Mystery coral die off

[jmwils1]

I’m sorry if this is posted in the wrong forum but over the last 3 months we lost (in order) 2 plate corals, a trachypylia, colony of birdsnest, an acro frag, 2 meteor shower montipora frags, 2 Superman montipora frags one head of torch (other head seems ok) and now starting to lose an acanthophylia and Duncan’s. All zoas, leathers, gsp and clove polyps seem fine as does an acans colony And another large torch colony. All fish, snails and shrimp are fine. the tank is a year old and these corals did well for 6 months and were showing significant growth until the die off. all parameters are stable and we haven’t changed flow or lighting. we have a trident and this reads pretty stable with alk around 8.3, ca around 420 and mag around 1400. Dos controls ca and alk. We don’t add trace elements. Salinity is 1.025 And we use Red Sea blue bucket. Temp is 78. Nitrate and phos were near 0. There are no visible diseases (no flatworm, jelly, etc). We have no algae. We have some brown dust in a few areas on the sand that looks like the diatoms we had when we set the tank up. Rodi reads 1 in, 0 out and media is a little less than a year old with about 800 gallons used. We’ve asked the Lfs for help and theyve come out a few times, done a cleaning and feel it is dinos. We don’t have any bubbly, stringy slime but they feel the brown dust is dinos due to the low nit/pho. We have increased feedings and started dosing nitrates. I’m going to get an ati icp test but am bewildered as to what happened. The tank was thriving until 3-4 months ago…

 

[blaxsun]

Have you charted any of your water parameters over the past 3-6 months to see if there is any correlation?

 

[jmwils1]

we have a full apex setup so alk, mag, ca, ph, temp, salinity and orp. Other than that I haven’t been checking anything regularly since nothing has changed. No new foods, salt, additives, livestock, etc.

 

[Semisonyx]

What size tank? How many fish? I’d be willing to bet that things grew fine until the corals outgrew the amount of food coming in, growth stagnated and then they died off. Increasing your feedings may help turn things around, but it can be hard with some sps species. IME, once corals start dying off (rtn/stn) due to low nutrients, there’s no stopping it without some serious cutting and fragging. Dosing NO3/PO4 may help, but you likely need more fish to feed.

 

[jmwils1]

Tank is Red Sea max e260 aio. Display is 55 gallon and sump area is 14. 2 clown, a bangai cardinal and a small yellow tang. A Firefish died a couple of months before the coral die off. Feedings have been increased during the last 3 months but the die off has continued to slowly progress despite this.

 

[sculpin01]

Coral death by dinoflagellates (Ostreopsis sp. are generally the causative organism) is usually rapid (I can attest to this personally) but easily treated by a combination of UV and activated carbon. What you’re describing sounds more like a water chemistry issue. ICP will probably provide guidance.

 

[mdb_talon]

A tank with no algae and near zero nitrates and phosphates sounds like you need to get some nutrients in there. I agree an ICP test may make sense also to see if anything bad

 

[jmwils1]

Thank you. I should mention that I’ve also had an appropriately sized up sterilizer for the last 10 months that was installed when I had an obvious Dino outbreak at the time. I’ll try increasing feedings more. I do periodically add reef roofs and a Red Sea amino acid product but only perhaps once a month

 

[mdb_talon]

Thank you. I should mention that I’ve also had an appropriately sized up sterilizer for the last 10 months that was installed when I had an obvious Dino outbreak at the time. I’ll try increasing feedings more. I do periodically add reef roofs and a Red Sea amino acid product but only perhaps once a month

The dinos are another indication of too low of nutrients. The UV can help control the dinos, but is not solving the reason they flourished initially.

Personally I dont ever trust a tank with no algae