Coral dying?

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I’ve attached 3 photos. Not sure what order they will show in.

One is of the main coral I’m concerned with, I don’t know the name (brain?) It has skeleton showing in top middle and bottom middle, as well as on the left. ID also appreciated! It’s orange and green.

One is of a blueish Zoa 4 heads, 3 seen in photo, they’re closed up. You can see healthy Zoa next to it

One is showing a bunch of nearby healthy corals. Only the two mentioned above are showing any bad signs in the entire tank.

Nitrates 0 (not long term, maybe for last week)
Phosphates .1
Calcium 390 last I checked couple weeks ago
Ph 8.1
Alk 8 last I checked

possible culprits:

1. Low likelihood? We had bad batch of Tropic Marin salt, but we’ve done four 30% water changes since our coral all got stressed bad from it and everything else rebounded really nicely.

2. we moved all of our fish to hospital tank for last 5 weeks while we fallow for ich. Bristleworm population booming now maybe as result of no predators? Maybe coral eating bristleworms, but those are rare from my understanding?

3. we have few Asterina (or whatever the real name is I know people debate this) starfish in sump, and I let one go in DT, but haven’t seen him in over a month. I know there is debate about if some species mess with Zoas, but never heard anything about lobophyllia being effected by Asterina stars?

4. We just got the green orange (brain?) 2 weeks ago, and a day or two in I think I saw some skeleton showing, so maybe it was hurt before we got it, but why getting worse now? I was on vacation for 2 weeks since we got it, so I apologize for not having more info on condition over last 2 weeks. Room mate was taking care of tank.

thanks everyone!

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

300 gallon btw, not that it probably matters?

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

lighting shouldn’t be issue also. Have lights pretty low fighting GHA. Flow is moderate. Feed phytoplankton every couple days usually, but while I was on vacation room mate did not feed it for the two weeks.

since we’ve had the brain we haven’t fed any meaty food. I don’t even know if brains (if it’s a brain?) eat food, will look that up now.

 

[Uncle99]

How many months old is that system.
I see GHA on sand and corals.

 

[bruno3047]

I’m not saying this is your problem, but a little anecdote of my experience. In a previous tank that I started with live rock, I had an explosion of bristle worms as a result of heavy feeding of live black worms to my copperband butterfly. I used to feed my Blastos right before the lights went out as they are night feeders. Soon, I started to see them lose color and look shriveled. So one night out of curiosity, I took my flashlight and shined it on the Blastos. They were covered, I mean COVERED with bristle worms. They were probably going after the food. Now I know they say bristle worms don’t eat coral, but their bristles can sure irritate them to death, and that’s what happened to my beautiful red puffy Blastos.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

How many months old is that system.
I see GHA on sand and corals.

9 months.

also I just checked alkalinity at 7 down from 8 from last I checked maybe 2-3 weeks ago. Is this cause for concern?

Temp: 78.2
Salinity 1.0255

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I’m not saying this is your problem, but a little anecdote of my experience. In a previous tank that I started with live rock, I had an explosion of bristle worms as a result of heavy feeding of live black worms to my copperband butterfly. I used to feed my Blastos right before the lights went out as they are night feeders. Soon, I started to see them lose color and look shriveled. So one night out of curiosity, I took my flashlight and shined it on the Blastos. They were covered, I mean COVERED with bristle worms. They were probably going after the food. Now I know they say bristle worms don’t eat coral, but their bristles can sure irritate them to death, and that’s what happened to my beautiful red puffy Blastos.

Ok thanks for the insights. I’ll do a thorough night time inspection after lights out.

the bristleworms seem to be focusing on algae on glass and rock surfaces.

I do see them roaming around some coral, but not really touching any yet. This outbreak mostly started booming since I was gone over last 2 weeks. Normally I check tank almost every night with my phone light for fun because when lights are out all the fun happens haha.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I do have a banded shrimp, but never see him mess with coral.

 

[Tiki_Reef]

What supplements do you dose if any, just curious.

 

[sixty_reefer]

It looks like you may have dinoflagellates, zero nitrates and the brown patches on the sand bed seems consistent with it. An option would be to dose calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate to elevate your inorganic nutrients.
not sure if that’s the cause for your corals not doing well although it may well be connected.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

What supplements do you dose if any, just curious.

I dose b-ionic calcium alkalinity 2 part, and less often small amounts of All-For-Reef by tropic Marin for calc, alk, mag, and trace elements. I kind of switch off between 2 part and all for reef to make sure I’m getting trace elements needed. I dose pretty mildly, probably should dose more to kee alk around 9 and calcium around 440. I’ve been slowly building up how much I dose, but being gone for 2 weeks my room mate didn’t dose so that’s why alk is at 7 from around 8 few weeks ago now.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

It looks like you may have dinoflagellates, zero nitrates and the brown patches on the sand bed seems consistent with it. An option would be to dose calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate to elevate your inorganic nutrients.
not sure if that’s the cause for your corals not doing well although it may well be connected.

Thanks for the info. Ya I stir sand regularly since we had to take our golden headed sleeper goby out for ich fallow period. Nitrates were 0 for long time, but got it under control around 5 on average until I left for vacation and room mate didn’t test at all lol.

 

[Cali Reef Life]

It sounds like you are having non stable perimeters with algae growth you sometimes show no nitrates because its being sucked up my the GHA. Non stable because you didnt dose for a couple weeks. Siphon some the algae out and do more water changes. Possibly dose 2 part to keep them more constant. Id say only make small changes don't do 7 things at once you wont know what fixed or caused it to get worse. Bring it up slowly and keep going steady and you should be fine but may lose a coral or 2.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

It looks like you may have dinoflagellates, zero nitrates and the brown patches on the sand bed seems consistent with it. An option would be to dose calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate to elevate your inorganic nutrients.
not sure if that’s the cause for your corals not doing well although it may well be connected.

When you say inorganic nutrients, which are you referring to? Lately I’ve been keeping nitrates around 5 and phosphates around .1

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

It sounds like you are having non stable perimeters with algae growth you sometimes show no nitrates because its being sucked up my the GHA. Non stable because you didnt dose for a couple weeks. Siphon some the algae out and do more water changes. Possibly dose 2 part to keep them more constant. Id say only make small changes don't do 7 things at once you wont know what fixed or caused it to get worse. Bring it up slowly and keep going steady and you should be fine but may lose a coral or 2.

Ok thank you. So get things stable is your prescription. Will focus that. Thanks! And yes the GHA is definitely sucking up nutrients. It was worse before, the more I get GHA under control, the easier it gets to keep nitrates and phosphates above 0.

I also turned down refugium lighting.

it’s definitely a bit of a struggle to get nitrates and phosphates stable. Was 0 for a while, then I overdid increasing them and they jumped to 8 in couple weeks. Now back to 0 lol.

 

[sixty_reefer]

When you say inorganic nutrients, which are you referring to? Lately I’ve been keeping nitrates around 5 and phosphates around .1

Nitrates and phosphates will be your inorganic nutrient hence the suggestion to use a inorganic form of nitrates to bring them up to detectable levels,

 

[vetteguy53081]

A Lot of recession going on here. Calcium slightly low and keep an eye on alk as it is at low end of dsclae and both balance together. Phosphate elevated.
Are you using tap water from faucet or RODI water ?
What test kits are you using?

Some causes other than mentioned above:
temperature to warm
Salinity elevated
levated or Low nutrients
Inadequate light intensity
Too much flow
Toxins from leathers or cyano/dino
Inadequate maintenance

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

It sounds like you are having non stable perimeters with algae growth you sometimes show no nitrates because its being sucked up my the GHA. Non stable because you didnt dose for a couple weeks. Siphon some the algae out and do more water changes. Possibly dose 2 part to keep them more constant. Id say only make small changes don't do 7 things at once you wont know what fixed or caused it to get worse. Bring it up slowly and keep going steady and you should be fine but may lose a coral or 2.

Are coral really that sensitive though that a drop from 5 nitrates to 0 and 8 alk to 7 over a 2 week period enough to kill LPS and close up Zoas?

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

A Lot of recession going on here. Calcium slightly low and keep an eye on alk as it is at low end of dsclae and both balance together. Phosphate elevated.
Are you using tap water from faucet or RODI water ?
What test kits are you using?

Some causes other than mentioned above:
temperature to warm
Salinity elevated
levated or Low nutrients
Inadequate light intensity
Too much flow
Toxins from leathers or cyano/dino
Inadequate maintenance

RODI reads 0

using Hannah for phosphate and nitrates, API for calcium and alkalinity.

78 is too warm?

salinity 1.0255 too high? What do you recommend? When I had lower salinity my calc and alk were even lower, so I increased my salinity with water changes and it helped bring up calc and alk.

light intensity too low? I read that brains don’t need much light? All the coral nearby it look amazing. Chalice, Zoas, acropora, daisy polyp, torch, ricordea mushroom.

flow doesn’t seem too high. I can try to post a video if that would help, but I couldn’t post videos in the past on R2R for some reason.

toxins from leathers, interesting. I do have Kenya trees spreading. I think that’s the only leather I have, but unsure if others may be classified as leathers. I have had several sea hares die over the last 2 months. Maybe concern?

inadequate maintenance: I spend probably 1-2 hours on tank almost daily, except over last couple weeks of vacation.

 

[Cali Reef Life]

Are coral really that sensitive though that a drop from 5 nitrates to 0 and 8 alk to 7 over a 2 week period enough to kill LPS and close up Zoas?

On the nitrates no but I'm assuming the brain coral wasn't doing the best before you got him. Think there are a bunch of things that can stress a coral out. If you have multiple changes well a coral is recovering it only takes a couple of things to put it over the edge. Your zoas are going to be fine. I just think your brain coral might not make it. Run some carbon work on the algae problem and be consistent with parameters . Keep it simple and stable and you will have long term success. Siphon the algae out every water change.