Help with dying acanthophyllia

[Ankit9762]

Hello reefing community,



I’m facing an issue where I’m losing my brain corals one by one. In the beginning, I had about 25 brain corals thriving in my 100-gallon reef tank for the first three months. However, I started noticing tissue loss, followed by browning and eventually death. So far, I’ve lost 15 corals, and now I only have five left. Unfortunately, one of my favorite corals, an Acanthophyllia, is showing similar symptoms, and its skeleton is becoming visible. I’ll be attaching photos below to show the progression.



Aside from the brain corals, I have other species like hammers, torches, and frogspawns, which seem to be doing fine. This problem began when my gonioporas started turning black, along with my elegance coral. I’ve attached before and after photos of my tank for reference.



Here are my current water parameters:



• Alkalinity: 7.7 dKH (I aim for 8.2)

• Calcium: 482 ppm (I aim for 440-480)

• Magnesium: 1530 ppm

• Nitrate: 41.7 ppm

• Phosphate: 0.34 ppm

• Salinity: 1.024



My ORP stays between 315-320. I’m running ozone and UV light with flow rates of 120 gallons for 12 hours and 450 gallons for the other 12 hours.



I’ve sent a water sample to Fauna Marin for an ICP test and will post the results once I get them. My system runs with a refugium and an algae scrubber. I haven’t lost any fish; they all seem to be doing well.



I also checked the PAR readings with an Apogee blue sensor. The brain corals are receiving between 70-80 PAR, while the top parts of the tank measure around 150-170 PAR.



For dosing, I use Fritz RPM for alkalinity, calcium, and magnesium but plan to switch to Tropic Marin Balling. Recently, I started dosing minor trace elements at 5 ml daily and iodine every other day. I feed my corals Quantum Coral Cane and Quantum Bio Enhance three times a week, and my fish get frozen food.



I perform a 10-gallon weekly water change. My system holds 75-85 gallons of water (excluding rock and stand), and the model is a Waterbox 100.3.



To treat the issue, I’ve used Cipro (500 mg) by dosing 200 mg daily for seven days, during which I turned off the UV and refugium lights. I’ve also used Revive Coral Dip and Professor Polly Bubble Bath Coral Dip, but despite all this, I continue to lose brain corals.



I would appreciate any advice or suggestions on what could be causing this issue.

 

[Ankit9762]

This are the photos

 

[FishyHotel]

I hope that your problem has resolved but I just want to share one of my experiences because I lost an acantho and a trachy to a pincushion urchin that developed a taste for LPS. Each of them started looking worse and I tried top dip them with no avail. It wasn’t till each one was basically gone that the next one would start to go. I wised up when my second acantho started getting bite marks on it. If you have an urchin you might just want to try isolating it to see if the problem persists or put it in your sump / another tank.