO secrete chemical toxins...WILL DO IT in a coral war...and these substances are NOT things we can test for. I've posted here that one of the worst combos to have is Devil's Hand near LPS. There is just not a lot of sea water in a nano tank for us to have all the beautiful corals we want..and..in such close proximity. Planning is very important.

In your defense, tho', I can't GUARANTEE that this is the cause of what happened..but..it certainly seems to be a possibility. If you lose another LPS, it might be the reason. SH

 

[jeasko]

SH thanks for the input and i take on board what you are saying, it makes perfect sense , was just confused about why one particular coral would be affected, but guess there are a million and one reasons not least of all the fact that it may be the weakest corl in my setup, will definately have to keep an eye out for anything else untoward so that I can hopefully catch anything before it gets to bad, and next time I will have to consider more carefully about where to position anything.