[Ross1]

Hi guys,

I think I lost my first awesome bright blue Hoeksemai from a large alk swing (upwards), my calcium reactor was offline and I got caught out,went low on alk, and then dosed too much. You live and learn ey. It stripped from the bottom up within a couple of days.

So I thought I would try another. I have had this one for 2 months maybe longer. I cut the colony into two peices, and off the mari culture base. One peice was fine, but after a few weeks one of them slowly started to die from the base up, it had good polyp extension and was growing,slowly. The second larger peice I have had eventually had the same problem,but alot slower. I thought it wasnt getting enough light or flow, so I put it in a prime position and over say 5 weeks, it's lost about 2 mm at the base and it's slowly rising upwards. The peice is growing and has full polyp extension.

My water quality is decent.

No3 10 ppm
Po4 0.003
Ca 420
Alk 8
Mag 1320
K. Not 100% but I think it's around 370/380.
pH is good now. 8.1 in morning (no lights on yet) and 8.4 max during the day.


I dose lugols daily (0.5ml). I'm not 100% on my levels as I'm not very confident with the kit. One test I seem to get a little colour and the other I can never get any colour from it. I did have a iodine problem, so dose daily now. I did also recentley loose a large bright green cluster acropora, which just striped from under neath the branches. I managed to save two small frags from the 12" x 6" colony. :-< All other corals seem good, good colour and growing. Not rapid growth though.

I will try and get a photo up soon.

Any advice would be great please.

Many thanks

[Social D]

Difficult to say given all your parameters are good, The one thing with Hoeksemai is they are qute hard to keep long term, Personally mines been fine for well over 18 months.
But there was a really good thread ages ago on Reef Central disccussing this very coral, And just about everybody bar a very few had kept it past a year old, Everybody bascially said the same as you Ross they all stripped even tho everything else was ok, Not much help and i wish i could find the thread.

I know with my first go with one which i bought quite large it stripped from the base and the slime that came off it was highly toxic to other SPS close to it, It wiped out another SPS overnight.

All i could save in the end was one tip which i still have now, Maybe if it continues frag it into several bits and hopefully one will make it

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

We find it an easy coral to keep and grows very well ,the acro need plenty of light and a lot of flow .

Maybe it was a flow issue in your tank Tim as you were under flow for a while . Another thing i find with the Hoeksemai is they don't like any kind of algae growth around the base as this to will make them die back from the base .
I think the Hoeksemai is an acro that fair better in a tank that has plenty to feed on as i have seen them in a few different types of system and the systems that are fed more tend to give you a coral that is deeper in colour ,a nice dark rich blue rather than a washed out light blue. Maybe the washed out light blue you get in a tank with very little in the way of water bound nutrient food is not an ideal environment for the Hoeksemai (This is just a Guess but a very likely one ).

All in all we have found them to be a hardy and beautiful addition to the reef tank

jas

[Social D]

Its wasnt the flow with the Hoek i bought Joe's old one that had been used to high nitrate im sure you remember those corals.

[Ross1]

[quote name='Social D' date='Jul 24 2009, 10:42 PM' post='43687']
Difficult to say given all your parameters are good, The one thing with Hoeksemai is they are qute hard to keep long term, Personally mines been fine for well over 18 months.
But there was a really good thread ages ago on Reef Central disccussing this very coral, And just about everybody bar a very few had kept it past a year old, Everybody bascially said the same as you Ross they all stripped even tho everything else was ok, Not much help and i wish i could find the thread.

I know with my first go with one which i bought quite large it stripped from the base and the slime that came off it was highly toxic to other SPS close to it, It wiped out another SPS overnight.

All i could save in the end was one tip which i still have now, Maybe if it continues frag it into several bits and hopefully one will make it


Do you feed your tank every day Tim? What do you feed?

The die back on mine is very slow, but progressive.

This is a frag peice from a colony (the rest is dead now), as the other part was dieing. I have trimmed the base off once already. The die back doesnt start straight away once I frag. It takes a few weeks. Strange.

Thanks alot for the help and advice.

[Ross1]

jason@jasonsaquatics, on Jul 25 2009, 07:28 AM, said:

We find it an easy coral to keep and grows very well ,the acro need plenty of light and a lot of flow .

Maybe it was a flow issue in your tank Tim as you were under flow for a while . Another thing i find with the Hoeksemai is they don't like any kind of algae growth around the base as this to will make them die back from the base .
I think the Hoeksemai is an acro that fair better in a tank that has plenty to feed on as i have seen them in a few different types of system and the systems that are fed more tend to give you a coral that is deeper in colour ,a nice dark rich blue rather than a washed out light blue. Maybe the washed out light blue you get in a tank with very little in the way of water bound nutrient food is not an ideal environment for the Hoeksemai (This is just a Guess but a very likely one ).

All in all we have found them to be a hardy and beautiful addition to the reef tank

jas

Lucky you Jas!

I have this peice (it's about 4" tall with a 2" branch coming off about half way up, and a few other branches just starting to grow out) right under a 14K 250 watt halide, the top of the coral is about 3" under the water! so you would think it must be getting alot of light. It's a great place for flow too with indirect flow coming from 3 ways washing over it. The polyps are extended fully.

But, big but, I hardly feed the tank. I'm going to add a cube of rotifiers every day now and see if that helps.

And like you mentioned this hasnt got the really rich blue like it should have, it's a washed out blue.

Better get feeding then.

Thanks alot for your help and advice.

[Social D]

If its washed out then yeh maybe start adding some food, I dont feed my tank coral food with the amount of fish i have coupled with the X amount of frozen it gets i dont see the need to feed any extra espcially given my high Nitrate atm.

I used to feed the tank when it was low in nutrients Salifert coral food, Clyclopeeze, Oyster eggs and Red Plankton, My hoek hasnt really changed much despite the 0-50ppm nitrate swing over a year, Stag corals die-back just as much as any other SPS, But as long as the die-back is slower than the re generation of growth i dont feel much concern to the corals health.

Personally i think die back is just the corals natural way of growing just like the wild, Although it doesnt look pretty or look good in a Reef tank, I think maybe if you get great growth a little die-back isnt a bad thing
Looking at tanks like (Reefyman Simons) Tank its an outstanding tank but had large amounts of dieback ... Did the tank look bad not in the slightest
it was amazing .. I think we should all relax a little when it comes to die-back, Just checking out the majority of posts on UR explains only the begining of mature tank, And Reefers tend to panic to early to soon, For me if we have to examine TOTM threads the majority are very early in stages of maturity and kinda give a false view/ leading of what a tank should look like, Hense why i think there should be a simple rule of at least 2 years before a tank has the privilage of an award.

50 percent of my SPS have died back underneath but do appear very healthy on top, I think were very quick to blame Alk swings but it could just be the coral beahaving in a normal way.

A little die back is ok when it stops and you see the coral turning grey over the white area.

Id wait and see and just observe the Hoek

[EVERTON 1]

[quote name='Social D' date='Jul 26 2009, 12:50 AM' post='43723'
If its washed out then yeh maybe start adding some food, I dont feed my tank coral food with the amount of fish i have coupled with the X amount of frozen it gets i dont see the need to feed any extra espcially given my high Nitrate atm.

I used to feed the tank when it was low in nutrients Salifert coral food, Clyclopeeze, Oyster eggs and Red Plankton, My hoek hasnt really changed much despite the 0-50ppm nitrate swing over a year, Stag corals die-back just as much as any other SPS, But as long as the die-back is slower than the re generation of growth i dont feel much concern to the corals health.

Personally i think die back is just the corals natural way of growing just like the wild, Although it doesnt look pretty or look good in a Reef tank, I think maybe if you get great growth a little die-back isnt a bad thing
Looking at tanks like (Reefyman Simons) Tank its an outstanding tank but had large amounts of dieback ... Did the tank look bad not in the slightest
it was amazing .. I think we should all relax a little when it comes to die-back, Just checking out the majority of posts on UR explains only the begining of mature tank, And Reefers tend to panic to early to soon, For me if we have to examine TOTM threads the majority are very early in stages of maturity and kinda give a false view/ leading of what a tank should look like, Hense why i think there should be a simple rule of at least 2 years before a tank has the privilage of an award.

50 percent of my SPS have died back underneath but do appear very healthy on top, I think were very quick to blame Alk swings but it could just be the coral beahaving in a normal way.

It's funny you should say that it could be just a natural occurence with the die back. I had a couple of acro's that started to show signs of die back from the base, and it was happening really slowly. All water parameters were excellent, flow,lighting were good. I was still getting good growth on the 2 corals, all of a sudden the die back just stopped, and the corals are still showing signs of good growth.

Also, when it is down to a problem with water quality etc, doesn't the die back happen rapidly, not at a slow rate?

[EVERTON 1]

EVERTON 1, on Jul 26 2009, 10:41 AM, said:

[quote name='Social D' date='Jul 26 2009, 12:50 AM' post='43723'
If its washed out then yeh maybe start adding some food, I dont feed my tank coral food with the amount of fish i have coupled with the X amount of frozen it gets i dont see the need to feed any extra espcially given my high Nitrate atm.

I used to feed the tank when it was low in nutrients Salifert coral food, Clyclopeeze, Oyster eggs and Red Plankton, My hoek hasnt really changed much despite the 0-50ppm nitrate swing over a year, Stag corals die-back just as much as any other SPS, But as long as the die-back is slower than the re generation of growth i dont feel much concern to the corals health.

Personally i think die back is just the corals natural way of growing just like the wild, Although it doesnt look pretty or look good in a Reef tank, I think maybe if you get great growth a little die-back isnt a bad thing
Looking at tanks like (Reefyman Simons) Tank its an outstanding tank but had large amounts of dieback ... Did the tank look bad not in the slightest
it was amazing .. I think we should all relax a little when it comes to die-back, Just checking out the majority of posts on UR explains only the begining of mature tank, And Reefers tend to panic to early to soon, For me if we have to examine TOTM threads the majority are very early in stages of maturity and kinda give a false view/ leading of what a tank should look like, Hense why i think there should be a simple rule of at least 2 years before a tank has the privilage of an award.

50 percent of my SPS have died back underneath but do appear very healthy on top, I think were very quick to blame Alk swings but it could just be the coral beahaving in a normal way.

It's funny you should say that it could be just a natural occurence with the die back. I had a couple of acro's that started to show signs of die back from the base, and it was happening really slowly. All water parameters were excellent, flow,lighting were good. I was still getting good growth on the 2 corals, all of a sudden the die back just stopped, and the corals are still showing signs of good growth.

Also, when it is down to a problem with water quality etc, doesn't the die back happen rapidly, not at a slow rate?

[Dave.I]

Interesting thread guy's! I think this could also be species related.I feel that some species in the wild dont tend to encrust at the base but grow upwards as fast as they can in a space race with there neighbours.If they spent time and energy putting down bases then they would be overgrown from above a die through no light.I think that stag type species are a classic example.I have a couple that have small bases,some have none and never have,and these grow very fast verticaly with little to no growth near the base.I feal that its a perfectly natural thing,within reason.

Dave

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

I think Dave.I made the most valid point here and that is the fact that they don't always encrust .On cultured acros this can make a place for the detritus to build up near the base of the coral and may well burn the coral .

This is ok if the flesh recession stops however one thing you got to keep an eye on is the exposed skeleton doesn't get an alga growth on it else this can chase the rest of the flesh off up the Skeleton .Worst than this make sure you don't get the algae infection in the coral as the only cure for this is to frag the coral well away from the die back into good flesh .

I would agree with you Tim but we have to remember these are small acros not corals of a foot plus ,Light flow and feed with the hock will help long term with this coral


jas

[Ross1]

Very interesting posts guys.

I had to frag it today, the die back had gone up another mm or 2 over the last few days. It was certainly faster than the growth at the top of the coral. I just trimmed about 1 1/2 cm off so I cut well into a good part of the coral. I have moved it to a better position, it's abit lower but getting more light front and back. One side was'nt getting much light, that side (the back) had lost all its blue colour. Could that have been the problem?

I think it could well be a like Jas said, a little die back at the base for what ever reason but the algea getting in and irritating the coral causing more die back.

My Po3 test comes out at 0.003 (not confident with those d-d test kits though) but I do have bits and peices of 'light' algae. My glass needs cleaning every 2 or 3 days, it's get's a brown dusting in places.

I have taken my rowaphos off line now as im on my second week of zeovit. Maybe I should run some po3 remover while the fragged/cut Hoeksemai settles? Dont want to deplete all of my po3 though as corals need a certain amount. ???

Do you guys think it would be o.k to run rowaphos as well as zeovit?

Thanks alot for the help and advice.

[Social D]

They dont reccomend running rowa after 2 weeks, Not that i have my head around it yet but running Phos removers interferes with the useage of ZEOVIT, It stops it working somehow.

Id let it run its own course, Maybe add some new Carbon and keep kneeding it everyday or so, Just keep an eye on any slime that might float around the tank.

Placement wise give it a prime location under the lights

[Social D]

I would agree with you Tim but we have to remember these are small acros not corals of a foot plus ,Light flow and feed with the hock will help long term with this coral


I dont think ive said these are drawbacks.. what dont you agree with?

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

Personally i think die back is just the corals natural way of growing just like the wild, Although it doesn't look pretty or look good in a Reef tank, I think maybe if you get great growth a little die-back isn't a bad thing

This could be the case if you had large corals but this post is about The hock and as i more a less know the size of the coral the die back is not down to natural reasons .I'm not saying your wrong with the die back issue on some sps being a natural thing but in the Hocks case its not a natural thing that's going on here and we mustn't get the two issues confused .

I'm Not saying this is the case as its a stab in the dark in trying to pinpoint the reason your hocks having problems but i Have seen pics of Hocks and read posts about hocks in ULNS systems and they seem to get a washed out appearance (Very Pale) and loose that lovely dark rich blue appearance .

Maybe there just one of the acros that don't like UNLS as not all sps are going to like the idea

jas

[lindsay]

On Researching the coral i found this site

some stunning corals here

http://www.dangsreef...allery=1&page=2

Point is look at the size of his acros or most of them and the Hock ,now look at his feeding for the week on his system .IMO there is a slight pattern forming here




jas

sorry linds posting under your name again lol

[Ross1]

Social D, on Jul 27 2009, 12:51 AM, said:

They dont reccomend running rowa after 2 weeks, Not that i have my head around it yet but running Phos removers interferes with the useage of ZEOVIT, It stops it working somehow.

Id let it run its own course, Maybe add some new Carbon and keep kneeding it everyday or so, Just keep an eye on any slime that might float around the tank.

Placement wise give it a prime location under the lights

mmmm I had a feeling that was the case. I wont bother then.

Thanks Tim.

[Ross1]

lindsay, on Jul 27 2009, 09:15 AM, said:

On Researching the coral i found this site

some stunning corals here

http://www.dangsreef...allery=1&page=2

Point is look at the size of his acros or most of them and the Hock ,now look at his feeding for the week on his system .IMO there is a slight pattern forming here




jas

sorry linds posting under your name again lol

Thanks Jas.

Awesome coral colonies in that tank. I cant stand 20K halides though. Imagine how good it would look under 10,12's or even 14's.

[ChrisR]

Ross1, on Jul 26 2009, 04:42 PM, said:

Very interesting posts guys.

I had to frag it today, the die back had gone up another mm or 2 over the last few days. It was certainly faster than the growth at the top of the coral. I just trimmed about 1 1/2 cm off so I cut well into a good part of the coral. I have moved it to a better position, it's abit lower but getting more light front and back. One side was'nt getting much light, that side (the back) had lost all its blue colour. Could that have been the problem?

I think it could well be a like Jas said, a little die back at the base for what ever reason but the algea getting in and irritating the coral causing more die back.

My Po3 test comes out at 0.003 (not confident with those d-d test kits though) but I do have bits and peices of 'light' algae. My glass needs cleaning every 2 or 3 days, it's get's a brown dusting in places.

I have taken my rowaphos off line now as im on my second week of zeovit. Maybe I should run some po3 remover while the fragged/cut Hoeksemai settles? Dont want to deplete all of my po3 though as corals need a certain amount. ???

Do you guys think it would be o.k to run rowaphos as well as zeovit?

Thanks alot for the help and advice.

Ross,

I run GFO along side Zeo(mind you i also run O3 as well), if you have a search through the Zeo forums there are actually a few people that are doing this. Start seems to reduce N quicker than it does P therefore once N is limited the P reduction is stunted(read it somewhere on Zeovit) I run about a 1/3rd of the recommended quantity of Phosban in a reactor with the flow turned right down so that the GFO is just moving and no more. I have been running like this for the past 2 months without any problems.

Chris

[jason@jasonsaquatics]

I Agree i to am not a fan of the 20ks but lets face facts the guy has some stunning results with a Top Tank


jas