Help!! Is my birdsnest dying??!!

[Cassian]

Hello all! I have a bit of an emergency. I did my daily check in on the tank and was looking at each coral. I noticed by birdsnest looks like it is losing its skin and all it’s polyps are closed. This coral has always grown great for me and I’ve never seen it do this! I have multiple acropora and none seem to be affected by anything. I haven’t changed anything in the tank. Only thing that happened was my trigger fish rammed into it yesterday and broke some branches, but that wouldn’t explain why my two other drags of it are doing the same thing. There is some sort of algae on it as well. This algae is also on another coral skeleton In The tank, but I think it is just hair algae. Please help !!

Parameters:
Ammonia-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrate-2?? Maybe 3??
Phosphate, haven’t checked
Ph- 8
Salinity- 1.027
Cal-450
Mag-1500
Alk-9

Pics:

 

[Bigbadfishy]

Iv noticed this coral is very picky about flow, have you changed any flow? Best luck for me is heavy flow but not constant.

 

[Cassian]

Iv noticed this coral is very picky about flow, have you changed any flow? Best luck for me is heavy flow but not constant.

No I haven’t changed it. It looked great 2 days ago Not sure what is going on. It is in heavy randomized flow

 

[Bigbadfishy]

How long have you had it?

 

[vetteguy53081]

They are sensitive to salinity. Best range is 1.025-1.026 max.. Moderate light and water flow,.

 

[Cassian]

How long have you had it?

Over a year now.

 

[Cassian]

They are sensitive to salinity. Best range is 1.025-1.026 max.. Moderate light and water flow,.

Thanks for that info! I will lower it and see if it comes back

 

[William Mumford]

Salinity would be my guess 1.027 is a little high. 1.025 is the number to keep. 1.026 is a max. Even that little tiny bit is alot to the tank.

 

[Cassian]

Salinity would be my guess 1.027 is a little high. 1.025 is the number to keep. 1.026 is a max. Even that little tiny bit is alot to the tank.

Thanks! Lowering it now

 

[Cassian]

@William Mumford and @vetteguy53081 , I lowered the salinity and the polyps are coming out now. Thank you so very much for helping me!! I’m hoping it will recover.
Also, I think I know what may have caused this. About 2 days ago the water in my sump got really really low because I didn’t realize my ato was out of RODI water. Could this have caused a slight salinity spike that it reacted to? From now on, I’m going to keep my salinity around 1.024, that way I have some room for fluctuation.

 

[Cory]

Fwiw mine died when a big clump of hair algae got tangled in it. I even removed the hair algae.

 

[Cassian]

Fwiw mine died when a big clump of hair algae got tangled in it. I even removed the hair algae.

Thanks for the info! Sorry to hear about yours

 

[Cory]

Thanks for the info! Sorry to hear about yours

Np was years ago. It loved .10ppm po4 and 5ppm no3 fwiw

 

[Vinman]

I keep birds nest in my tank cuz I consider them an indicator for everything if they're closed up something must be wrong