Cant keep euphyllia. Why??

[mjw011689]

ok help me figure out why euphyllia doesn’t last in my tank.

Parameters as followed. I test a few times a month, always roughly the same, although nitrate has slowly climbed over the last 6 months

Salt 1.025
Alk-8.7
Cal - 430
Mag - 1320
Phos - .11 (climbed a little recently, usually .06ish)
Nitrate - 25.8 (again, climbed a little recently, usually around 12)
Ph 8.0

It seems I just can’t keep euphyllia long term. I have a gold hammer, pink hammer and 2 frogspawn that all are dying as of 2 days ago. The gold hammer has slowly grown from 1 head to around 10. This has been my most successful one until it just started dying.

About 2 years ago I lost all coral to brown jelly after adding a new hammer. Since then every coral introduced has been Aquacultured, and gone through a month long quarantine/observation. Everything’s dipped, whole 9 yards. I’ve never observed any pests or fish eating anything.

I have a torch that’s still doing ok, but even that doesn’t really grow much. After a year I’m almost to 2 full heads from one.

Most of them sit between 125-200 for par, with the torch being higher than others.

Any ideas why they just don’t grow or live long term? None of my parameters have rapidly swung in any direction in over 2 years. Like I said, nitrate and phos has increased over the last 3-6 months, but I know a ton of people with higher numbers than me and they do just fine, grow like crazy. What am I missing

 

[13rodo]

ok help me figure out why euphyllia doesn’t last in my tank.

Parameters as followed. I test a few times a month, always roughly the same, although nitrate has slowly climbed over the last 6 months

Salt 1.025
Alk-8.7
Cal - 430
Mag - 1320
Phos - .11 (climbed a little recently, usually .06ish)
Nitrate - 25.8 (again, climbed a little recently, usually around 12)
Ph 8.0

It seems I just can’t keep euphyllia long term. I have a gold hammer, pink hammer and 2 frogspawn that all are dying as of 2 days ago. The gold hammer has slowly grown from 1 head to around 10. This has been my most successful one until it just started dying.

About 2 years ago I lost all coral to brown jelly after adding a new hammer. Since then every coral introduced has been Aquacultured, and gone through a month long quarantine/observation. Everything’s dipped, whole 9 yards. I’ve never observed any pests or fish eating anything.

I have a torch that’s still doing ok, but even that doesn’t really grow much. After a year I’m almost to 2 full heads from one.

Most of them sit between 125-200 for par, with the torch being higher than others.

Any ideas why they just don’t grow or live long term? None of my parameters have rapidly swung in any direction in over 2 years. Like I said, nitrate and phos has increased over the last 3-6 months, but I know a ton of people with higher numbers than me and they do just fine, grow like crazy. What am I missing

Have you tried moving them around the tank (different flow). May also be worthwhile to start lower on the light and bring it up. Are they bleaching?

Edit: The outlier imo is your hammer that was growing and died. That to me says something changed recently. I’m by no means the expert, but my euphyllia all seem to do pretty well.

 

[VintageReefer]

1) I would first suspect flow. People do have success with torches in high flow but usually these are well established and adapted to the tank. I have found all my torches and hammers are happier in low flow.

2) once bjd is in the tank it can linger, and jump from torch to torch. Tank should be treated with antibiotics just to be sure it’s killed off

3) do you feed the euphyllia? It’s not required but it does help keep them happy and healthy. Try coral cane - torches (and all LPS) love it

4) your numbers are fine. Torches like nitrates and some phosphate.

I don’t know you and I haven’t seen your tank but my guesses are the above items, in that order.

 

[mjw011689]

Forgot to mention flow. I’d consider it to be pretty gentle in this tank. I’ve played around with it to get a decent amount of movement in the coral but not to the point where they close up from too much flow. I adjusted it to the point where they’d open up fully and still seem to have a good amount going through.

Yep, I’ve tried starting them low and moving them up, that being said none of them are even in high par, aside from maybe the torch if you call 180-200 high. Most of the stuff I have is from local people that grew it out, and I tried to place them in similar par to what they were doing well in.

Yeah the gold hammer is the one that’s getting me too. Did so well for so long and was one of the few that actually grew. And like overnight just started dying. But nothing has been added, nothing has changed routine wise in several months if not over a year. And I’ve tracked my params over the last 2 years and there’s not much fluctuation with anything. Especially not rapid. So idk what would have changed to cause it all to do that overnight.

Side note, I did cut my weeping willow leather up about a month or so ago. The day after I did that I lost a monti that was right next to it. I associated that with irritation from the leather though

 

[mjw011689]

Thanks for the reply. I do not directly feed them. I’ve gone through phases of target feeding with roids and even mysis, but never really noticed any difference, even after a few months.

As for the BJD, when it knocked everything out, I removed every coral and ran through the kfc method to the T. And then quarantined all of them in a separate system for quite a while before reintroducing to the tank.

Is there something I could have treated the tank with at the time? Besides just the corals I mean.

 

[mjw011689]

I should add… 15-20 years ago I had no problems with any of these corals. Frogspawn and hammers grew like weeds for me, and this was when I didn’t keep up with anything in my tank. No ato, didn’t test, hardly did water changes and most certainly did not dose. Just reed crystals water change maybe once a month. I know we lost a lot when live rock went out the window, but I don’t remember these problems back then.