Brain coral flesh receding

[peterat33rpm]

I have a brain coral that I've had for about 6 months or so in my 9 month old tank, had been doing great but recently has had significant receding of flesh around the side (see pic). I've been battling hair algae with low N and P but otherwise numbers have been fairly ok, ICP test results from about a week ago are pictured below. I dose all for reef but i've recently cut back since my alk had been high (had been running high in the high 10's-11, most recently low 9's).

For light it's an AI blade grow on an ~8 hour cycle, par is probably in the low 100's. The only thing that's changed with the lights is i raised it off the rim of the tank by about 4 inches a few weeks ago.

I have revive coral dip on hand, might that help? I'm worried he's just on a slow march to death, as i have yet to have a coral come back from looking sickly like this :-(

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Its losing flesh on the right side, personally I don't believe that dips can help such severe cases and might even make it worse.

I think that is dino's in your tank, dino's can bother and/or kill some corals. But even green algae can irritate corals. Low nutrients might bother it, changing alk will bother it...

Personally I would get your algae identified and solve that problem, which in itself will go a long way to helping your tank. Then get your parameters stable

 

[sfin52]

Is there a strong flow hitting that side of the coral

 

[IceNein]

I agree with @Mr. Mojo Rising that the best course of action is almost always solving one problem at a time, and since you know that the algae is a problem and that has a simpler, more straightforward solution, I would go with that.

 

[peterat33rpm]

Is there a strong flow hitting that side of the coral

Nah it’s in a pretty low flow zone.

Yea I’m working hard on getting the GHA under control and am making progress, purpose of the ICP test was to make sure nothing toxic as I had a cleaner shrimp, an emerald crab, and a few snails die within a few weeks of each other but tests looks ok so I’m going to beef up my CUC and hope that helps things stabilize.

I don’t think it’s dinos, as I had them and mama hard to get rid of them but they were replaced by GHA :-/

 

[sfin52]

Nah it’s in a pretty low flow zone.

Yea I’m working hard on getting the GHA under control and am making progress, purpose of the ICP test was to make sure nothing toxic as I had a cleaner shrimp, an emerald crab, and a few snails die within a few weeks of each other but tests looks ok so I’m going to beef up my CUC and hope that helps things stabilize.

I don’t think it’s dinos, as I had them and mama hard to get rid of them but they were replaced by GHA :-/

Very typical once you clear dinos the next step is cyano/gha. the whole tank resets.

 

[peterat33rpm]

Yep learned that the hard way, it sucks