Jump to content
SaltCritters.com

reasons to dye. Help and ideas needed


kotlec

Recommended Posts

800.jpg.6b15af1b8f7c3304e71696c5e4338c28.jpg

Over a year I am battling this situation with no luck.  Its mostly euphyllias that are affected. Especially hammers.

Overall healthy and happy looking coral starts to dye of suddenly and is gone in few days.  Head after head. Never all heads dye at once.

As you can see in picture  one head is gone and another in process. Sometimes it stops dyeing for a week or month. Usually few corals dyes simultaneously while others

stay healthy and nice looking.

I have mixed reef tank with few acros that are doing well. 

I manage to keep parameters in range and test them religiously.

What should I be looking for ?  Is there specific  parameter or something that euphylias are sensitive to ?

I do ICP every few month to be sure nothing slips out of sight too.

I am simply out of ideas.   Please share what comes to mind.

Temp 25

KH 8

Ca 420

MG 1380

Nitrates  3-4

Phosphates  0,01-0,03

Link to comment

Stability of salinity and alkalinity. The more alk fluctuates between waterchanges, the more issues arise.

 

Nutrients..having low to no phos and nitrates is an issue.

 

Too much flow

  • Like 2
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment

Salinity and kh are stable . I dont do any big water changes at all.

Higher phos was tried with even worse result.

 

Flow yes can be a problem theoretically. Need to study all coral placement once more. 

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...
RoyalGramma001

Certain corals just don't do well in certain tanks for no reason. Some people have no problems with euphyllia but some people just can't keep them it's no ones fault sometimes.

Link to comment

Unfortunately this sounds like it is so.

On the other hand isnt that "no reason"  only means - unknown reason.  May be one day somebody will come with right idea.

BTW  pictured  coral from first post is loosing next head as I write.

Link to comment
thecoralbeauty

I've always had good luck with hammers in my tanks, knock on wood, but I would look at flow and Mg stability. One of mine got grumpy and started peeling off one of its heads recently but since I've stabilized and started dosing Mg it cut it out. I would suspect maybe in your case, flow might be a suspect and thus the next logical variable to evaluate? Though, this is really strange! Even with the wrong flow/light they are generally pretty tolerant. I'm sorry you're dealing with this. Very mysterious. 

Link to comment
thecoralbeauty
7 minutes ago, kotlec said:

Is it possible, that other corals can irritate hammers to death ?  Like softies ?  Not being in close proximity though.

Just thinking loud

presumably, though I personally haven't had this happen. I have always had softies with mine, with or without carbon, and no issue.

 

I looked at your params posted earlier... you have quite a clean tank! I wonder if maybe they would appreciate higher nutrients (nitrates and phosphates?) even so, not enough nutrients i think might lead to a slower decline rather than just losing heads like that. And if that were true, softies would probably also be annoyed. 

Link to comment

Mushrooms strangely  looks super happy.  Sinularia Dura does not look happy at all though. 

I have a lot of big fish  and they poooooo. But scrubber copes with it perfectly.

 

I had tried higher nutrients . Phosphates were up to 0,09. That made hammers to die even more.

Link to comment

 

On 1/19/2021 at 9:17 AM, kotlec said:

Temp 25

Consider keeping it something like 26-27ºC.

 

On 1/20/2021 at 3:29 AM, kotlec said:

Higher phos was tried

When?  How?  

 

Phosphates are necessary but are not a magic bullet, unfortunately, so corals that were already damaged from the poor water conditions may have been too far gone to be helped.  

 

Even corals that make it sometimes never look the same afterward – it's apparently a very traumatic thing to go through.

 

On 2/4/2021 at 9:58 AM, kotlec said:

But scrubber copes with it perfectly.

It sounds like you are aiming for "perfectly clean water" or something like that.  

 

From what I know about your situation so far, the scrubber is the most likely root cause of the issue.  

 

Remove it and see if your nutrient levels rebound to normal levels.  Be thankful if they do, you don't have to dose to bring things up then.

 

Unfortunately the damage is already done to the corals and tank can take months for them to recover from....sometimes they never fully return to looking the same.

 

Keep reading....pictures and an article are coming up.

 

On 2/4/2021 at 9:58 AM, kotlec said:

I had tried higher nutrients . Phosphates were up to 0,09. That made hammers to die even more.

Most likely delayed effects from prior starvation, as mentioned above.

 

Keep reading....pictures and an article are coming up.

 

On 1/19/2021 at 9:17 AM, kotlec said:

Nitrates  3-4

Phosphates  0,01-0,03

It sounds like you were touching on the solution by somehow increasing phosphate levels.  It doesn't sound like maybe you were 100% confident about your dosing for some reason though.

 

Here's the article with pictures I was mentioning.  👍

 

Phosphate deficiency promotes coral bleaching and is reflected by the ultrastructure of symbiotic dinoflagellates

 

Boring title, but the pics of Euphillia growing under the all permutations of high and low of both nitrates and phosphates really save the article.  (Click the link! 😉)

 

My summary of the article:  Your coral AND it's dino's are damaged.  

 

Bleaching and death are likely, if not guaranteed, as long as conditions continue as they have been.....zero levels punctuated by temporary (maybe even random) nutrient spikes.

 

If nutrient levels get corrected (≥0.10 ppm PO4 and ≥5-10 ppm NO3) and stabilized in that range, then damage to your corals will stop.  

 

But as before, the damage that's been done is done...those corals will have to repair again, if possible.  

 

As in the past, some may be too far gone already.

 

 

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

mcarroll

Thank you very much. I will read article . 

I cant remove scrubber as it is only nutrient control device and I have a lot of big fish as I have mentioned.  But I can play with photo period or even reduce scrubber size. Would it work ?

 Also I would like to point your attention to fact that dyeing coral  does not look starved or so. Actually they look very healthy and nice. Even when one part separates from skeleton another part still looks healthy.  Do these symptoms still align with your guess ?

Link to comment

I would just scale back the scrubber (by whatever means you have) until there are still plenty of dissolved nutrients left in the system every time you test.  If you scale it back a little and your test numbers are still really low as I the last round of results posted, then scale it back a some more.  Repeat until you have a better balance that favors the tank rather than the filter section.

 

6 hours ago, kotlec said:

Do these symptoms still align with your guess ?

Barring introduction of new evidence, yes they do.  👍

 

Maybe post a full tank picture?  Any chance you have progress shots of one of the heads before and after it faded out?

Link to comment

My scrubber has 3 separate screens. I can remove one or even two and still have filtration. Also they are on timer so I can adjust time light is on.

 

Morning shot :

16.jpg

Just  remembered.  Before dyeing almost all looked like they open their mouth. Picture is bad quality but still can see that mouth open a bit.

80.jpg

Link to comment
9 hours ago, kotlec said:

16.jpg

Gorgeous!!

 

But look at all that rock that is trying to grow bacteria and multitudes of other microbes!!  That's where the piles and piles of N+P are going....in addition to growing all those corals.

 

Personally I would try it with no light and no screens for a while....get to that state in what ever order makes you comfortable.  IMO the rest of the system is still starved for nutrients and would immediately pick up 120% of the left overs when the algae screens are gone.  Reactivate the system if/when the nutrient levels actually outpace tank maturation+coral growth.  👍

 

Also, how are you doing flow among all that rock and coral?  N+P require flow to penetrate a coral's boundary layering order to be of use.....inadequate flow to a coral will pinch off the flow of dissolved nutrients independently of dissolved levels.  This usually also compromises the flow of detritus/food to the coral.   

Link to comment

OK.  I thing I will remove one screen after another and watch how parameters react.  May be single screen can be left in place ?

Regarding flow. I have two big pumps in one end of tank one on each side and  gyre pump in another end that is working in random wave mode. All torch corals are swaying their hair  nicely. Stream from return pump is nicely agitating surface. No worries here.

 I made video : 

 

Link to comment
9 hours ago, kotlec said:

All torch corals are swaying their hair  nicely.

The one on the right-hand side of the movie frame seems to be getting whipped around quite a bit.  

 

Were the heads that have died in whipping-strong flow like that, or were they in comparatively weaker flow? 

Link to comment

 Are you saying that being in more calm conditions can be harmful  ?

  My head goes round.

 

I have removed one screen already and dosed some phosphates.  All corals look a little happier except one acropora who retracted polyps today on half of branches.  

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recommended Discussions

×
×
  • Create New...