Weird tissue death on 2 Acropora, all others look fine.

[Nburg's Reef]

My one Acropora colony I kept and moved to my new condo earlier this year started having spots of tissue slough off out of no where. Its been thru sps hell, multiple tank moved and has been fine with everything, but now, after months and months of stability, its having these patchy death spots. I thought AEFW at first, but after removing the colony and inspecting sections under a scope, I found nothing. No eggs, no little bite marks, just larger death patches on a single colony.

My Alk, Ca and Mg have been pretty stable and just calibrated my Trident to make sure everything was reading correctly.
Alk is ~8.5
Calcium has been low lately, 360 but I am slowing bringing it up, but Alk has stayed in the 8.3-9.0 range since setting up
Mag 1330
NO3: ~5 ppm (Nyos, brand new, confirm with Red Sea)
PO4: ~0.02 ppm (hanna ULR Phosphate checker)
SG: 1.026 (use calibration fluid weekly to double check)

Trident test from a month ago showed nothing out of whack.

I have about 20 smaller acropora frags and none of them are showing anything out of the ordinary except my Oregon Tort, which I have had since June. its showing minor tissue regression on the edges of where its encrusting, but otherwise still healthy looking. I'm thinking that might be from algae growth around it, or me scraping it with a battle brush trying to remove algae?

Only thing I can think of is I cleaned and reprogrammed my MP40s, and it was in a high flow area, and I used some home made marine snow to take care of vertmatids, so maybe the change in flow and clearer water (increase in PAR) caused it to bleach in spots and die? Anything I should consider? I clipped off about 5 or 6 branches that had spots but there were a few more today (you can see the nubs on the bottom of colony).

I just moved it to a lower light, lower flow area where a frag of itself is doing nicely. You can see it to the left.


Oregon tort - minor recession over the last 2 days.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Bring salt to 1.025 and Im wondering if the snow was the right balance being homemade and caused any spikes.
What is current tank temp and any changes to light schedule ?

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Temp ranges from 78.5 to 80ish. Has been that way for ever. Light schedule has been constant for a while too, minor tweaks a few months ago, but that was to bring the LED intensity down a just bit.

The calcium carbonate I use to make the 'marine snow' is supposedly 100% pure, dietary supplement.

 

[john90009]

When was the last time everything was changed on your ro/di ?

 

[Nburg's Reef]

When was the last time everything was changed on your ro/di ?

Like a month or 2 ago. I don't do large water changes, so should still be fine. I can double check my TDS, but both stages of my DI chambers showed 0 tds the last time I checked about a week ago.

 

[john90009]

Ahh okay, something strange happened in my tank. My tds would read 0 and I had done an ati icp test and nothing that they checked was out of the normal, but a lot of my sps lost pe except for my tenuis, which thrives with the most PE ever. I had a ssc and after while it lost all the polpys and color and had a decrepit look to it. I fully changed out every big of my ro/di because I figured something was making it though that was irritating because everything else was perfect and the numbers were stuck. And after a water change a few days later these extremely tiny white polpys are making thier way out.

 

[john90009]

Crazy how much it’s changed

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Its weird, obviously this piece is stressed. I clipped off a seemingly healthy branch yesterday and fragged it, and today its dead on the under side (which I think was top side before I fragged it) the and alive on top (which was the bottom). makes me think maybe my phosphates bottomed out and the intense light and flow cause its to bleach a bit and now the bleached (top side) spots are dying. Funny how some branches are still colorful and have actually been coloring up more lately, while the lighter spots are dying.

 

[RVA REEF]

could be aefw, you cant rule them out just by visual inspection, only way to tell for sure is to dip and see if anything falls off they are masters of camouflage, could have come in when you got frags last and are just now getting larger population to do damage.

 

[Nburg's Reef]

could be aefw, you cant rule them out just by visual inspection, only way to tell for sure is to dip and see if anything falls off they are masters of camouflage, could have come in when you got frags last and are just now getting larger population to do damage.

Highly unlikely. I dip everything I get and only get from a few refutable sources. I also remove all acros from their plugs and glue to the new. I broke some of the damaged branches and rubbed off as much loose tissue as I could and examined everything under a scope. no AEFW. I inspected the coral, and all other frags. no signs of the little bite marks that are notorious signs of AEFW and no signs of eggs. Not ruling it out, but I have noticed the only places I am currently getting tissue death is where the tissue is directly under the lights. Sides and bottom tissue all look good, so I am thinking its flow/light/nutrient problem or some unknown chemical issue.

I will keep an eye out for AEFW, but no other coral have bite marks or signs of stress.

 

[RVA REEF]

highly unlikely but not impossible, unless you dip every acro once a week for 6-8 weeks you can not rule them out. Dipping once and taking the plug off doesnt always kill them/eggs, just makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

 

[ScottB]

Not saying I know what is causing your issue, but unless you have a lot of fish with heavy nutrient import/export, I would suggest upping your nutrients a bit. PO4 of .02 is within the test error range of zero.

 

[Nburg's Reef]

Not saying I know what is causing your issue, but unless you have a lot of fish with heavy nutrient import/export, I would suggest upping your nutrients a bit. PO4 of .02 is within the test error range of zero.

Yeah, I am working on bringing it up. I feed A LOT and but don't have a lot of fish. I started dosing Na3PO4 this week, but trying to bring it up very slowly.

 

[gguertin145]

I have been dealing with stressed sps and run similar parameters. I don’t have a heavy fish load and started upping my pho4 and it seems to be helping. Might not be your issue but worth a shot.

 

[Nburg's Reef]

I have been dealing with stressed sps and run similar parameters. I don’t have a heavy fish load and started upping my pho4 and it seems to be helping. Might not be your issue but worth a shot.

I'm working on upping my PO4, so hopefully that can help.

I ended up removing the on colony since I have backup frags that were unaffected, and refragged my oregon tort since it was having issues around the base. So far things look fine. I will keep my eye and maybe try some antibiotic treatments if it continues.