Help with tissue loss in corals

[Areseebee]

My tank is 100g and about a year old. I don't have much in the way of corals but I had an encrusting monti, a small acro, a pectinia, 2 hammers, a goni (or something closely related) and an octospawn that have been with me for maybe a little over a year (they came from my other tank about 6 months ago). All these corals have been fine. About three weeks ago I got an order of various sps frags in and put them in a frag rack on the bottom of the tank and they had been fine. About two weeks ago I noticed that the goni and monti had stopped coming out, but everything else seemed to be ok.

Then I lost two of the sps frags after about a week. It was kind of rapid. However I've noticed that basically all of them seem to be in trouble with tissue loss.

I also have a stylo that has lost quite a bit of tissue from the base while mainting extended polyps... But I can't find the picture.

I'm also now seeing that the pectina looks bad.
It looks like it's losing tissue and I can see the point skeleton sticking through.

The hammer/octo look totally fine to me and one of my old sps still looks ok.

I mostly test alkalinity. I test it everyday at a similar time and it tends to range between 8.5 and 8.7. salinity is 35ppt.

Any tips for what I should do here?

 

[Tahoe61]

After looking at your tank thread I don't see the lighting type you are using?
Include values for calcium, nitrates and phosphate, people are going to want those. Double check or recalibrate the instrument you use for measuring SG.

 

[crappie]

As Tahoe61 said kind of hard to help without knowing lights, flow, nutrients levels, etc

If you post lighting, lighting schedule, ca, kh, po4, mg, and what you are using for flow you may get more responses

 

[Areseebee]

Ok, so for parameters.
Ca 450 (Red sea)
Alk 9.02 (Hannah, I believe this is creeping up because consumption has dropped)
nitrate 6 ppm (hannah HR)
phosphate 0.28 ppm (hannah)

My lighting schedule is pasted below. The lights are right at 12" above the water surface. If I use Photone just at the water surface I get 420 PAR on the left and 390 on the right.

For flow I have three things in there. I have two pulse-style wave makers on opposite sides (Jebao DPM 45 and a Tunze Nanostream 6075. I also have a gyre style jebao pump that more or less just agitates the surface and gives a constant current across the front. I've included a FTS below.

I deliver 2-part b-ionic via dosing pumps that do something like 2 or 3 ml 11 times a day for a total of roughly 25mL per day of each part.

 

[Science/G]

Nitrates are a little low IMHO. Below 10 and some of my LPS get grumpy. I shoot for between 10 and 15 FWIW. Now your phosphates are a bit high at .28, probably not that big of a deal but there are some purists who stand firmly by the importance of the redfield ratio 16:1 nitrogen to phosphorus, who would see these numbers and point to this imbalance as a problem.

 

[Science/G]

Where are your blues and cool whites? I don't see any in your schedule.

 

[Areseebee]

The flat part of the lighting curve has this for the channels:

 

[CHSUB]

My belief is corals need to be feed. This is accomplished by large healthy populations of fish or direct coral feeding. I only see a few fish and with your relatively high inorganic nutrient levels imo corals get “grumpy” with over fed and active zooxanthellae.

I would simultaneously increase direct coral feeding and reduced pollution (no3 and po4) with better maintenance.

 

[Areseebee]

The fish stock are: a larger linneatus fairy wrasse, a smaller pintail fairy wrasse, a small/medium royal gramma, a medium/large tomini tang, a smallish copperband butterfly and a pair of relatively small mandarins. I do plan to add one or maybe two more fish but it doesn't feel that low to me. Maybe it is.

What would you recommend direct feeding to the corals? I currently deed about 1.5 cubes of frozen mysis/brine, some shavings of a homemade food made from blending salmon, clams, shrimp, nori, clams. I also feed two different pellets for the mandarins (b2 and one other). Finally I feed lice black worms for the butterfly. I actually feel like I feed kind of heavy but I'm not against upping it. To be clear you are suggesting I feed more but also I should do more water changes to keep the levels down.

 

[fish_collector]

Your issue doesn't appear to be light or flow related, your corals look like they're starving and/or you may have a heavy metal issue/source water issue. A healthy tank should be growing some green algae and coralline algae. It's hard to tell what state your tank is in with photos taken with non filtered camera lens. (Orphek lenses are $25 on Amazon and are wonderful)

In general, verify the purity of your source water, adequate carbon prefilters and 0 TDS.

Run some coconut shell carbon in a cannister in your sump.

Do a 25% water change once you can verify the source water purity, vacuum out the sand to remove excess detritus.

Verify there are no rusty magnets anywhere including inside of pumps, it doesn't take much to start killing corals.

Feed more, get your nitrate up to 15 or so, your phosphate is ok at 0.2-0.3 (my sps thrive at this level).

Add some more fish, this is important!

Perhaps obtain and place a Polyfilter pad into a high flow area of your sump, this will change color in the presence of certain toxic heavy metals while removing them.

Wait and see.

There is no easy solution. Fwiw, my tanks do better when the stocking level is high, I believe it has to do with carbon balance but just a guess as I'm not a chemist. And lastly take my advice with a grain of sand, it's no better or worse than anyone else's 2 cents.

And lastly, does your tank have silicone delam along the bottom front seam? it certainly looks like it from the photo you posted. If not, no worries.

 

[Marine Betta]

My tank is 100g and about a year old. I don't have much in the way of corals but I had an encrusting monti, a small acro, a pectinia, 2 hammers, a goni (or something closely related) and an octospawn that have been with me for maybe a little over a year (they came from my other tank about 6 months ago). All these corals have been fine. About three weeks ago I got an order of various sps frags in and put them in a frag rack on the bottom of the tank and they had been fine. About two weeks ago I noticed that the goni and monti had stopped coming out, but everything else seemed to be ok.

Then I lost two of the sps frags after about a week. It was kind of rapid. However I've noticed that basically all of them seem to be in trouble with tissue loss.

I also have a stylo that has lost quite a bit of tissue from the base while mainting extended polyps... But I can't find the picture.

I'm also now seeing that the pectina looks bad.
It looks like it's losing tissue and I can see the point skeleton sticking through.

The hammer/octo look totally fine to me and one of my old sps still looks ok.

I mostly test alkalinity. I test it everyday at a similar time and it tends to range between 8.5 and 8.7. salinity is 35ppt.

Any tips for what I should do here?

Sorry you’re dealing with this. I would order an ICP test to determine or rule out an imbalance or contaminant that can’t be tested otherwise. Get a total ICP test that will include sending a sample of RO water. You should get results back in a week.

Nitrates could be higher, and your phosphates are on the high side. I like my nitrates to be between 10-20 and phosphates to be between 0.04 and 0.08. Everyone’s tank is different though, and I have seen people with higher numbers that have amazing tanks. Consistency and stability are key.

If you don’t already, spot feed your lps and dose amino acids. I spot feed with reef roids and mysis shrimp. For amino acids, I use Red Sea AB+, Aquavitro Fuel, and Acropower. I highly recommend Acropower for any sps tank. Some LPS almost need to be spot fed at least once a week. I spot feed my Gonis reefroids and goniopower twice a week. If a Goni isn’t opening, it’s normally because manganese and/or iron is low, too little flow, or it’s hungry.

Definitely add more fish. Most of those, except the tang, are low bioload fish. Some ideas for new inhabitants are a marine betta (one of my personal favorites if you couldn’t tell by the name), starki damsel which is one of the only damsels I would ever recommend to someone, any anthias, or pretty much any halichoeres wrasse.

Just to flush out all possibilities, have we ruled out predation or pests? Your copperband probably wouldn’t mess with the pectinia or the sps, but it could potentially pick at other LPS corals.

 

[CHSUB]

The fish stock are: a larger linneatus fairy wrasse, a smaller pintail fairy wrasse, a small/medium royal gramma, a medium/large tomini tang, a smallish copperband butterfly and a pair of relatively small mandarins. I do plan to add one or maybe two more fish but it doesn't feel that low to me. Maybe it is.

What would you recommend direct feeding to the corals? I currently deed about 1.5 cubes of frozen mysis/brine, some shavings of a homemade food made from blending salmon, clams, shrimp, nori, clams. I also feed two different pellets for the mandarins (b2 and one other). Finally I feed lice black worms for the butterfly. I actually feel like I feed kind of heavy but I'm not against upping it. To be clear you are suggesting I feed more but also I should do more water changes to keep the levels down.

Imo there can be a difference between feeding a tank and feeding corals directly. It is not an exact science where fish waste and fish food contributes directly to the corals. Sometimes the corals get enough food, other times they don’t imo and Ime. This is why I started directly applying foods like aminos and reef Roids to the corals with flow off. I think this was the missing piece for me.

To be clear you are suggesting I feed more but also I should do more water changes to keep the levels down.

Yes, but to the corals directly and not necessarily more WC but full time protein skimming and detritus removal. Personally I feed my corals more than my fish. I think we forget corals are animals not plants. Like your CBB they are difficult to feed and we must make extra effort to feed them while maintaining the cleanest possible environment.

Don’t be scared of low nutrients, be worried about feeding your corals. I feed corals 6 days a week with very low residual nutrients, far below hobby test kit resolution. I still do vigorous maintenance and wc. No3 and po4 are plant foods not coral foods….to be clear my no3 is 0.30 ppm.

And just in case you want to see the results of my advice…

 

[Areseebee]

Your issue doesn't appear to be light or flow related, your corals look like they're starving and/or you may have a heavy metal issue/source water issue. A healthy tank should be growing some green algae and coralline algae. It's hard to tell what state your tank is in with photos taken with non filtered camera lens. (Orphek lenses are $25 on Amazon and are wonderful)

Yea sorry about the pictures. I'm not sure why but I can't figure out how to get a good one with a pixel. I'll say this tank has never gone through hardcore uglies but I did have a phase maybe 3 months or so ago where I was getting a lot of hair algae. I strategically deployed my decorator urchin and did a bit of blackout and it seemed to get mopped up. Actually, as short ago as last month the back wall had a lot of hair algae. I wonder if at that time we had a lot of nutrients and they've been kind of used up since and now everything is starving.

In general, verify the purity of your source water, adequate carbon prefilters and 0 TDS.

We are at 9 TDS right now. I definitely ignore changing RODI filters more than I should. I find the whole thing kind of feels like weird voodoo that always leaves a mess behind. I can change those.

Run some coconut shell carbon in a cannister in your sump.

Do a 25% water change once you can verify the source water purity, vacuum out the sand to remove excess detritus.

Verify there are no rusty magnets anywhere including inside of pumps, it doesn't take much to start killing corals.

And lastly, does your tank have silicone delam along the bottom front seam? it certainly looks like it from the photo you posted. If not, no worries.

I really hope not, it's an older ELOS tank that got "professionally resealed" according to a friend. It's all very terrifying.

 

[Areseebee]

Sorry you’re dealing with this. I would order an ICP test to determine or rule out an imbalance or contaminant that can’t be tested otherwise. Get a total ICP test that will include sending a sample of RO water. You should get results back in a week.

Nitrates could be higher, and your phosphates are on the high side. I like my nitrates to be between 10-20 and phosphates to be between 0.04 and 0.08. Everyone’s tank is different though, and I have seen people with higher numbers that have amazing tanks. Consistency and stability are key.

If you don’t already, spot feed your lps and dose amino acids. I spot feed with reef roids and mysis shrimp. For amino acids, I use Red Sea AB+, Aquavitro Fuel, and Acropower. I highly recommend Acropower for any sps tank. Some LPS almost need to be spot fed at least once a week. I spot feed my Gonis reefroids and goniopower twice a week. If a Goni isn’t opening, it’s normally because manganese and/or iron is low, too little flow, or it’s hungry.

Definitely add more fish. Most of those, except the tang, are low bioload fish. Some ideas for new inhabitants are a marine betta (one of my personal favorites if you couldn’t tell by the name), starki damsel which is one of the only damsels I would ever recommend to someone, any anthias, or pretty much any halichoeres wrasse.

Just to flush out all possibilities, have we ruled out predation or pests? Your copperband probably wouldn’t mess with the pectinia or the sps, but it could potentially pick at other LPS corals.

Thanks I was looking into acro food like 2 weeks ago. I'll go with your suggestions here. I've tried it before but it often feels like I'm just kind of blasting a stick with an expensive liquid and then it just is done and nothing happened.

I havne't ruled out predation/pests but the kinds of problems I'm seeing don't feel that way to me. Especially that pectinia... it's just deflated and all the skeletal edges are sticking out. Maybe I'm wrong. I've also not seen anything nipping or eatting at them. I don't have much in the way of exotic inverts or anything.

 

[Areseebee]

Imo there can be a difference between feeding a tank and feeding corals directly. It is not an exact science where fish waste and fish food contributes directly to the corals. Sometimes the corals get enough food, other times they don’t imo and Ime. This is why I started directly applying foods like aminos and reef Roids to the corals with flow off. I think this was the missing piece for me.

To be clear you are suggesting I feed more but also I should do more water changes to keep the levels down.

Yes, but to the corals directly and not necessarily more WC but full time protein skimming and detritus removal. Personally I feed my corals more than my fish. I think we forget corals are animals not plants. Like your CBB they are difficult to feed and we must make extra effort to feed them while maintaining the cleanest possible environment.

Don’t be scared of low nutrients, be worried about feeding your corals. I feed corals 6 days a week with very low residual nutrients, far below hobby test kit resolution. I still do vigorous maintenance and wc. No3 and po4 are plant foods not coral foods….to be clear my no3 is 0.30 ppm.

And just in case you want to see the results of my advice…

Ok I will try these foods. I've always fed things with moths like hammer and frogspawn but I never feed sticks because it always feels like voodoo. I'll give it a try!

 

[Marine Betta]

Sorry you’re dealing with this. I would order an ICP test to determine or rule out an imbalance or contaminant that can’t be tested otherwise. Get a total ICP test that will include sending a sample of RO water. You should get results back in a week.

Nitrates could be higher, and your phosphates are on the high side. I like my nitrates to be between 10-20 and phosphates to be between 0.04 and 0.08. Everyone’s tank is different though, and I have seen people with higher numbers that have amazing tanks. Consistency and stability are key.

If you don’t already, spot feed your lps and dose amino acids. I spot feed with reef roids and mysis shrimp. For amino acids, I use Red Sea AB+, Aquavitro Fuel, and Acropower. I highly recommend Acropower for any sps tank. Some LPS almost need to be spot fed at least once a week. I spot feed my Gonis reefroids and goniopower twice a week. If a Goni isn’t opening, it’s normally because manganese and/or iron is low, too little flow, or it’s hungry.

Definitely add more fish. Most of those, except the tang, are low bioload fish. Some ideas for new inhabitants are a marine betta (one of my personal favorites if you couldn’t tell by the name), starki damsel which is one of the only damsels I would ever recommend to someone, any anthias, or pretty much any halichoeres wrasse.

Just to flush out all possibilities, have we ruled out predation or pests? Your copperband probably wouldn’t mess with the pectinia or the sps, but it could potentially pick at other LPS corals.

Thanks I was looking into acro food like 2 weeks ago. I'll go with your suggestions here. I've tried it before but it often feels like I'm just kind of blasting a stick with an expensive liquid and then it just is done and nothing happened.

I havne't ruled out predation/pests but the kinds of problems I'm seeing don't feel that way to me. Especially that pectinia... it's just deflated and all the skeletal edges are sticking out. Maybe I'm wrong. I've also not seen anything nipping or eatting at them. I don't have much in the way of exotic inverts or anything.

I don’t target feed my sps, but I noticed a big difference in them once I started feeding acropower. I just dose it into the water column.

Yeah, the pectinia doesn’t look like predation to me. Did you dip your new frags? I was thinking the acros could potentially have acropora eating flatworms. If you shine a light on them and see tiny circular marks/bites. Those would be AEFW. For the montis, the most likely culprit would be montipora eating nudibranchs. If it’s a fish, you could try recording a video while you’re not in the room to see if something is picking while you’re not there.

 

[Areseebee]

Ok. I ordered Reef Roids, acropower and AB+. I also found a big thing of AB+ in my fridge that expired in 2022. Not sure if I should use it. I drew up some in a syringe and it looks like horse tick, but a horse you've exclusively fed lime Gatorade. Is that ok? Otherwise I'll have to wait till Friday to start!

 

[Areseebee]

Sorry you’re dealing with this. I would order an ICP test to determine or rule out an imbalance or contaminant that can’t be tested otherwise. Get a total ICP test that will include sending a sample of RO water. You should get results back in a week.

I've never done an ICP test, do I basically need two kits for this and I just do one with the reef water and one with RODI? Or does standard measurement in a kit include running both samples?

Edit: I see maybe "total" is the word that implies both. I see Fauna Marin has a "total" that appears to include running both samples.

 

[Marine Betta]

Sorry you’re dealing with this. I would order an ICP test to determine or rule out an imbalance or contaminant that can’t be tested otherwise. Get a total ICP test that will include sending a sample of RO water. You should get results back in a week.

I've never done an ICP test, do I basically need two kits for this and I just do one with the reef water and one with RODI? Or does standard measurement in a kit include running both samples?

Edit: I see maybe "total" is the word that implies both. I see Fauna Marin has a "total" that appears to include running both samples.

Yep, that’s right. Fauna Marin has one that only tests for trace elements (Reef ICP) and another one called Reef ICP Total that tests everything. It will test your RO water, your typical tank parameters, and then all the trace elements. The total also comes with a prepaid FedEx shipping label. Either way, it will ultimately get sent off to Germany, and you will have results in about a week.

 

[Areseebee]

Ok so the ICP test came back: https://lab.faunamarin.de/en/share/analysis/291073

There's a lot of things that are "off" but it feel to me like the most relevant thing is Tin? The description of what too much tin can do sounds pretty spot on for what I'm seeing.

As far as I can tell it's not in the RO water so it's somewhere in the tank? Perhaps something I've added since getting those SPS has been leaching Tin? I can think of two possibilities. I added a new powerhead and I used some waterweld to seal a small leak in one of my return pipes (but it was a really small, slow leak and I'm not actually even sure it's doing anything). Those are the only two changes I can think of.

Would others agree this is the issue? Not sure this will get much traction here