Coral aggression or temperature/lighting issues?

[iunknown]

Brain Coral, Favites
I was wondering if anyone could direct me to a good diagnosis website. I had a brian coral melt down on me last night. I moved it lower in the aquarium and away from some zoa's. I'm guessing it is one of three different problems and I'm trying to figure out which one. I'll post a pic when I get home from work tonight.

Coral aggression (my best guess)- The new zoa colony that I put in has from (what I've been reading), sweeper tentacles. I thought it was worms at first, but maybe its a hitch hiker on the bottom of the rock. Maybe its an anenome? I'll check it tonight and blast it with superglue if I find anything. Maybe the filaments are reaching out and stinging and devouring the coral? The sweeper tenticles come out at night (does that lead to any conclusions?). It looks like the coral got stung and now has a bacterial or fungus infection. Also I've noticed in the morning these mucus lines all over the tank. Don't know what they are from.

Temperature- I changed my photoperiod from 8 hours to 11 hours. Maybe this was too drastic? Because of the change I noticed the temps getting to 82.

Lighting- With the longer photoperiod, maybe my brian coral is getting burned? What does this look like (any websites with pictures)? But its weird only one coral is having issues.

Checked the water parameters and everything looks good.

 

[Azurel]

Zoas have no sweeper tentacles at all....In-fact if they don't directly touch they really can not harm other corals.....My bet would be the new length of the lighting period.....When a coral gets burned it usually turns white and expels it's zooxanthellae which in turn make the tissue white or clear. I would double check you Alk, and Ca. If you have more then one test I would use both to test both parameters. For a coral like Favites to go south it is usually due to lighting, parameters or attack. In this case I think it could be lighting. 3 hr increase is kinda big without building up to it....

 

[iunknown]

Alright, I'll have to take a better look tonight. It looked like it has spider webs all over it and that it was puffy from a sting. The zoa's colony are on a large rock that had a lot of hitch hikers when I did a reef dip (anenomes, bristtle worm). Maybe there was something on the bottom part of the rock that I missed that has sweeper tentacles? I'll have to do more research.

 

[mpoletti]

Just curious, but why the increase in photoperiod to 11 hours?

 

[Azurel]

There is a snail that has long stringy mucous lines that it puts out into water to catch detritus and plankton then it will pull it back in and eat. I have had them before and the mucous lines can irritate corals as well

there is some info on it here....
Snails That Worm Their Way Into Tanks by Ronald L. Shimek, Ph.D. - Reefkeeping.com

 

[iunknown]

11 hours was just from what I've been reading. Recommended was 12 hours? I figured to get things to grow faster, but I'm new and learning.

Oh, man. Maybe I have multiple things going on. The last picture on your link looks like the spider web stuff that appears in the morning. Maybe I have those snails (need to read through that). The other thing that most closely looks like the tentacles coming our from under the rock is spaghetti/ hair worm (third to last picture),
Spaghetti and Hair Worms… What’s in a Name? by Ronald L. Shimek, Ph.D. - Reefkeeping.com
I don't know what harm full sweeper tentacles look like at this point.
Thanks for the help.

 

[iunknown]

OK, got home from work and its looking better. Still have no idea what could have happened. The only aggressive thing I have in the tank thus far is a turbo snail. Doing some reading, Jelly type infections seem to be common in this species. One of the Acropora is getting white from the bottom up, but the other two are doing fine.

Heat temperatures and poor water quality are most important contributors to jelly infections

My chalice is experiencing stress-related necrosis. My MH 150 W lamp was at 8" high, I moved it up to 9" and dropped the photo period to 9 hours. I'm still getting temp swings from 76 to 92 by the end of the day. Is that too much?

This is a bad picture of what I was thinking was stinging the coral, but not so sure now, since all the reading points to hair worm. Lots of detritus accumulating right underneath it.

 

[Azurel]

In a large bowl take the brain out and blow it off with a turkey baster and if you can get some Tropic Marin pro coral cure or Melafix Marine anti-bacterial and dip it....

 

[mpoletti]

Are you talking your halides for 11 hours? If so, there are many successful tank where people run ther halides for 4-6 hours a day.

 

[iunknown]

Yeah, I dropped it to 7 hours since the tank was doing fine when it was at 8 hours. I'll have to run some searches on temp swings to see how many degrees in one day is too much for corals.

 

[jlinzmaier]

Temp swings of 4-5 degrees are generally considered OK, but 76 to 92 is about as bad as you could do. That's likely a huge stress on your corals. You really should work on that. A person can acclimate a tank to a large swing if you do it slowly, however, when you add any new animals they likely won't be used to such a dramatic swing and will be quite stressed.

The worm with long tentacles is likely a spaghetti worm if it's making little detritus piles at it's burrow. They're harmless. You'll likely see it come out shortly after the lights go out and it will start foraging for scraps.

There's definately no need for a halide photoperiod of 11 hrs. That's pretty extreme and you won't get much better growth vs a 6-8 hr photoperiod.

From your pics, it doesn't look like you have jelly infections. It looks like you have stressed corals with some tissue loss and a refractory increase in slime production which is a common reaction to stress, localized tissue injury (sting, burn, etc...), or localized tissue necrosis often occurring for many different reasons.

Jeremy

 

[ahayes13]

you said 92 ? is that correct?

 

[iunknown]

Yeah, 92, maybe even 92.3 tops. Thanks everyone, man what a newb. Sucks learning the hard way and I feel bad. Looks like the (either moon coral or brian coral) is going to make it. Now I'm fraging the Acropora to try to save it. Looks like the Chalice is getting a tiny bit worse. I've got iodine dip in the mail, so maybe that will help?
https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/f48/need-help-rtn-rapid-tissue-necrosis-25410.html

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i167/IUnknown/IMG_3992.jpg

 

[jlinzmaier]

Don't dip already stressed corals!! An iodine dip is used to treat many things but if the cause of the corals stess and illness is your tank conditions then you can dip all you want but you'll only stress the corals further.

Jeremy

 

[ahayes13]

i guess i would say your temp is prob. a large cause of your problems. 92 is quite hot. generally i wouldnt want more than a few degrees temperature swing. going from 76 to 92 is just too drastic for your system. you should try to keep your highest temp around 82.
do you have any small clip on fans either running across the top of your tank under your lights or blowing down on your sump ?? that you help Drastically to keep your temperatures down. just keep in mind cooling by evaporation will mean that you will have more evap. and prob. need a larger amount of top off water.....

 

[ahayes13]

oh and dont worry we all had to learn at some time or another :) , and i think all of us are always learning, no matter how long someone has been in the hobby....

Yeah, 92, maybe even 92.3 tops. Thanks everyone, man what a newb. Sucks learning the hard way and I feel bad. Looks like the (either moon coral or brian coral) is going to make it. Now I'm fraging the Acropora to try to save it. Looks like the Chalice is getting a tiny bit worse. I've got iodine dip in the mail, so maybe that will help?
https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/f48/need-help-rtn-rapid-tissue-necrosis-25410.html

 

[jlinzmaier]

we all had to learn at some time or another :) , and i think all of us are always learning, no matter how long someone has been in the hobby....

+100 Very well put Amanda.

That's what these forums are for!! We are all glad to help and are all learning at some level. I make it a goal of mine to read threads every day at least until I learn something new or come across an article that teaches me something about reefing. I've been doing this for years and still I'm amazed at how much I can learn in one day. Trust me, it's not that I'm a slow learner, there's just many perspectives, techniques, advanced literature, continually new studies being done, and many aspects to this hobby that a person can only learn with time and experience.

Jeremy