Euphyllia Coral Dying

cohojoe412

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I’m continuing to lose my hammers and torches. Tank is 14 months old RS350. At first the torches and hammers were puffy and great polyp extension. Growing like crazy. A couple of them still seem fine. But I’ve now starting losing them faster than they grow. I’ve lost 3 torches, 2 hammers and losing an octospawn. It seems to start from the outside, start to see small
Pieces of skeleton then slowly progresses over a 2-3 week period until dead. I tried dipping impacted corals and healthy in coral Rx it seemed to slow the decline slightly.
SPS looks better than ever, zoa growing and acans are all fine.

Parameters:
Ph - 8.2-8.4
Kh 8.3-8.8
Mag -1440-1500
Ca- 440
Nitrate - 35 was closer to 20 when issues started. Has spiked lately and working to bring down slowly
Phosphate - 0.38, was 0.2 when issues started


I’m doing weekly water changes of 10%, going to be doing 20% for the next while to bring phos/nit back down.

Any ideas what could be causing this?

IMG_5980.jpeg IMG_5979.jpeg IMG_5978.jpeg IMG_5977.jpeg
 

Shirak

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Parameters are fine IMO for your lps. I would look into light. Euphyllia tend to look fine for a long time and then blah... You can tell how they are doing by a nice wide flesh band on the outside top of the skeleton. If you don't see that then there is a problem and the coral is slowly starving.

Par levels?
 
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cohojoe412

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Parameters are fine IMO for your lps. I would look into light. Euphyllia tend to look fine for a long time and then blah... You can tell how they are doing by a nice wide flesh band on the outside top of the skeleton. If you don't see that then there is a problem and the coral is slowly starving.

Par levels?
I don’t have a par meter but running two radions. All the euphyllia are mid level in the tank. The torches that look good do have that flesh band, these did as well. I did change the light settings reducing white photo period about three months ago trying to combat hair algae.

Current settings are: blue ramp up for 30
Min to 75% AB+ for 5 hours followed by blues for another 3 hours. The old settings was 85% AB+ for 7 hours. I made the change based on WWC video about lighting and the algae issue. Could the reduction be something that caused the issue?

Might have to get a par meter I guess
 

Shirak

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I don’t have a par meter but running two radions. All the euphyllia are mid level in the tank. The torches that look good do have that flesh band, these did as well. I did change the light settings reducing white photo period about three months ago trying to combat hair algae.

Current settings are: blue ramp up for 30
Min to 75% AB+ for 5 hours followed by blues for another 3 hours. The old settings was 85% AB+ for 7 hours. I made the change based on WWC video about lighting and the algae issue. Could the reduction be something that caused the issue?

Might have to get a par meter I guess
I would say so. The light that gives algae energy to grow also gives the corals energy to grow.
 
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cohojoe412

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I would say so. The light that gives algae energy to grow also gives the corals energy to grow.
I will bump it back up to what it was and see if this turns things around. The two that look best are 2” higher in the water column
 

Reginald Reefer III

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Take a colony out and dip it in some type of iodine based supplement - i.e Tropic Marin Coral Clean. Look for flatworms falling off. Look for eggs on the skeleton. If they have been good for an extended period of time and now are getting picked off one after the other, I would look into some kind of pest/flatworm infestation.
 

phillyb614

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Could be bacterial infection. I was having a similar issue. Dipped my frogspawn that was starting to shrivel, dipped in coral rx, seemed to fix the issue. Started looking better the very next day. Good luck. I know things like this really suck.
 

Lavey29

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I don’t have a par meter but running two radions. All the euphyllia are mid level in the tank. The torches that look good do have that flesh band, these did as well. I did change the light settings reducing white photo period about three months ago trying to combat hair algae.

Current settings are: blue ramp up for 30
Min to 75% AB+ for 5 hours followed by blues for another 3 hours. The old settings was 85% AB+ for 7 hours. I made the change based on WWC video about lighting and the algae issue. Could the reduction be something that caused the issue?

Might have to get a par meter I guess
XR15 lights are weak par lights. I run mine at 100% intensity on the AB plus setting for 10 hours and corals thrive.
 
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cohojoe412

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XR15 lights are weak par lights. I run mine at 100% intensity on the AB plus setting for 10 hours and corals thrive.
It most likely is this thinking about it more. My anemones have all migrated to the highest points on the rocks as well.
I’ll start increasing photo period and intensity again.

I’ll start increasing it slowly as to not shock anything. I’ll go with 1/hour increase a week then start increasing intensity unless that’s too fast?
 

Reginald Reefer III

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Point of reference - I picked up a 8 head hammer colony on FB for a good price. The colony looked fantastic in pictures and I **ALMOST** didn't dip it before introducing it into my office nano. Thank GOD I dipped it because a 15 minute dip produced at least 20-30 euphyllia flat worms and 3 egg clutches found after I noticed all the flat worms. They can wreak havoc pretty quick from something very inconspicuous.
 

Notsolostfish

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It most likely is this thinking about it more. My anemones have all migrated to the highest points on the rocks as well.
I’ll start increasing photo period and intensity again.

I’ll start increasing it slowly as to not shock anything. I’ll go with 1/hour increase a week then start increasing intensity unless that’s too fast?
i wouldnt increase light without testing par
 

Reginald Reefer III

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It most likely is this thinking about it more. My anemones have all migrated to the highest points on the rocks as well.
I’ll start increasing photo period and intensity again.

I’ll start increasing it slowly as to not shock anything. I’ll go with 1/hour increase a week then start increasing intensity unless that’s too fast?
If your LPS were all OK and you didn't change anything with lighting, I really don't think chasing that is the correct action. Look for something that changed quickly or is irritating/eating the coral.
 

Reginald Reefer III

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XR15 lights are weak par lights. I run mine at 100% intensity on the AB plus setting for 10 hours and corals thrive.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he meant to say that the XR15 AREN'T weak PAR lights. I'm pretty sure cranked up to 100% and ~6-9 inches above the water line, you can get 250+ PAR at 8-10 inches under the water.
 
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cohojoe412

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If your LPS were all OK and you didn't change anything with lighting, I really don't think chasing that is the correct action. Look for something that changed quickly or is irritating/eating the coral.
I did change the lighting a little before some of the issues now that I think about it more I’m wondering if that was it.
 

Lavey29

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Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he meant to say that the XR15 AREN'T weak PAR lights. I'm pretty sure cranked up to 100% and ~6-9 inches above the water line, you can get 250+ PAR at 8-10 inches under the water.
Yea if you have them at 100% you can get average par top to bottom on my 22 inch deep tank but they are far from solid quality par lights and struggle with sustaining the more difficult corals like tenuis or millie. Fine for easy SPS on top though.
 

Lavey29

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It most likely is this thinking about it more. My anemones have all migrated to the highest points on the rocks as well.
I’ll start increasing photo period and intensity again.

I’ll start increasing it slowly as to not shock anything. I’ll go with 1/hour increase a week then start increasing intensity unless that’s too fast?
You want a 10 hour photo period. Just use the AB plus setting and dont mess tweaking it around. I increased my par 1% per day from 70 to 100. My corals took off after that. Rent a par meter. That's what I did.
 

ajmckay

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So does just lighting make sense? Are the euphyllia high up doing fine and the lower suffering? Just seems odd because IME they're tolerant of a range of light intensities and receding/dying off is different than just not growing.

What about flow? Are the euphyllia that are doing fine in a different flow pattern than the ones doing poorly?

Any system changes around the time things started to turn south?
 

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