what the heck is going on with my coral? Multiple coral losses.

[Bucs20fan]

You are very welcome, let us know how it goes.

 

[elchopo]

So I did 5 days of treatment with the Cipro. The medicine came 3-4 days late and I ended up losing the one torch I did not want to lose. My hammers and frogspawn do look better but not at the level from before. The chaeto is really doing wonders with my nitrates and I am under 0.05ppm. So, I think I will work on just keeping my parameters at acceptable levels. Will not add any more coral until I see these rebound and start growing.

Thanks, everyone for the advice!

 

[Aquanic]

So I did 5 days of treatment with the Cipro. The medicine came 3-4 days late and I ended up losing the one torch I did not want to lose. My hammers and frogspawn do look better but not at the level from before. The chaeto is really doing wonders with my nitrates and I am under 0.05ppm. So, I think I will work on just keeping my parameters at acceptable levels. Will not add any more coral until I see these rebound and start growing.

Thanks, everyone for the advice!

Your nitrates are under .05 or your phosphate? Good parameters for phosphate and nitrate is 3ppm-15ppm nitrate and .03-.1 phosphate. Coral need nitrate and phosphate to grow. I aslo looked up your treatment to see that you are battling and I came across this thread that I think you should take a look at https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/please-stop-ciprofloxacin-dips-and-other-antibiotics.955634/

I’ve battled brown jelly before but I’ve never had great success treating it. I’ve tried freshwater dips and peroxide dips and coral RX as well as some other coral medication that supposedly treated it. My best advice for it is to get any coral out of the tank that have it since it’s so contagious. If any of that slime gets on another coral, that coral will probably develop it. And then treat the affected pieces outside the tank. For me, peroxide and freshwater dips seemed to have the most promise for recovery but having one head frags at the time, there wasn’t much I could do once i saw it

 

[elchopo]

Your nitrates are under .05 or your phosphate? Good parameters for phosphate and nitrate is 3ppm-15ppm nitrate and .03-.1 phosphate. Coral need nitrate and phosphate to grow. I aslo looked up your treatment to see that you are battling and I came across this thread that I think you should take a look at https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/please-stop-ciprofloxacin-dips-and-other-antibiotics.955634/

I’ve battled brown jelly before but I’ve never had great success treating it. I’ve tried freshwater dips and peroxide dips and coral RX as well as some other coral medication that supposedly treated it. My best advice for it is to get any coral out of the tank that have it since it’s so contagious. If any of that slime gets on another coral, that coral will probably develop it. And then treat the affected pieces outside the tank. For me, peroxide and freshwater dips seemed to have the most promise for recovery but having one head frags at the time, there wasn’t much I could do once i saw it

I may have my decimals in the wrong place lol. Nitrates are under 5ppm.

I am not even sure if its brown jelly. I don't see any signs of it. My coral just simply started retracting and stayed that way for a month or so and one by one started dying. I contributed that to the nitrate spike TDS at .6 and having a hard time getting balance back to my tank. Another poster mentioned all those in combination likely contributed to more sensitive coral, my torches and younger hammer, and bacterial infections that they could not recover from.

 

[Dburr1014]

So I did 5 days of treatment with the Cipro. The medicine came 3-4 days late and I ended up losing the one torch I did not want to lose. My hammers and frogspawn do look better but not at the level from before. The chaeto is really doing wonders with my nitrates and I am under 0.05ppm. So, I think I will work on just keeping my parameters at acceptable levels. Will not add any more coral until I see these rebound and start growing.

Thanks, everyone for the advice!

Check your po4 numbers also.
Cheato will reduce nitrate faster than phosphate.
If your getting close to zero reading nitrates and phosphates are 0.05 or higher, just feed more.
Coral prefer ammonium over nitrate. Fish feeding gives you ammonium.

 

[Aquanic]

I may have my decimals in the wrong place lol. Nitrates are under 5ppm.

I am not even sure if its brown jelly. I don't see any signs of it. My coral just simply started retracting and stayed that way for a month or so and one by one started dying. I contributed that to the nitrate spike TDS at .6 and having a hard time getting balance back to my tank. Another poster mentioned all those in combination likely contributed to more sensitive coral, my torches and younger hammer, and bacterial infections that they could not recover from.

Hmm. How long were the corals open before all this happened? If it’s not parameters, something else you might want to check for is making sure no electrical current is in the tank from like a heater or pump that’s broke, if you have a multimeter, you could set it to 120 AC then put the black probe on a piece of metal and dip the red side in the tank and that should show if there’s stray voltage. What do you dose to the tank?

As far as getting the tank to stabilize, I recommend a hands off approach. Imo when we “help” the tank stabilize we tend to change a lot of things and dose things to fix stuff. I would try to stick to the basics; dose your calcium, alk, mag, and any trace you might do. And then either adding more area for bacteria (rock or bio bricks) or I’ve had good experiences with NP bacto balance helping my tank stabilize when I was battling cyano and algae. But it’s basically carbon dosing with a complex carbon source. Most other carbon sources (vodka and vinegar) have a carbon chain that is smaller and easier for everything to eat it. Since the bacto balance has a more complex carbon string it’s harder for simple bacteria to break it down. My understanding is that it feeds the good bacteria while starving most of the bad. It did take about a month or two for me to notice cyano going down but after that my nitrate and phosphate balanced out at 5ppm nitrate and .03ppm phos and then the bad stuff is disappearing

 

[Dburr1014]

Hmm. How long were the corals open before all this happened? If it’s not parameters, something else you might want to check for is making sure no electrical current is in the tank from like a heater or pump that’s broke, if you have a multimeter, you could set it to 120 AC then put the black probe on a piece of metal and dip the red side in the tank and that should show if there’s stray voltage. What do you dose to the tank?

I think this post meant to say black probe to ground. You are measuring potential of the two.

 

[Aquanic]

I think this post meant to say black probe to ground. You are measuring potential of the two.

A piece of metal would be a ground

 

[Dburr1014]

A piece of metal would be a ground

Not if it was on top of plastic.
It needs a path to ground.
Being metal doesn't make it a ground.

I just want everyone to be safe around water and electricity.