Tissue receding on SSC

[TheBig053]

Hey All, so I woke up this morning and checked my tank with a flashlight like I do every morning and noticed two areas on the base of my strawberry shortcake acro where the tissue receded off the skeleton over night. The SSC has been in my tank for 3 weeks today without issue. I was even beginning to see some more growth from the base on the frag plug.  I just checked all my parameters and everything is normal for my tank. Tested with red sea kits with exception of the Phos test which is Salifert.

 

Nitrates: 5-10 ppm (a little high for SPS I know)

Phos: 0.01

Ca: 425

Mg: 1520

Alk: 8.4

Salinity: 1.025

Temp: 80 

 

Mag has always been a bit high but I haven't had any issues with this previously. I also recently began running Kalkwasser in my ATO to help keep my Ca levels up. All other SPS/corals seem to be fine, but my rainbow micromussa hasn't opened since I changed the water on Friday. 

 

Heres a photo with the affected area circled. 

 

The other white area below the circle is a bit of coral glue from a messy frag gluing job. Oops. That was about two weeks ago. 

 

My only course of action at this time is to continue to monitor it and see if it spreads any further. Anyone have any ideas on what could possibly be causing this? Should I be doing something else to address this? I don't want to make any drastic changes to the tank when everything seems to be doing well. 

[sprite]

First thing I would do is lower your temp to stay 78 and see if that stops it. 

[TheBig053]

Ok, just turned the heater down. Did an inspection to see if maybe there is a pest thats munching on it, but I did not see anything. 

[lkoechle]

Flow? I had one rtn from is having too much.  I had it for about 2 weeks

 

[TheBig053]

It is in a high flow area but not in the line of fire from any direct high flow. The return pump nozzles are the closest source of flow.  I'll try to angle the out put nozzles even farther away and see if maybe that helps. Temp is now down to 79. 

[TheBig053]

It seems to have slowed down/stopped. Tough to really tell though when I've been looking at it every 5 minutes.  Temp down to 78.5.  The only flow directed at it is coming from a powerhead on the opposite end of the tank. I can't imagine that would too much flow.  

[Clown79]

Temp at 80 is not an issue. If it's stable at 80 it's fine. Normal reef temp is 78-80.

 

If it was swinging slot in large degrees 'd say that's a concern or over 82 degrees. 

 

Dropping it 2 degrees in 1 day can cause an issue.

 

Could be a flow issue. Lack of flow to the area can do this and quickly. 

 

Lack of flow and alk swings is the main culprit from tissue loss on sps

[TheBig053]

Well whatever it was it has stopped. No temp swings recently. The tank has held steady around 80 for the past few weeks. My Alk did drop to 7 before my WC on Friday morning but was steady at 8.4 all weekend.  I have plenty of flow in the tank, if anything possibly too much. 

 

I cant believe I didn't notice this earlier in the day but it looks like a snail or hermit crab got on my frrag rack and spun my purple milli frag into another piece of unknown acro and two branches were touching. The acro RTN'd on the tip of the branch where they were touching and mille put out mesenterial filaments. This was only a few inches from the SSC. I wonder if this could have played a role as well. 

[sprite]

Update? Those 2 fighting each other shouldn't have affected the ssc. Keep an eye out and if the tips of the one acro grows algea on it, clip it off so it doesn't spread down the branch.

[TheBig053]

Tissue necrosis on the SSC has definitely stopped.  Ployps are out and color is still just as vibrant as the day I added it.  Water parameters have remained stable,  just finished testing again.  The micromussa that was closed up for several days also opened up again last night and even took some mysis this evening. 

 

I'll keep an eye out on the exposed skeleton on the tip of the Acro branch, but so far so good. I have a larger magnetic frag rack en route from amazon so I can give these larger pieces more space and avoid any future contact.  This is the second time two have bumped into each other and caused tissue loss.

 

They are larger pieces that I acquired at our local aquarium club meeting but they were all browned out (presumably from the fragging process). My plan was to keep them on the rack to see if the color comes back and if it does, what do they actually look like before I attach them to rock. The good news is they are finally starting to color up again, so hopefully they will find a permanent home here sooner rather than later. 

 

Anyways, thanks for the advice and hopefully I am not back on here posting about this again.

[Clown79]

The alk drop may have been the cause.