Mesenterial Filaments on New Acro

[RFLKPTR]

Hey all!

Bought a pack of frags from the LFS about two weeks ago. Some are already encrusting further, but this larger scripps has filaments which have been flapping around for 5 days now. Seems to be some tissue loss on one of the 5 tips that are suffering this affliction.

What is this?

Parameters are as follows:
PAR in the first spot: 280
PAR in the second spot: 240
Salinity - 1.0255
Alk - 8.3
Cal - 425
Mag - 1400
PO4 - .06
NO3 - 4.5 5JUN, 3.3 9JUN
Ph - 8.1 - 8.2 pretty stable
Temp - 77.6

1

 

[Tahoe61]

I see what your describing but the acropora looks to be otherwise healthy. No obvious tissue loss.
An old urban SW hobbyist tale is the skeleton is growing faster than the tissue.

 

[RFLKPTR]

Hey Tahoe, thanks. I will have to take a closer shot of the worst of the tips. You can see it on the rightmost part of the frag, but it is too pale in the light I shot it in.

Appreciate the feedback! I agree that it otherwise looks healthy.

 

[RFLKPTR]

@Tahoe61

Alright, I have two millies from that batch that are doing well. One fully encrusted the plug. Two aren't doing well.

The Scripps is slowly still losing tissue on the five branch tips that were concerning two weeks ago

I have been working on stabilizing nitrate, and I had removed all fish to go fallow for flukes and ich.

Current values:
PAR: 280
Salinity - 1.0255
Alk - 8.6 21JUN, had gone up to 8.9 a few days ago
Cal - 430
Mag - 1400
PO4 - .03
NO3 - 4.5 5JUN, 3.3 9JUN, 1.7 13JUN, 6.7 16JUN, 5.6 17JUN, 5.1 20JUN
Ph - 8.1 - 8.2 pretty stable
Temp - 77.6

 

[Tahoe61]

Well that's a tough one.
Corals are slow to show improvement after being stressed, even briefly.
If the Millepora are doing well I would stay the course and continue to prevent nitrate and phosphate from getting too low.

Keeping all corals, especially sps, happy is a challenge. Figuring out why one does better than the coral growing next to is so frustrating. We can guess all day long as to the variable causing the STN. Consistency is the best long term plan of action. I would bring Ca up a tad though.

 

[Scallopking]

How old is your tank? That’s sand is super white. Looks so nice.

But Yep I see the dying tips. Things I would start doing to fix this. I had this issue a long time ago different tank. Just heartbreaking seeing it. They will continue to die off tip down. Something is amiss in your tank. If you have filaments coming out when not feeding that’s a sign. And they aren’t normal looking feeding filaments either from my issues before.

Daily water changes based on your tanks volume for 5 days. Vacuum your sand with the water change.
Recheck your salinity with another device, it could be off.
Bring temp up, I run 78.3 lowest and heater turns off at 78.6.
Stop dosing Mg altogether.
Consider bringing Alk down further to 8 or even 7.5-7.8.

That’s just what I’d start looking at and doing all at the same time.

What kind of salt are you using?

 

[Scallopking]

How do you get your ph stable in that range all the time btw? Thats awesome if you don’t do anything.

 

[RFLKPTR]

Well that's a tough one.
Corals are slow to show improvement after being stressed, even briefly.
If the Millepora are doing well I would stay the course and continue to prevent nitrate and phosphate from getting too low.

Keeping all corals, especially sps, happy is a challenge. Figuring out why one does better than the coral growing next to is so frustrating. We can guess all day long as to the variable causing the STN. Consistency is the best long term plan of action. I would bring Ca up a tad though.

Cool, thanks so much. I agree with consistency and with a 75 / 25 split percentage of dry rock to live rock, I think it's a challenge for sure having taken a 10 year break from the hobby up until 4 months ago.

 

[RFLKPTR]

How do you get your ph stable in that range all the time btw? Thats awesome if you don’t do anything.

Hey Scallop, thanks for chiming in.

Yeah I keep a fuge with a small amount of chaetomorpha, so I guess that's what I contribute that to. I keep it on for 3 hours during the night time. Could be that my house is pretty well ventilated too. I did notice when we had a total of 8 people in the house for a few nights, that the pH dipped to 7.9 during the night.

 

[RFLKPTR]

How old is your tank? That’s sand is super white. Looks so nice.

But Yep I see the dying tips. Things I would start doing to fix this. I had this issue a long time ago different tank. Just heartbreaking seeing it. They will continue to die off tip down. Something is amiss in your tank. If you have filaments coming out when not feeding that’s a sign. And they aren’t normal looking feeding filaments either from my issues before.

Daily water changes based on your tanks volume for 5 days. Vacuum your sand with the water change.
Recheck your salinity with another device, it could be off.
Bring temp up, I run 78.3 lowest and heater turns off at 78.6.
Stop dosing Mg altogether.
Consider bringing Alk down further to 8 or even 7.5-7.8.

That’s just what I’d start looking at and doing all at the same time.

What kind of salt are you using?

Appreciate you. Interesting take, since that's a few things all at once. Only things that are off in the tank are two acro frags.

Stock list other than five acro frags:
Anacropora
Three different Montipora species
Stylophora
Chalice
Acans
Probably an easy thousand polyps of zoanthids

I understand that the other corals are all easier, but having two out of five acros burn the tips seems a bit much for making temp and alk adjustments (I agree with lowering alk), bringing the temp up (78.2 right now), and aggressive water changes with sand vacuuming is too many changes to be focused.

I don't dose mag by the way, just AFR at 8ml per day at the moment.

Thanks!

Oh and an edit - Tank is 102 days old right now! Was established for 2 years, I bought it set up and transported it a few hours away, set it back up, and added about 75 pounds more of live rock. So that dry rock is going through ugly stages right now, which may contribute to acro unhappiness.

 

[Scallopking]

In my case, only acros were affected by the burnt tips issue and not 100% of them. Like slimmers were fine. Other LPS corals were fine. Didn’t have much softies. But our cases may be totally different. And totally pick and choose what you think is right and works for your tank. My concern, is how it started for me back then, one, then two then most of them. Burnt tips is kind of personal to me.

 

[RFLKPTR]

In my case, only acros were affected by the burnt tips issue and not 100% of them. Like slimmers were fine. Other LPS corals were fine. Didn’t have much softies. But our cases may be totally different. And totally pick and choose what you think is right and works for your tank. My concern, is how it started for me back then, one, then two then most of them. Burnt tips is kind of personal to me.

Yeah I feel ya! I appreciate the advice, hope it didn't sound like I was ungrateful at all.

Oh you asked how I keep the sand so clean - I have two gyres on pulse that put out a max of about 91x turnover for the tank. That, and nassarius and a sand sifting star that's probably about 2.5 years old now.

When you say slimmer, did you mean green slimer?

 

[Scallopking]

Not at all, you’re good. Yeah, sorry green slimers. What brand gyres are they?

 

[DaJMasta]

Your phosphate may be a little too low for your nitrate level, maybe increase it a little to accommodate for the upper bound of the nitrate.

 

[RFLKPTR]

Not at all, you’re good. Yeah, sorry green slimers. What brand gyres are they?

I've got one AI Orbit 4, and one Hygger gyre. The Hygger is brand new. I think I like it enough. Good flow

 

[Scallopking]

I’ve been toying with getting one or two AI 4s. One day I’ll commit.

 

[RFLKPTR]

I really do like the Orbit 4. I wanted to get another, but at this point couldn't justify spending roughly 1k on two pumps.

Anyways, what do we think about fragging the scripps colony to essentially have more of a chance at keeping some of the good tissue? Polyp extension isn't the greatest on the colony, and I definitely notice the burnt tips are still receding.