Coral tissue floating on skeleton and/or receding. HELP!

[Dhofman]

Hello All!

I have exhausted all avenues I know and am now looking for your help. My setup has been running for just over 1 year and have had good success with fish and corals, until recently. In the last 2 months I have had unexplained coral losses. The type of coral does not seem to matter as losses have been seen across the board. It started out slow, but seems like more and more corals are being impacted. I will try to explain the best I can the symptoms, giving as much detail of my setup as possible (I apologize in advance for the length of this post).

It does not seem to matter if the coral is an acro, monti, chalice, cyphastrea, favia, euphyllia, etc. I have lost at least one of the above in the last month. I am seeing STN starting in the middle of the frag on acros (these were added a few weeks ago so may not be related). I am seeing tissue loss on a pokerstar monti from both the edges and middle of the coral. I see tissue floating/moving on the skeleton with the water movement on both chalices and cyphastrea with the tissue eventually dying/receding. I have favias that recede until there is nothing left but skeleton. I have heads of torch corals that wither away after a week or two while healthy ones remain. Seems like I come home from work and another coral that was healthy now has some issue.

Here are all the specifics of my system (I apologize if I forget something):
300G display tank (96x30x24)
100G sump
4 Jebao RW-15s (two at each end of the tank in various wave patterns)

Temp: 79F (very little, if any, temp swings)
Salinity: 1.025 (Refractometer calibrated monthly)
PH: 8.2 (Red Sea)
Alk: 8.5 (Hanna)
Calcium: 458 (Hanna)
Magnesium: 1320 (Salifert
Iodide: .04 (been trying hard to bring this up) (Seachem)
Ammonia: 0 (Red Sea)
Nitrite: 0 (Red Sea)
Nitrate: 10 (Red Sea)
Phosphate: .04 (Hanna)
Strontium: Have not tested yet.
-None of my test kits are anywhere close to expiring.

Lighting: I use T5's with the following light schedule
2 actinic, 1 ati blue, 1 ati coral+ on from noon to 9pm
1 ati blue, 1 ati coral + on from 3:30pm to 7:30pm

I do 10% water changes once a week. I use Aquavitro products for salt and additives (with exception of baking powder for alk). Once a month during water changes, I try to clean the sand bed. Sand bed is 2 to 3 inches thick. In my sump I have a large area for Chaeto algae. I run my protein skimmer about 50% of the time. I have a large amount of live rock in the DT. I also have rock in portions of my sump. I do not run GFO, carbon, or any other reactors at this point in time. (Looking to add a Calcium reactor once I figure out what this issue is.) There are significant amounts of space between corals and the affected ones range throughout the DT. My fish and inverts have left corals alone (even looked at night with flashlight). I do not see any visible pest during the day or at night with flashlight. I have tested for stray voltage in the water using a multimeter which resulted in 0 (tested both AC and DC). I have tried numerous dips with Coral RX and Seachem's dip which has not stopped anything.

Fish:
1 Blue Star Leopard Wrasse
1 Fiji Leopard Wrasse
1 Ornate Leopard Wrasse
4 Zebra dartfish/gobies
3 firefish
6 clownfish
1 Zebra Blenny
2 Hawaiian Flame wrasses
1 Yellow coris wrasse
1 Melanarus wrasse
1 Carpenters Wrasse
1 Blue Dot Jawfish

Inverts:
1 Blood Red shrimp
2 Cleaner Shrimp
3 Peppermint Shrimp
Trochus, Astrea, Small Turbo, Nassarius, and Cerith snails

I have spoken to several local experts and they are all stumped. I have even brought water samples and sicks corals into a local aquarium maintenance company. We tried freshwater dips which yielded no pests. We looked at the corals I brought in under a microscope, nothing definitive came from that. The monti tissue MAY have had bite marks on it and what one person thought was an isopod. But the other coral tissues did not appear to have bite marks. I brought in samples of possible pest from the dips I did and all were determined beneficial pods.

I have attached a few pics to help demonstrate (sorry for picture quality).

If anyone has any ideas, please let me know. At this point, I am out of things to try (with exception of testing Strontium) and getting very frustrated as losses are starting to mount. Perhaps with your help I can finally get an answer and save my corals!

If I missed anything, please ask and I will answer the best I can. Thanks!

View attachment 20151230_184508.jpg

View attachment 20160105_201356.jpg

View attachment 20151231_122943.jpg

 

[rlman41299]

might wanna give some nitrates in your system. They look starving. I had 10ppm nitrates before and tank showed symptoms that you mentioned. I have acros same as what you pictured. Bumped my nitrates to 20ppm and so far things have stopped dying. Just a suggestion

 

[recess62]

I am notan expert but I think your 4 th picture tells a lot. It looks as though the process is spreading from one coral to another. My thought would be an infection of some type. If it was a protozoan or a parasite you would see that under a microscope. However you would not see a bacterial infection unless you used a gram stain and an oil imersion lense.

 

[klesel]

Are your ph and alk stable ? Or have you changed anything such as chemicals ?like brands salt or dosing chemicals. Or as recess just said good possibility as well seams strange it's not just one but several.

 

[Dhofman]

All,

Thanks for the replies so far. I can look at bumping up nitrates. I am a little reluctant as I always thought acros liked a little, but not too much.

My alk has been stable. However I have had a period where ph dipped once the house was closed up and the furnace started running. That was about a month ago. I have been dosing to keep it up to the level I am currently at. Things had started to go downhill prior to that. I have not changed any brands, however I did have to start dosing Aquavitro's Balance.

If it were an infection, how would someone treat that? I am not sure I have a resource that could verify such a thing.

 

[Bokevince]

Hi all, i have the same problem,
I was thinking that s because of my old lights (radion gen 1 - 4 years old) but might be po4 too high and my alk and mg too down, i follow your thread, i hope you ll find a solution that i can apply to my tank...!
How old are your lights?

 

[kevindo123]

Copper?

 

[kevindo123]

Can you sent your water out for testing. I see a detail test report from Triton test.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

@twilliard Any Ideas here?
Hed be the best for chemistry and nutrition. Possibly a bacterial.

 

[twilliard]

Right off the top of my head is bacterial infections, wide spread.
Water column
As stated above a different process is needed to determine bacteria on the leading edges of the coral. @Lionfish Lair may be able to help clarify.
IMO since wide spread massive UV, slow flow. Doesnt have to be permanent install.
Your numbers look good IMO

Bacteria

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Right off the top of my head is bacterial infections, wide spread.
Water column
As stated above a different process is needed to determine bacteria on the leading edges of the coral. @Lionfish Lair may be able to help clarify.
IMO since wide spread massive UV, slow flow. Doesnt have to be permanent install.
Your numbers look good IMO

Bacteria

Thanks. And Good Morning.

If ALL other parameters have been ruled out. yea.
RTN and STN are pretty well documented.
heres some reading.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/6/corals

 

[Dhofman]

Once again....thanks for the responses!

I have been considering sending a sample to Triton to see if anything stands out. My T5 bulbs have been changed recently as they were due (1 year). I did test for Strontium yesterday and it came back within healthy ranges (10 using the Salifert test).

I will have to see if I can pick up a UV. It would at least kill anything in the water column to help minimize new infection.

I am still reading through the RTN / STN article. Pretty overwhelming stuff (at least for me)!!!!! I have taken measures to remove all sick looking corals to a QT tank. I also did frag some of the healthy sections of SPS in the event I lose the mother colony/frag. Unfortunately I do not have any more tanks and am keep the frags in the DT.

 

[Addicted2ACRO's]

Hello,
Following along. I think I may have a similiar problem. How would I increase Nitrates in my system?
Thank you

 

[Dhofman]

I raised mine by using Seachem's Nitrogen Flourish. Used 7 capfuls (for approx 350 gallons) at a time, tested the next day, then re-dosed if needed. I found initially my corals sucked it up (cause they were starving). Now my level is a little more stable.

 

[DeniseAndy]

I had a widespread issue with corals about 3 years ago. Noticed an sps go, then spread similarly to montis, then affected some lps, then developed brown jelly on some lps. It wiped out my sps and I saved many lps by soaking in antibiotics for 4 hours and putting in a new system. Very similar to what you are seeing. No pests, no fish issues, no water issues, and I determined a bacterial infection from an earlier alk swing. (immunity low)

I also went and fragged the corals hoping to same some of the montis, and it made it worse, much worse. I think that is what eventually wiped out all montis. The fragging was done in the tank as my corals were to large and the system too large to remove to frag. I did water changes and such, but was not working.

You can treat with some antibiotics, but you will have some bacterial die off too. If you can get corals out, try putting in hospital tank and treating for up to 4 hours. Use kanamysin or eurithromycin, or similar.

I did not save any sps, but did save many lps with this method. The sps, I could not get out of the system.

However, about a year later, some montis started growing back as I never removed the skeletons from the encrusted rocks. Very weird.

 

[twilliard]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/potassium-nitrate-spectracide-stump-remover-dosing-steps.215730/

 

[Bokevince]

Did the necrosis happen soon after you bulbs change? Maybe sunburst!!!???
My water was very cloudy ( bacteria bloom) and when it comes back ultra clear ( after running uv), necrosis started in my system... So i was thinking of a sunburst in my case.
I dose alk , mg and ca without reactors or dosins pumps, so my parameters are not very stable and corals don t like this also...
In my case i m hesitating with this 2 things and a another one, maybe my radions are too old ( 4 years running at 100% several hours every day...

 

[melev]

Have you looked at anything that contains a magnet to make sure it hasn't cracked open? Cleaning magnets, pump impellers, return pump,and skimmer pump(s)?

You also stated you try to clean the sandbed. This is usually a no-no. I never do anything with my sandbed myself other than to maybe level out an area that has piled up. The reeflings take care of keeping it clean.

 

[Dhofman]

I have never used LED's but from what I understand, those led bulbs should last a long time. Perhaps someone can shed more light on the subject than I. In your case, could the bacterial bloom have been the issue and you are now seeing the fallout?

My necrosis did start around the same time, however I know of at least 1 monti that had tissue loss prior to that. Also, would sunburst explain floating tissue in the skeleton? I suppose it is possible it stressed everything out and made corals more susceptible.

I will double check my pumps and impeller magnets when I am home tonight. Would the item still work if the there was such a failure?

As for the sandbed cleaning, I have read views on both sides and go back and forth on it. It gets so dirty and when fish disturb it, I dislike how my tank looks with dust like particles circulating everywhere.

 

[DeniseAndy]

As long as you are careful doing the sandbed, you are fine. In my 7 ft long, I will vacuum almost 80% when I do it. If I am just blowing, I only do a small area maybe 9"total. That should not have caused an issue.