Candy cane/Caulastrea coral died within 72 hours - any ideas?

[Hal3134]

I bought a candy cane/caulastrea coral from LA last week, shipped overnight. Water temp on receipt was 70 degrees. I gave it the standard bath in Revive and gave it a visual inspection for pests. After acclimating for temp, I put it in my tank at mid-level, where within 72 hours it promptly died. All tissue receded and never came back.

My tank is 72x28x30H, with three Reefbreeders economy LED boxes. I turned down the white channel to about 50% and had the blue channel running about 75%. Flow is about 20x turnover per hour between a MD-40 and my return pump. It was not in direct flow. Calcium is a little low at 330, Alk= 7.7 dKH, and Mg=1350. Tank has been up for 10 months or so. I have an oversized protein skimmer (13 inches in diameter) that does a nice job creating dark green skimmate. No carbon at this time. I am behind on my water changes. Salinity runs about 1.023 to 1.026. Deep sand bed. Temp is 76-78.

The only other coral in the tank is an 5 inch multi-branched orange digitata that came in on my live rock from TBS. It's been in there for pretty much the full 10 months. It lost 1 branch that was touching an adjacent live rock, but otherwise has been ok.

Fish are:
2x yellow tang
longhorn cowfish
2x clownfish
saddleback butterfly (no nipping observed)
niger trigger
diamond goby
hippo tang
flame angel (no nipping observed)
tomini tang
copperband (no nipping observed)

Any ideas what would kill the candy cane so quickly? I'm hoping to get a RBTA this weekend but am concerned about its survivability in view of this most recent experience.

 

[Kremis]

There are a few possible things that could have killed your candy cane. The first one I noticed was your fish list. Saddleback butterfiels are not reef safe, and while you may not have observed nipping from the flame angel or copperband it is a possibility. In addition to this, like you said your calc is a little low so raising it would be a good idea, however this most likely would not have caused the death of your candy cane on its own. Your salinity should not be in such a wide range as 1.023- 1.026, you would want to keep it between 1.025 and 1.026. Another possiblity could just be too much stress from shipping and acclimating. However, out of all of these I would bet on fish nipping.

 

[Hal3134]

Sorry, I corrected my post to show that I never saw the saddleback nip either. Of course, I don't watch the tank 24/7, but I do observe it for a pretty decent amount of time each day.