Unhappy Acanthophyllia

EngineerRock

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I have three acanthophyllia in my Red Sea Peninsula 500 (132 gal). Two of them are very happy and healthy. The third one seems to be sick. It sometimes inflates but this is getting less and less frequent. Most of the time it is pretty shriveled up and sad looking. It still east reef roids but very slowly. Same with meatier foods. I got all three at about the same time and they were all doing great at first. If you look at picture "healthy 2 and sick" those two corals actually came from the same tank in the shop at the same time.

Over the past few months a few things have happened that might be relevant. The first was a brown jelly outbreak that killed several euphyllia before I got it under control. The second was that my bubble tip nem decided to walk around a bit and definitely stung the sick coral a bit. Both of these events happened over a month ago at this point.

Based on advice from the LFS (they think it is a bacterial thing) I have done multiple ciprofloxacin treatments. The exact treatment is to crush 1/4 of a tablet into powder and mix it with tank water in a ziplock. I then place the coral in the ziplock and put it into my sump with no lights. I was told to let it sit that way for 6 hours and repeat for 3 days. I tried this and it seemed to work temporarily.

I am not sure what to do at this point. Should I resume the ciprofloxacin treatments and continue until it seems to be fully recovered? Should I really leave it in the sump 6 hrs a day many days in a row? Is there something else I should do?

I had a smaller (80g) AIO tank from March 2020 to April 2021 before I upgraded to this one. I brought over all the live rock and bio media but replaced the sand bed with crushed coral.
Parameters:
alk: 7.68
ca: 485
mg: 1332
ph: daily high 7.8, daily low 7.65
(I recently set up my trident and DOS pump so I am still dialing the dosage in. I am having trouble keeping alk and ph up so I am gradually increasing my mg)
tmp: 78.5
salinity: 1.024

I was sitting at 0/0 for a long time so I increased my feeding and pulled out a bunch of chaeto but didn't stay on top of testing. This is an LPS only tank. I am going to do a 20% water change today and just dosed some nopox to bring this down. My target is ~10-20 nitrates per LFS instructions.
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrates: 80
Phosphate: 2

I didn't realize how bad my nitrates are so I am going to fix that ASAP. But I don't think it would be the cause of the deflated appearance because the other two Acanthophyllia and all the other LPS are doing so well.

healthy 1.jpg healthy 2 and sick.jpg healthy before it got sick.jpg sick.jpg
 

revhtree

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Is something close enough to be stinging it?
 
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EngineerRock

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Is something close enough to be stinging it?
There is a chalice kind of close to it but I haven't noticed any aggression from it. There is also a large bubble tip I have checked at night to verify there is no contact. I don't see any white stringy spots on it. I saw these when it got stung before.
 

Hincapiej4

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I noticed you have rubble not sand. Could I make a suggestion?

Try putting some sand in a container, put the coral in the container ontop of the sand..see if it helps ;)
 
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EngineerRock

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I noticed you have rubble not sand. Could I make a suggestion?

Try putting some sand in a container, put the coral in the container ontop of the sand..see if it helps ;)
I can try that. Do you mind explaining why you think that will help? I want to learn and understand what I am doing.
 
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EngineerRock

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Is your phosphate really 2? That’s really high if so. Usually it should be .02-.10 range…
I know. I haven't been testing nitrates or phosphates for a bit. I am going to do a water change today. Normally I keep phosphate at .02 or lower. I added some fish and started feeding more and didn't notice notice these levels increasing. I am going to get these numbers down. But since the rest of the tank including other anthophyllias are doing great I feel like the issue has to be something else.
 
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EngineerRock

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I know. I haven't been testing nitrates or phosphates for a bit. I am going to do a water change today. Normally I keep phosphate at .02 or lower. I added some fish and started feeding more and didn't notice notice these levels increasing. I am going to get these numbers down. But since the rest of the tank including other anthophyllias are doing great I feel like the issue has to be something else.
For most of this tanks life I have actually been struggling to keep the nutrients above 0/0
 

IKD

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I know. I haven't been testing nitrates or phosphates for a bit. I am going to do a water change today. Normally I keep phosphate at .02 or lower. I added some fish and started feeding more and didn't notice notice these levels increasing. I am going to get these numbers down. But since the rest of the tank including other anthophyllias are doing great I feel like the issue has to be something else.
I would venture that phosphate level is your issue.
 

Suohhen

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Yeah acans can definitely struggle at higher phosphate levels and having one coral struggle when the others aren't isn't ruling out something like water params because it can be a Canary in the mine situation where that coral was possibly less healthy to begin with, or is struggling to recover from the anemone stings.
The recommendation to put it in a container is that things like bristle worms and such can bury in the sand/rubble and harass the coral.
 
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EngineerRock

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Yeah acans can definitely struggle at higher phosphate levels and having one coral struggle when the others aren't isn't ruling out something like water params because it can be a Canary in the mine situation where that coral was possibly less healthy to begin with, or us struggling to recover from the anemone stings.
This makes a lot of sense actually.
 

Hincapiej4

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Meat corals are very soft, they also have a sharp skeleton. The rubble could be in a position that just happens to be upsetting that particular one. I would also fix the phos as well though.

It could be hurt somewhere and the sand might help relieve it and give it time to heal if hurt.
 

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