Is this RTN?

[castiel]

 

Just placed in the tank yesterday ... anything I can do about it?? Or should I just wait it out?

[ajgouty]

I dont think so....what are your params?

low alk is probably the number 1 cause of loosing color from base up.

[Mitch619]

Check your params, if anything is off, than correct it. If everything is fine, I'd wait it out. One of my birdsnets bleached pretty bad on the base. I just took extra care of my water, and everything went great.

[castiel]

Thanks, both. I know my calc and KH are fine but I need to get an alk test to check that out.

[Wizzy]

Good Luck castiel. It looks like a beautiful piece.

[Dani3d]

High alkalinity will cause that, not so much low alkalinity. I run my alkalinity pretty low between 6 to 7 and sometime it even get to 5 (rarely now that I have a dosing pump) and I never had this with my SPS or my frags. I have read of many occurance of RTN or STN when people have their alkalinity higher than 10.

BTW, the KH is what you should be looking for...if you know your Dkh, there is no need to test for alkalinity...this is alkalinity.

 

Alkalinity should be around 8 dkh and never more than 10. Natural sea water is around 7.

 

I would frag it and cut it a bit over the healthy tissue and use crazy glue in gel to cover the fresh cut. Often just covering the affected area with crazy glue in gel will cure this.

 

It could be a light shock as the piece looks rather brown and if you have LED then it could be too strong.

[Euphyllia]

What salt are you using?

[castiel]

Dani thanks for the post. My dKH is 7, which could be because I am using natural sea water (answer to Euphy's question there too). Thanks for clarifying KH/alkalinity, I was confused as to what each was and what the difference was! As I said, my first SPS so I have never really monitored that to date.

 

I have my LED turned down but maybe still too bright ... not sure if I want to remove it and frag it already as it was a pain in the arse to get it where I wanted it to start with! But I'll keep a close eye on it for a day or two and if it advances even a tiny bit, will pull it out and get the hacksaw out.

[ajgouty]

High alkalinity will cause that, not so much low alkalinity. I run my alkalinity pretty low between 6 to 7 and sometime it even get to 5 (rarely now that I have a dosing pump) and I never had this with my SPS or my frags. I have read of many occurance of RTN or STN when people have their alkalinity higher than 10.

BTW, the KH is what you should be looking for...if you know your Dkh, there is no need to test for alkalinity...this is alkalinity.

 

Alkalinity should be around 8 dkh and never more than 10. Natural sea water is around 7.

 

I would frag it and cut it a bit over the healthy tissue and use crazy glue in gel to cover the fresh cut. Often just covering the affected area with crazy glue in gel will cure this.

 

It could be a light shock as the piece looks rather brown and if you have LED then it could be too strong.

 

 

I had the same problem before i started dosing 2 part and mag. Before my alk was around 8. All of my sps had decent color but faded at base. After raising my alk to 12 my sps have never been better as far as color and growth. I was dosing kalk via ATO and overdosed and alk climbed to 15 for 4 days and nothing bad happened. If you look at a lot of the really nice sps tanks they are routinely above 10. normally around 12.

[Euphyllia]

Natural sea water is inconsistent and it may have bad things from pollution dissolved in the water. The salinity and pH will vary, and even though it is filter, there may be other crap in it that you don't want. I would recommend mixing your own.

[ajgouty]

I have also seen this happen with sps when it goes from an established system to a system with new/clean rock and water.

[castiel]

Natural sea water is inconsistent and it may have bad things from pollution dissolved in the water. The salinity and pH will vary, and even though it is filter, there may be other crap in it that you don't want. I would recommend mixing your own.

Nah, not going to happen. I get it from the same LFS and I know they get it way off the coast away from any pollution. And remember I am in Australia, this is Southern Ocean water. I actually believe it brings way more benefits than problems, so I'll just have to look to other options =0)

 

ajgouty maybe that is it - the LFS said this was a frag from a big colony in a customer's tank, sounded like it had recently arrived.

[Loki40]

High alkalinity will cause that, not so much low alkalinity. I run my alkalinity pretty low between 6 to 7 and sometime it even get to 5 (rarely now that I have a dosing pump) and I never had this with my SPS or my frags. I have read of many occurance of RTN or STN when people have their alkalinity higher than 10.

BTW, the KH is what you should be looking for...if you know your Dkh, there is no need to test for alkalinity...this is alkalinity.

 

Alkalinity should be around 8 dkh and never more than 10. Natural sea water is around 7.

 

I would frag it and cut it a bit over the healthy tissue and use crazy glue in gel to cover the fresh cut. Often just covering the affected area with crazy glue in gel will cure this.

 

It could be a light shock as the piece looks rather brown and if you have LED then it could be too strong.

 

this^^

[Daleo]

Stable parameters are more important than "correct" parameters. If you change alk, do it slowly. Personally I keep mine 9-10. It allows more calcium to dissolve.

 

Btw seawater is vey well mixed and there are few fluctuations in ocean parameters.

[briansbelle]

Not an expert but could the coral next to it be sending out sweepers at nite and stinging it?

[SRGaudio]

Not an expert but could the coral next to it be sending out sweepers at nite and stinging it?

 

It kinda looks like some sort of favia, and is def an LPS, so I would consider that a definite possibility. I have seen some crazy long sweepers on my favia.

[castiel]

I never considered that possibility .. never seen any sweepers from the favia at all. Hmm hopefully not as this is about the only place in the tank the acro works!

 

I am leaning more towards light shock/tank move shock. It's certainly not progressing at a noticable rate, same as it was 10 hours ago as far as I can tell.

[kevlow]

To me, that looks like tissue necrosis and not damage from coral combat. I have had this happen before when a piece is a day or two old in the system or a week or two in the system. IMO this was a response from trying to adapt to a total new enviroment.

I had success fragging the piece above the living tissue and re mounting it. When i tried leaving it alone, the necrosis slowly continued until I ended up with a nice white dead coral.

 

I am not sure that there is one constant common cause. It is easy to pinpoint if there just was an alk spike or crash. But it also happens when the params are spot on and stable and a new piece goes south. I think there so many variables when a coral is transported or gets a new tank. The first month is definitely the most difficult for a new coral. I don't know if anything had to be off in your tank.

 

At this point, I would cut and re mount it Trying to get the living half established through the first month.

 

Good luck,

 

Kevin

[Bishop]

if it were bleaching from light shock, it should be happening from the top down. Happening at the bottom can be more of a sign of infection. If the tissue is loosing color then that is one thing but if the tissue is actually gone and that is skeleton I see, fragging is the only option.

[castiel]

Hmm okay, thanks guys. Consensus seems to be fragging so I will see what I can do and hopefully save it.

[castiel]

Wow well I posted above late last night, so left it until this morning to do the fragging. I was shocked this morning to see the necrosis had advanced notably in the 9 hours I was asleep ... it would have taken the whole frag in a few days I think.

 

So I got the garden shears out. I took some healthy coral too, because there was a 'nub' where I think part had broken off but it was white and dead looking and I didn't want to take a chance.

 

The light is a bit funny here, but the light part is the dead skeleton and the dark is the healthy part.

 

And this is what I am left with, about half of the total length (and again the light looks odd, but this is all healthy looking).

 

It's now back in the tank and I just hope it survives. This is something like it should/will look like:

 

Thanks again for the advice. This forum is great for dicking around on, but when you really need it you know that you'll get the advice you are looking for. =0)

[kevlow]

Update?

[castiel]

All looks good so far! The frag seems perfectly healthy as far as I can tell, and I've even seen the beginnings of some polyp extension. I'll try to post some pics later.

[castiel]

Couldn't get a great pic as it was feeding time and my crab decided to take up residence on it ... but as I said, all healthy looking.