I need help with my hammer and octospawn!

[CAreefnoob]

Hey everyone, I have a 45 gallon reef tank and am having some problems with my Euphyllia coral. A hammer and an octospawn. Both of them are receding. I started a new job and neglected the tank for about a month, I know my mistake, don't yell at me. The corals were in the middle of the tank and I have now moved them to the bottom. There is moderate flow through out the tank. I have a cannister filter. I cleaned that all up and did 2 water changes. One was 10% and the other was 25% in the same week. A lot of my tank parameters stayed the same even with the neglect.

pH 7.8
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Calcium 520ppm
Nitrates 10ppm
Phosphates 0.5ppm
I will check my water again, I didnt check it after the 25% wanted to give it a day for everything to mix.

Should I get a test kit for magnesium? Do I need to dose with magnesium to help the Euphyllia?

I'm using a viparspecra light with whites at 15 and blues at 30 and I have a glass top aquarium with the light hanging about 18inches above the tank. And the tank is 2 feet deep.

I have 8 fish, 2 clowns, 4 chromis, coral beauty and royal gramma. Hermit crabs, snails, and cleaner shrimp.

All the other corals are doing pretty well. My goni and aveo like to expand and contract but from what I read they are more sensitive to others. Zoas are growing well, Acans have been growing and one head has turned to like 7 on each. I have a Duncan that has gone from one head to 5, 1 big one and 4 little ones starting from underneath. Kenya tree getting bigger. And my birds nest has a lot more branches. Is my tank just not Euphyllia friendly? I like those corals because of their movement.

Any advice on how to keep these guys alive would be appreciated. Thank you in advance!

 

[glb]

Can you put up some pics? It’s possible your coral got irritated by something or is unhappy with its placement. Yes you should get an mg test for good husbandry but I doubt that’s the problem if your other corals are ok.

 

[CAreefnoob]

Can you put up some pics? It’s possible your coral got irritated by something or is unhappy with its placement. Yes you should get an mg test for good husbandry but I doubt that’s the problem if your other corals are ok.

Here are some pics of them, when I first got them about 2 months ago they were a lot fuller.

My salinity is at 1.026
Alkalinity is at 10 <--- API reef master kit so it only has whole numbers.

 

[lucyretz]

So first of all, API is ok for an approx, but since theres clearly a big issue here its time to get some quality test kits. salifert is on the cheaper side and very accurate for cal mag and alk, hanna meters are amazing for nitrate and phos. Euphyllia is extremely sensitive to alk fluctuations and needs higher levels of mag as well.

 

[Spare time]

So first of all, API is ok for an approx, but since theres clearly a big issue here its time to get some quality test kits. salifert is on the cheaper side and very accurate for cal mag and alk, hanna meters are amazing for nitrate and phos. Euphyllia is extremely sensitive to alk fluctuations and needs higher levels of mag as well.

They don't need higher levels of magnesium. Ocean levels are fine

 

[lucyretz]

They don't need higher levels of magnesium. Ocean levels are fine

ok so yes, should've worded it better, but they seem to thrive in the 1450-1500 range.

 

[CAreefnoob]

So first of all, API is ok for an approx, but since theres clearly a big issue here its time to get some quality test kits. salifert is on the cheaper side and very accurate for cal mag and alk, hanna meters are amazing for nitrate and phos. Euphyllia is extremely sensitive to alk fluctuations and needs higher levels of mag as well.

I used a Salifert test for the magnesium. All my other corals are doing well and growing. Before I buy all the expensive testers I'm gonna do an ICP test to compare the values I get with the API tests. I will make sure I run my tests the same time and from the same spot I get the water for the ICP test. I did do some further searching and saw a post about little mites being on their euphyllia and killing them and I just saw some on my octospawn. And it looks like the only way to fix this is with dog heartworm medicine? Not sure where to get it.

 

[Spare time]

I used a Salifert test for the magnesium. All my other corals are doing well and growing. Before I buy all the expensive testers I'm gonna do an ICP test to compare the values I get with the API tests. I will make sure I run my tests the same time and from the same spot I get the water for the ICP test. I did do some further searching and saw a post about little mites being on their euphyllia and killing them and I just saw some on my octospawn. And it looks like the only way to fix this is with dog heartworm medicine? Not sure where to get it.

I'm not sure what mites you are referring but it's talking about copepods and amphipods I doubt it. People like to use amphipods as a scape goat

 

[Spare time]

You need a better phosphate kit as it's useless. You want phosphate between 0.03ppm ish to 0.1ish. The lowest value API phosphate can read (0.25ppm) would be considered extremely high. I'd guess that month of neglect led to calcium and alk dropping pretty low which might have caused issues on top of other elements and stuff out of line. They might reflect.

 

[Rmckoy]

I agree with above. .
Better quality tests to get a more accurate number for phosphates .
0.5 is extremely high . Could be a sign of something not balanced or stable .
and for all of 10 dkh I’d be worried there isn’t enough nitrates to feed the coral but the skeleton is growing …..

I don’t think that’s 100% of the issue in this case but think high phosphates are not helping matters .

neglect also brings Alk and cal consumption which points towards instability
As mentioned above euphillia don’t like fluctuations .

 

[Spare time]

I wanted to add that tanks with calcifying corals can't be left alone for a long duration without issues arising since they, along with coralline algae and what not, can drain elements like calcium and things like carbonates very rapidly. For example,I doubt much my tank would survive a week without dosing.

 

[Nemosis]

Unlike torches that can withstand a decent amount of flow, hammers, frogspawn, and octospawn cannot. Your parameters, from what I see, doesn't look detrimental to anything other than certain sps coral. (And I've seen worse!) Your issue may be what we cannot see which would be flow. Too much flow can pull the tissue away from the skeleton causing bacterial infections and recession. It wouldn't hurt to check your magnesium level and adjust if necessary. Make small changes to correct your tanks current parameters and be patient. Nothing good happens fast in this hobby.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

It might not be anything you've done or not done. Sometimes coral, euphyllia in particular, is injured, stressed, etc before it ever ends up in your tank but it takes a while to show. See my post linked below:

Post in thread 'Emergency Torch corals melting away' https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/emergency-torch-corals-melting-away.904103/post-10095972

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Hey everyone, I have a 45 gallon reef tank and am having some problems with my Euphyllia coral. A hammer and an octospawn. Both of them are receding. I started a new job and neglected the tank for about a month, I know my mistake, don't yell at me. The corals were in the middle of the tank and I have now moved them to the bottom. There is moderate flow through out the tank. I have a cannister filter. I cleaned that all up and did 2 water changes. One was 10% and the other was 25% in the same week. A lot of my tank parameters stayed the same even with the neglect.

pH 7.8
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Calcium 520ppm
Nitrates 10ppm
Phosphates 0.5ppm
I will check my water again, I didnt check it after the 25% wanted to give it a day for everything to mix.

Should I get a test kit for magnesium? Do I need to dose with magnesium to help the Euphyllia?

I'm using a viparspecra light with whites at 15 and blues at 30 and I have a glass top aquarium with the light hanging about 18inches above the tank. And the tank is 2 feet deep.

I have 8 fish, 2 clowns, 4 chromis, coral beauty and royal gramma. Hermit crabs, snails, and cleaner shrimp.

All the other corals are doing pretty well. My goni and aveo like to expand and contract but from what I read they are more sensitive to others. Zoas are growing well, Acans have been growing and one head has turned to like 7 on each. I have a Duncan that has gone from one head to 5, 1 big one and 4 little ones starting from underneath. Kenya tree getting bigger. And my birds nest has a lot more branches. Is my tank just not Euphyllia friendly? I like those corals because of their movement.

Any advice on how to keep these guys alive would be appreciated. Thank you in advance!

If these were mine, I would do an iodine dip. They look like they may be beyond help, but the iodine can help if there's an infection.

Edit: looking at the pics again, I think the hammer is a goner, partly because it's a wall variety.

For both though, iodine dip and then place back in the tank in a spot that gets indirect flow (but enough to keep detritus from settling) and then try not to move them for a while.

I hope they recover but if they don't, you should definitely not give up... Euphyllia (actually fimbriaphyllia) are my favorites too