SPS following alk spike, is it the right diagnosis ?

[david p.]

maybe i should mention that most of my Acro looks healthy... the red dragon looked healthy and the one that RTn last night was also... my pink lemonade lost a bit of color around Feb-march, but was stable and kept encrusting and growing.

 

[slojmn]

An alk spike like the one you mentioned in your ULNS could definitely be the culprit. It can take months for the effects of the spike to translate to the corals, even though you got it back down naturally. I spiked my alk a few years ago from low 8's to 14+ in one day with an alk overdose. I lost some things, quick RTN, colors shifted, bases receded. It was a long wait and see process. In the end I was pretty lucky, not too many losses. You may also be on the lucky side, even though it doesn't seem like it now. I am pretty sure there is a whole thread about it somewhere on here. I may have posted it to Randy's forum. I would ride things out and not try to chase colors or do too much to fiddle. Give the tank 6-7 months to come back from the alk spike.

 

[htownguy]

Im in the same boat as you. I had a alk spike about a month and half ago. 8 dkh to 12 in one day because of my stupidity. The first 2 weeks most of the acros just had poor polyp extension and faded in color. Then in the beginning of june i had 3 acros rtn basically in 2 days flat. another 3 or 4 had burnt white tips. and a few more just turned to brown turds. It took me until this week to finally stabilize my water with the reduction in alk consumption. Things seem to be getting better now.. the injured acros seem to have better polyp extensions and all rtn stn has stopped. I'm just going to to keep my water as stable as possible and let nature take its course on the tank. Funny thing is it only affected maybe 30% of my sps. All the others in the tank still look great and are growing like nothing happened.

 

[david p.]

ok...i'm still struggling with my SPS.
As previously mentionned, since i have been dealing with this for a while, and it'S getting hard to determine if all the issues i see are from my alk spike, or if the alk spike triggered a domino effect. or something else ... did the Alk had anything to do with this ????

All my LPS are doing great.

The first symptoms appeared in late march, one of the first affected was my red planet (before and now shots) . we see in the middle/base of the colonie, it's now pretty much dead, it was not that bad at first, polyps were still visisble in the 'white area, but you get the idea how it is now. The colors are off to compate both picture, the 'now' picture is not that brown and the old picture is not that 'shiny' (LEd effect)

The other pic is to show similar symptoms in the earlier stage, colonies that show signs of receiding. The last one was bright green at some point with red polyp, one day all the green went away basically over the course of a few days, polyps were still out and healthy, and now base is dieing (we see algae) and less polyps, it deterirated around April-early May for that one.


Other pre and post shots (late march vs now):

I also have 3 colonie that lost tissue on the base, the side not exposed to light, but it stopped pretty fast, i read about white bande disease (WBD)... could be it. could be something else, all these colony lost a lot of color and show some signs of receiding.

My assumptions so far with some explanation why some are ruled out:
1. Slow rise of Alk over 2 months due to TTM for my 3 QT (Late jan, March, April) with WC from DT combine with my low nutrient stressed the coral. My old salt had alk of 12dkh, i slowly raised alk from 8.3 to almost 12 dkh. I was pretty sure that was the culprit, but it has been 3-4 months, and i cannot say coral are improving. I lost a few more since then, could be from the initial stress, and slow death was their sentence. Alk is stable at 8.5 since Mid April. Ca consumption is stalled, i stopped dosin Ca a while back.

2. i slowly reduce the amount of GFO i used in reactor, from January to April. P were still undetectable at that time. Color and growth were impressive until march. i wanted some P and N in my system. Over theperiod of Late Jan to mid April, i added several new fishes. I still had undetectable P. But all these combine with the alk spike and slow growth, removal of GFO , all these reduced the P intake in the system.. increasing P faster than i wanted and browing out coral. My P test did not show any phosphate with seachem. I switch recently to Red sea, i can mesure P now betwen 0.04-0.08. Also, i have noticed more algae in my tank without reading P on my Seachem test kit. not sure symptoms match a fluctation in P.

3. I changed salt from red sea coral pro to AF reef salt to have new water in the Alk range i maintain my tank, introduced with 5g WC weekly since mid-april. I did the introduction once i diagnosed my alk spike has been one of the potential root cause, maybe around mid/late-april, the first signs of receiding were in late march. it is certainly not the root cause, but it's still a change that happened.

4. I have a bug or bacterial infection. i dont think AEFW, i dont see any bite marks. I freaking about black bugs and red bugs, but i dont see anything. I'm planning on a preventive Interceptor treatment, i'm usually against such treatment, but since thing dont seems to improve.... why not...

i used to think it was only a few colonies and my system was slowly back on track, but now i see signs on maybe 30% of my acros, and either lost or fragged 10-14 heavily affeected acros either. I still have aprox 70-75 acros, meaning ~20 with signs of receiding at different level. Most of them still encrusting and growing. Some of them show signs of new growth.

any inputs... i have not seen similar symptoms in my hours of reading.

thanks

 

[dieselkeeper]

I still losing corals to an alk spike and low nutrients. My SPS stopped grewing. Tips slimed when flow turned off. Then the tips turned white, then brown. Then the whole colony slowly turned white. A couple of weeks of slow death. Lost about 10 colonies so far. The rest are showing white and brown tips. It's going to be a total loss of SPS. Noticed today my sertosa, size of a dinner plate, has white tips like flesh peeled off. This has been going on for a couple of months now. Just when I thought it had slowed down, another coral starts to go down hill. Hope things turn around for you soon.

 

[kevensquint]

At first your corals looked simply nutrient starved. But then that cotton stuff between the coralites is more unnerving. My guess would be first paling from no nutrients followed by a bacterial attack.
IME, you need to keep water temp. Below 78f. Preferably 76 at least until things turn around. Good flow and frequent water changes. I did stop two Sanjay's in my systems with this recipe but some corals were lost, more than half lived. I think Alk should be more like 7.5 since the least stressful level is 7-8 . No one ever gets any alk issues when in the 7-8 range. When you pass 8, other elements can become suddenly harsher because of the higher alk.