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.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Pictures will really help IMO. Did you measure that par yourself or is from some other source? Taking a full year for a second polyp is slow growth, something I would attribute to low lighting. But the hammer that grew from one polyp to 10 polyps is really puzzling, can we see a picture of that hammer?

How gentle is the flow? My hammer gets high light and flow, it sits directly under a metal hallide and jiggles all day in the flow.

Again, pictures help to have some visual idea's.

 

[mjw011689]

I’ll try taking a pic or video later when the lights come on. But I made sure the flow was strong enough to where stuff doesn’t settle on the polyps. I tested it with food (mysis and roids) to make sure it was at least strong enough for that. But if I turn the flow up much more they would get a little irritated and close up a little. I did try that over like a week to see if they would get used to it and they just didn’t really open back up till I turned the flow down a bit.

As for the par readings, I did them myself. I’ve used 2 different meters, about a year apart. And they gave me similar readings.

Edit - all of these are sitting under a gen 4 xr30.

 

[mjw011689]

Not sure if this link works, but this is the flow of my torch. The torch is really the only one left, but the hammers had pretty similar flow.

 

[helmsreef]

What kind of fish livestock do you have? Have you dipped any of your LPS post mortem?

 

[mjw011689]

I did dip after, nothing came off. I tried coral rx and hydrogen peroxide. Nothing besides a couple copepods and micro brittle stars came off the base.

Fish are as follows

2 hippo tangs
Purple tang
Foxface
Springeri damsels
Flame hawk
A few watchman gobies, neon goby,yellow clown goby
2 black clowns….
Oh and a starry blenny

As far as I’ve observed, I’ve never seen anyone picking at anything. I’ve questioned the foxface with some zoas, but never caught him at it and I’ve never seen him touch any of the euphyllia.

 

[helmsreef]

I wouldn't count out either one of the hippo tangs. I had one that was meticulous about picking at LPS. Not sure if he would just want to move them or play with them but he would grab the edge of the skeleton. Also have seen Clown pairs bury into LPS such as they do with nems. Your numbers seem fine to me as well.

 

[backbayreef]

Understand that it's been rough & hope you'll find the root cause soon. I have torches & hammers in a tang & angel-infested tank. Surprisingly, all my ~10 torches are still ok after a year but randomly lost some hammers in the last few months. For me, it's likely those pesky angels. Perhaps something might be nipping at night or when you're not looking?

Your Mg seems a little low but unlikely your root cause.

Good luck!

 

[mjw011689]

I struggle to keep my mg high for some reason. I’ve read hammers like higher range in the 1400s, I just can’t seem to keep it there without heavily dosing.

As for the fish going after it, anything’s a possibility. The tangs have all seemed to completely ignore coral altogether, I really don’t suspect them. I do put a camera on there once in a while and, while it doesn’t record, I can monitor and I’ve never caught them. Same for the foxface, but he’s my only real suspect if I had to pick, only because I’m pretty sure he’s gone after zoas and a few years ago I know he went for a Goni. He doesn’t touch my current Goni though, and I have a feeling he was only picking at that since it was already dying and pieces were coming off.