Corals dying. Help!

[Humble_Reefer]

Have you experienced any upward salinity movement over the course of time that you have been dosing?

How long have you been dosing?

Been dosing the whole time 6 months manually, then approx 1 yr with a jebao dp4, and the last 6 months with the bubblemagus. I have had the salinity creep up a tiny bit from 1.023-4 to 1.025 in the last couple months. I will try to find my calibration fluid and see if it's off at all.

What is the temp? Can you double check. Looks like brown jelly

79.9 just now. So up ~2 degrees from the usual. My heater is off and the room temp is 79.

Your phosphate number looks like ppb. Are you sure it's ppm?

I use the Hanna ULR phosphorus to phosphate chart on the Hanna site. So the checker said 29 ppb phosphorus and the chart says that's .089 ppm phosphate. Pretty sure I'm reading it right (see attached).

i agree, if head has bjd remove from tank trying not to blow it off ,remove head,the head i see is questionable ,bjd,or pooping,google brown jelly disease if not familiar ,can spread fast

Ok i'll remove just in case. Ive removed a single head frag with suspected bjd before but not a whole colony. Think I should frag and toss the one head, or put the whole colony in a small 2 gal holding tank?

 

[vetteguy53081]

Calcium low, Phos a little high.
What test kit(s) are you using?
Generally dipping the coral in Peroxide seems to help if not clear up the jelly like substance . . . 3 cap fulls to about 1/2 gal of RO water for about 5 min. and gently move the coral in the bath which works great on hammers and frogspawn brown jelly issue. Do also a water change before returning the infected coral to the display tank.
If it doesnt clear up, you may need to frag the remaining healthy section of the coral.

 

[Humble_Reefer]

Update: Two heads of frogspawn are either still fully retracted or dead. Pectinia looks better but still retracted, it is normally very puffy. My clowns host it and are usually very gentle but they have been more active lately in their courtship displays, so maybe they've been rougher on it than usual. Perhaps a seperate issue from the frogspawns and mushroom deaths.

I've unplugged the ATO for a bit to see if that changes anything. Nothing detectable by my tests (salifert) of the reservoir water. TDS is 2 so I'm going to change my rodi filters and make some 0 TDS water and top off by hand for a bit. I have two ICP tests, so now seems like a good time to send those off. I havent noticed any issues with the frag tank's LPS, so I'm hesitant to think it's the rodi water.

Thanks for the help everyone. I'll keep posting with updates on the ICP and if I figure out the cause at all.

 

[Humble_Reefer]

Calcium low, Phos a little high.
What test kit(s) are you using?
Generally dipping the coral in Peroxide seems to help if not clear up the jelly like substance . . . 3 cap fulls to about 1/2 gal of RO water for about 5 min. and gently move the coral in the bath which works great on hammers and frogspawn brown jelly issue. Do also a water change before returning the infected coral to the display tank.
If it doesnt clear up, you may need to frag the remaining healthy section of the coral.

Thanks for the tips. So dip in peroxide and straight ro water? No saltwater?

Alk and nitrite are API
Calcium, Mag, N03, P04 are salifert
Double checked P04 with Hanna checker

 

[vetteguy53081]

Thanks for the tips. So dip in peroxide and straight ro water? No saltwater?

Alk and nitrite are API
Calcium, Mag, N03, P04 are salifert
Double checked P04 with Hanna checker

Peroxide and straight ro, yes

Using API and other test kits, I would for a piece of mind suggest taking a good water sample to a trusted LFS and have them test for you to see their results and for comparison with your test results.
Focus on salinity, alk, calcium and Phosphate.

 

[Humble_Reefer]

Update: Cause still unkown. Pectinia bounced back and frogspawn is not dead but retracted. Now the green colony has started to retract and the tissue is looking darker. No signs of BJD as far as I can see. Shrooms and leptastrea are now suffering, with half my polkaroo lepastrea melting away. Ive read phosguard can leech aluminum, so I've removed that. ATO is still off as I top off by hand with 0 tds rodi. Im hesitant to make any more changes without knowing what's going on though... Green and red slime are getting worse again. Will test parameters again after work.

 

[SMSREEF]

Peroxide and straight ro, yes

Using API and other test kits, I would for a piece of mind suggest taking a good water sample to a trusted LFS and have them test for you to see their results and for comparison with your test results.
Focus on salinity, alk, calcium and Phosphate.

Very interesting. This is the first I read of freshwater dip for corals. I know fish can handle it, I even use freshwater to clean macro algae (peroxide with freshwater killed my macros, but water alone was just fine).

I thought coral cells would explode due to influx of water into the cells.

Does the slime the coral makes protect them during the 5 minutes?

 

[fishguy242]

i dip all zoas in fresh water 5 min and swish for nudis,repeat every other day for 2 weeks in case of eggs they open rt back up

 

[SMSREEF]

i dip all zoas in fresh water 5 min and swish for nudis,repeat every other day for 2 weeks in case of eggs they open rt back up

That’s awesome! Another tool I can use.