How do you deal with tissue recession?

SamMule · Nov 12, 2021

Tank has had a rough month or so. I had an unknown stress event about a month ago. Not sure if it was the result of a spilled carbon bag in the sump or some of the essential oils that my spouse was using, but it resulted in a lot of ticked off corals. A couple large water changes put everything back in order, but, of course, the stress event paused growth, and therefore alk consumption dropped. Idiot me didn't adjust the talk dosage when filling my ATO and I ended up with a spike to 10.5 dkh. The problem has since been corrected
Lost a couple acros, burnt tips on some, and others just lost color.
Everything seems to be recovering, but I have one acro that is still receding at the base. It is mounted to my main rockwork, so pulling and dipping is not an option. (Plus, it seems like a terrible idea to stress it any further)
I'm inclined to leave it be and see if the recession stops, but I'm curious how others address this kind of issue. Here's a bad pic, but you get the idea...

Here it is a month or so before the stress event.

C. Eymann · Nov 12, 2021

Definitely dont dip it unless pests are suspected, thats an issue/ mistake I see many reef keepers make, they think dips like revive/ coral rx etc etc are "therapeutic or healing" they are not at all, its compounded stress if the issue is caused by water chemistry/ environmental stress.

In your case, if parameters are stable/ back to norm and it still presists on receeding then I would frag it off the encrusted base at least .5-1cm above the line of tissue recession depending on speed of recession- faster = futher into healthy tissue, slower= closer to recession line. In some cases it maybe better to spread your bets and frag the whole piece up to multiple separate frags and mount them in different areas of the tank.

Hope this helps

old salt reefer · Nov 12, 2021

Well if it's real fast, cut off good parts and move to a different tank(for me anymore this rarely if at all happens). If it's real slow, leave it alone and see what happens.

SamMule · Nov 12, 2021

Anyone ever try covering the affected area (and slightly above) with glue? Seems this would be less stressful to the piece than hacking it up. The recession has been pretty slow. That's maybe a week or two of recession shown in the pic.