When should I frag this acro to save it?

[lizzyann]

I've had this oregon tort for 7 months and it's always been healthy and had good growth. A few weeks ago 3 of my acros lost their green colors and started to turn brown overnight, and are now getting lighter in parts. The underside of the corals look especially worse than usual. I don't think there's any necrosis happening yet, as it looks like the flesh is still there, just super light. Can this colony rebound? Should I wait until I see tissue necrosis to frag? Or would chances be better if I go ahead and frag some of the branches now?

 

 

I'm most worried about the tort but my green slimer is in a similar state, except that the encrusted base still has good color and PE, but the branches are brown and starting to lighten in spots, with one branch losing polyp extension completely, and the other still having some bright green polyps coming out.

 

There's a lot more info about the circumstances of the browning on my build thread if you have any ideas about what might have happened or be happening. 

 

[Clown79]

The brown sometimes indicates dead flesh where algae is covering the skeleton that's left.

 

I went through the journal quickly.

 

0 phos can definitely be an issue for lack of growth, colour loss, and can lead to dino's.

Macro dying off could be due to lack of phos.

 

 

 

The nitrates and phos aren't balanced. 

Are you using any media in your filter?

 

 

The other issue I can think of is alk fluctuations. Stony corals definitely don't like that.

What does the newly made salt mix at for alk? 

That's your target number you want to keep stable.

 

 

[lizzyann]

I had lots of issues with dinos previously and mostly recovered from that. I see little strands of stuff occasionally but it's never been enough to make me want to get it under the microscope to determine if it's cyano or dino or diatoms. There's definitely some cyano here and there though.

 

I'm definitely concerned about my nitrate/phosphate balance but it's been at 0 and .2 for about 5 months and the acros seemed to freak out almost overnight.

 

I have chemi-pure in my filter. Should I take it out and see what happens? I'm a little scared since it's ALWAYS been in my tanks, and I really don't want an explosion of nuisance algae. There already is a great deal of nuisance algae and other things that point to lots of nutrients, like tons of spaghetti worms and vermitid snails, which is kinda confusing. 

 

Alk hasn't been 100% stable but pretty sure it's only fluctuated by about 1.5 dKH for several months, and I don't thiiiink ever suddenly, but I might just not have realized it. I've got it stable at 8.5 now. I need to double check the fresh mixed alk. It's supposed to be like 13 I think, but I don't remember it testing that high when I did it a long time ago. Might be time to switch salts, especially if higher alk is especially bad for lower nutrient systems.

 

I've looked and looked and really can't tell if the flesh is there or not in places. It doesn't look like the STN pictures I've seen of it kinda peeling off, more just fading away.

 

These three in the middle, the green slimer, oregon tort, and flaming unicorn seemed the most affected. I also have an acropora spathulata and an acropora millepora that seemed slightly faded, but not as bad as these three.

 

The slimer and tort are the worst though. Oregon Tort:

 

Green slimer:

 

 

The more I look the worse they seem, should I just go ahead and hack them up? 😭

 

[Clown79]

O phosphate and low nutrients in general is the main cause of dino's.

 

Nutrients are essential to coral health and growth. Chemipure is carbon with added media that normally is a phos reducer.

It still needs replacing monthly but if you have 0 phosphates, then it's not recommended to use phos reducers.

 

A simple good carbon is recommended.

 

 

Alk stability is about daily/weekly fluctuations. Have you tested alk every day from waterchange to waterchange to see if there is daily drops? With a lot of stony corals, daily alk consumption is pretty common.

[mitten_reef]

Looks like a case of STN. Very hard to say if they could recover by simply leaving them alone, it all depends on what caused it and what corrective actions were taken.   

 

If I were you, since you didn't know how it came about, I'd cut them now to prevent the tissue loss to creep on further.  I'd cut really close to where the loss stops, stick that deep into superglue, or cut 1/8" or 1/4" further into the good portion of the branch.  

 

PS, were you sold that purple blue frag as an Oregon Tort?  I hope not, because it does not look like any tort I've seen before, i.e. it's not likely a Tort species.  A.Tortuosa has a very distinct corallites growth patterns.  It's still a very nice coloration acro nonetheless, I'd buy it, just not at OT price.

[lizzyann]

I think I'm going to go ahead and cut them today or tomorrow. Today I finally see a couple very small areas on both where there is definitely no flesh and algae growing, so it seems like those two are continuing to look worse. The other acros seem to all look a little better though, just not as colorful as before.

 

9 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

PS, were you sold that purple blue frag as an Oregon Tort?  I hope not, because it does not look like any tort I've seen before, i.e. it's not likely a Tort species.  A.Tortuosa has a very distinct corallites growth patterns.  It's still a very nice coloration acro nonetheless, I'd buy it, just not at OT price.

I was! It did look very different when I got it though:

 

And the supposed mother colony it came from:

 

What do you think? I've actually been wondering for a while what can affect the shape of corallites, as both of these frags that are having the most issues have developed really long, pointy corallites. Is that what you're referring to? I hadn't been able to find any info about what causes that in my limited searches. 

 

14 hours ago, Clown79 said:

Nutrients are essential to coral health and growth. Chemipure is carbon with added media that normally is a phos reducer.

It still needs replacing monthly but if you have 0 phosphates, then it's not recommended to use phos reducers.

Yea the chemipure was really useful before I transferred tanks and had much higher nutrient values. I just continued to use it because I didn't really want to change what wasn't broke (I definitely took it out while I was dealing with dinos though) but maybe now things are broke and I should change it up. I definitely realize my nutrients should be higher, but they've been like this since I transferred everything into this tank in March and none of the corals seemed to mind, except possibly these acros all of a sudden. That plus all the algae growth I already have as well as the other "nuisance" critters that usually come with higher nutrients, make me a little unsure of what is even going on in my tank. I feed what I thiiiink is a medium to heavy amount and am probably on the lower end of recommended rock to cycle nutrients, so I would think I wouldn't be having this problem. Do you have any experience removing chemipure/purigen from tanks? I'm just scared I'm going to create a crash in the other direction, but certainly might be worth trying if I can keep a really close eye on things and be testing constantly.

 

15 hours ago, Clown79 said:

Alk stability is about daily/weekly fluctuations. Have you tested alk every day from waterchange to waterchange to see if there is daily drops? With a lot of stony corals, daily alk consumption is pretty common.

I haven't tested every day since I got my doser set up, which I would think should be preventing daily changes, but I should definitely do another round of daily testing since it's been a while. I did change the water the day before the acros started looking really bad, so I'm wondering if there might have been a higher-than-usual alk swing with that. I've started researching other salts that are closer to the parameters I'm going for. I'm currently using IO Reef Crystals.

[mitten_reef]

25 minutes ago, lizzyann said:

I think I'm going to go ahead and cut them today or tomorrow. Today I finally see a couple very small areas on both where there is definitely no flesh and algae growing, so it seems like those two are continuing to look worse. The other acros seem to all look a little better though, just not as colorful as before.

 

I was! It did look very different when I got it though:

 

And the supposed mother colony it came from:

 

What do you think? I've actually been wondering for a while what can affect the shape of corallites, as both of these frags that are having the most issues have developed really long, pointy corallites. Is that what you're referring to? I hadn't been able to find any info about what causes that in my limited searches. 

Yup the pointy-ness is what I was referring to. looking back at some earlier photos on your journal, the frag did look more like typical tort shape up until recent new growth. I don’t know why the coralite would turn pointy shape. Let us know on your journal what you find. 

The mother colony looks really nice too btw. Hope you make friend with them for future frags 😬. 

[Clown79]

1 hour ago, lizzyann said:

I think I'm going to go ahead and cut them today or tomorrow. Today I finally see a couple very small areas on both where there is definitely no flesh and algae growing, so it seems like those two are continuing to look worse. The other acros seem to all look a little better though, just not as colorful as before.

 

I was! It did look very different when I got it though:

 

And the supposed mother colony it came from:

 

What do you think? I've actually been wondering for a while what can affect the shape of corallites, as both of these frags that are having the most issues have developed really long, pointy corallites. Is that what you're referring to? I hadn't been able to find any info about what causes that in my limited searches. 

 

Yea the chemipure was really useful before I transferred tanks and had much higher nutrient values. I just continued to use it because I didn't really want to change what wasn't broke (I definitely took it out while I was dealing with dinos though) but maybe now things are broke and I should change it up. I definitely realize my nutrients should be higher, but they've been like this since I transferred everything into this tank in March and none of the corals seemed to mind, except possibly these acros all of a sudden. That plus all the algae growth I already have as well as the other "nuisance" critters that usually come with higher nutrients, make me a little unsure of what is even going on in my tank. I feed what I thiiiink is a medium to heavy amount and am probably on the lower end of recommended rock to cycle nutrients, so I would think I wouldn't be having this problem. Do you have any experience removing chemipure/purigen from tanks? I'm just scared I'm going to create a crash in the other direction, but certainly might be worth trying if I can keep a really close eye on things and be testing constantly.

 

I haven't tested every day since I got my doser set up, which I would think should be preventing daily changes, but I should definitely do another round of daily testing since it's been a while. I did change the water the day before the acros started looking really bad, so I'm wondering if there might have been a higher-than-usual alk swing with that. I've started researching other salts that are closer to the parameters I'm going for. I'm currently using IO Reef Crystals.

A spike in Alk from a water change could cause an issue, especially acro because so many claim it to be a coral that doesn't handle change well.

 

 

You have high nitrates and 0 phos? that can be an issue. There is a balance between the two.

 

 

I have removed media before. I only use phos reducers in small quantities as needed.

 

I use purigen but reduced the amount I use now.

 

I always use carbon in my tanks, I don't use large bags of it

I prefer filling my own media bags so I can control the amount I need to use for my tanks needs and change certain media more often.

 

Chemipure is carbon, switching over to another carbon should be fine, its not a biological media.

Regular Carbon should be changed every 3 - 4 weeks. Some do it every 2 weeks.

 

Reducing the amount you use is a safe way to make changes rather than completely changing over to different products.

 

 

What target numbers are you trying to achieve with your salt?