Is my torch toast?

N

Nonfamous

Reefing newb
Over the last week or so mu torch has been looking worse and worse each day. Not extending and very light in color. Last night I noticed it was almost fully retracted and nearly white. I couldn't imagine what could have been wrong.

I tested for everything except SG and everything looked fine. Since I do weekly water changes I waited until then to check the SG. it was 1.032! Holy crap! How did that happen???? I never mix to more than 1.026. Where did all that salt come from???? Any way, I'm going to lower it over the next week or so by doing water changes with lower salinity water. My current mix is at 1.022. Doing 10 gallon water changes I should be ok in a few days.

Okay, so is my torch going to make it? I didn't know they were that sensitive to SG. Should I see some recovery once the reading drops? How long?
 
YIKES! I wasn't sold on my SG being in the 1.032 range even after I did a 10 gallon WC so I took my refractometer to the local FS and asked them to calibrate it. Oh boy.....it was reading 3 points high! That still would have put my SG at the 1.028 -1.029 range if all things were correct. They weren't.

I measured the SG in my mix at 1.022. Actually it was likely in the 1.018 - 1.019 range! Still, with a total volume of 114 gallons, it shouldn't have hurt much. Unless...... the readings were way off somewhere.....they were. I checked the tank when I got home, and its reading 1.021! Holy Crap! Not sure which way is up at this point.

I'm mixing another batch of 10 gallons. I'm going to bring it up to 1.027 and do another WC tomorrow. I will see where I stand at that point. I'm trying not to raise or lower it too much at one time so this is going to take a while to sort out. My poor fish and corals!

The SG must have been off for some time. I posted in another thread about my penny paylos taking over. I guess they like the different SG range because they are going nuts! My Torch on the other hand.....well.....I just hope it survives.
 
Nonfamous said:
YIKES! I wasn't sold on my SG being in the 1.032 range even after I did a 10 gallon WC so I took my refractometer to the local FS and asked them to calibrate it. Oh boy.....it was reading 3 points high! That still would have put my SG at the 1.028 -1.029 range if all things were correct. They weren't.

I measured the SG in my mix at 1.022. Actually it was likely in the 1.018 - 1.019 range! Still, with a total volume of 114 gallons, it shouldn't have hurt much. Unless...... the readings were way off somewhere.....they were. I checked the tank when I got home, and its reading 1.021! Holy Crap! Not sure which way is up at this point.

I'm mixing another batch of 10 gallons. I'm going to bring it up to 1.027 and do another WC tomorrow. I will see where I stand at that point. I'm trying not to raise or lower it too much at one time so this is going to take a while to sort out. My poor fish and corals!

The SG must have been off for some time. I posted in another thread about my penny paylos taking over. I guess they like the different SG range because they are going nuts! My Torch on the other hand.....well.....I just hope it survives.
Click to expand...



Take it SLOW. Don't raise it all at once. You're still within "acceptable" parameters. It's going to be harmful if you jump your salinity up too much too fast.
 
"where did the salt come from"... remember, when water evaporates from your tank, the salt STAYS. When you add water, you add dechlor freshwater!

Also, have you fed the coral? Some phytoplankton at night (turkey baster) might help~
 
SG is up to 1.021 with 3, 11 gallon water changes. More planned for next week. Target for the next round is 1.023 over 3 water changes.(average SG reading prior to WC was a 1.018/9) I dipped the torch for good measure. It doesn't look any worse, but its still nearly white. It still extends about 1" - 1 1/2". I did feed it directly. Didn't seem to obviously affect it. Good or bad. I have reduced the 12,000k lights on that side of the tank a bit to see if it helps any, but since they were only running at about 55% anyway, I don't see how it would do much.

I also lost my One spot FoxFace yesterday. Not sure if its related or not. Keeping a close eye on everything else.
 
you never answered whether or not you are topping off with freshwater??? changing the Salinity like you are doing is causing stress and likely the result of your foxface dieing
 
Sorry, but yes, I top off correctly. That didn't really seem to be a question that needed to be answered.

So, if your following along,

For nearly two years my tank has been stable. SG of 1.027 until recently.

During a water change is when I noticed that my refractometer was reading 1.030

I didn't trust the reading so I had it calibrated. It was reading way too high. For how long I don't know.

Actual SG was 1.019. Likely the refractometer was changing over time and over MONTHS the SG dropped from 1.027 to 1.019. So it was NOT a drastic change.

Since recalibration, over a 9 day period, I have raised the SG to 1.021. That's raising it roughly 1/4 point a day. Well within recognized ways of doing it.

The SG has not been going up and down, drastically, daily.

I have no idea what happened to the FoxFace. General consensus is that it was just nature. He showed no signs of stress and everything else in the tank is doing very well. The Topic of this thread was if my torch was going to make it. It looks like it has a good chance now that I'm correcting a long term problem with my refractometer and SG.

Thank you all for your advise.
 
I've seen SG go to high and hurt corals. Keep your water clean and feed them almost every day and they might make it.
 
So far the torch is all that's having an issue. Other than the copper penny palyos taking over the tank! Doing another wc this evening. I'm approaching 1.022 for this week.

One thing I found interesting was lighting. Since the torch was looking bleached I turned the lights down a bit. Well, yesterday morning they were barely extended so I figured what the heck, let's crank the lights up and see what happens. Well, they extended! So, the water is getting better and I am leaving the lights up and we will see what happens.
 

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