Corals Closed After Adding Chaetos aglae

[jacobdeano888]

Hi guys, 

 

Could use some advice.

 

I have had my tank over 1 year. I have 2 Clown fish and a bubble coral and Torch coral.

I decided to add a hang on breeding box to have some chaetos to experiement with fighting off tank algae.

About 2 weeks after adding the Chaetos my corals closed and havn't seemed to open.

 

Could the Algae of taken to much nutrients? 

I rearranged some live rock about 3 weeks back so could they be just adjusting?

I ask as i am worried the corals will start to die.

I beielive the flow is about the same as it was in their old posistions.

Im using small air pump to pump water from tank to breeding box 

 

My water conditions are good. 

 

Amonia is 0

nitrite 0

nitrate is around 2.0

PH is at 8.0

[mcarroll]

59 minutes ago, jacobdeano888 said:

I decided to add a hang on breeding box to have some chaetos to experiement with fighting off tank algae.

And old myth, but still a popular one...macro algae doesn't fight micro algae, it fights corals if anything.

 

1 hour ago, jacobdeano888 said:

Could the Algae of taken to much nutrients? 

Very likely, especially since it doesn't look like you're testing for everything and what you tested for wasn't particularly "high".

 

I would suggest removing the cheato and getting your phosphates tested.  It's almost 100% sure that is what's wrong with your corals.  (Micro algae might actually thrive in this condition, for comparison.)

 

Also, keeping stony corals means you should be testing your alkalinity.....as sooner or later calcium and magnesium too.  Alk will go down as corals grow new skeleton and this can also cause the problems you're seeing.

[Clown79]

More than likely the chaeto is using up any available nutrients.

 

Nitrate at 2ppm is low.

 

Have you tested phos? 

[A.m.P]

You have dinoflagellates and they're irritating or killing your coral, most likely your test kits are giving you false positives and you're actually quite close to 0 on both nutrient levels.

[jacobdeano888]

Thanks for the Advice everyone,

 

I have ordered a Phos test kit so tomarrow i will test asap.

I tested calcium and although i cant remember the reading it was within the general recommended margin.

I have removed the breeding box and the chaetos.

I should also note i did a massive tank clean to remove algae just before this event accured and water change with store salt water. I tested it and it was fine.

Reason i am confused about the dinoflagellates problem is my tank has much less algae at the moment then it had previous to cleaning it. Could cleaning my tank of caused the algae to be disturbed and irritate the corals?

I read online a blackout tank could help for a couple of days.

 

I will test the phos and see what i find from there.

 

Thanks for the advice guys, this is the first time i have had my corals having issues so i appreciate it.

[mcarroll]

Let us know when you get your alkalinity test results...that's the other major one aside from phosphates.

 

Take it easy on the water changes until you've assessed your nutrient levels....if they are already zero/near-zero then waterchanges are only going to make that worse.

 

Do you have reagents to dose phosphates and alkalinity if needed?

[jacobdeano888]

I will post results tomarrow once i receive my kits. 

 

I do not have the reagents to dose unfortunately. Are they any you would recommend?

 

Also do you think this torch coral head is dead? I can see a few tentacles still inside but the outer ring of it is flaky if that makes sense.

[Clown79]

If you have dino's, the last thing you wanna do is waterchanges or blackouts.

 

Blackouts do nothing for dino's.

 

So besides finding out phos and alk levels, you want to determine what algae you have.

[W1ll]

4 hours ago, jacobdeano888 said:

I will post results tomarrow once i receive my kits. 

 

I do not have the reagents to dose unfortunately. Are they any you would recommend?

 

Also do you think this torch coral head is dead? I can see a few tentacles still inside but the outer ring of it is flaky if that makes sense.

I had a similar nutrient issue earlier this year, If you have access to Brightwells NeoPhos, that is the best additive for phosphate. Unfortunately Brightwells products are unavailable in my country, so I used Seachem Flourish Phosphate which works well too. Regarding that torch coral head, it is still alive, but most likely will not make it unless you can fix the issue quickly. As long as you can see the fluorescent tissue, it is still alive. I have had a hammer coral recover from about that about of remaining tissue.  

[DevilDuck]

Get some lugols solution or even plain drug store iodine and make a dip for those dying corals. There’s a 50/50 chance that repeated dips may save them.

[mcarroll]

I would play it safe with the corals that aren't clearly declining from day to day....just correct any systemic issues (ie. if you find phosphates to be zero, etc.) and see how they all react.

 

Putting a highly stressed coral through the handling involved with a dipping procedure might put it over the tipping point of what it can withstand...even if the dip itself isn't stressful.  

 

For corals that aren't responding to an improved environment, other measures like a dipping procedure would need to be considered.  

 

It's worth pointing out that it's possible that whatever happened has already had lethal effects on one or more corals, all you can do is watch the damage play out.

 

What to do depends a lot on your judgement because you're actually there with the corals.

 

One of the only things I can tell you for sure is that you should not give any of these corals up for dead until there's algae or something else overgrowing the skeleton.

 

Almost ALL of us have had some kinda of coral comeback story where something we thought was dead made a surprise comeback.  So don't make the mistake of throwing something out just because it doesn't look right.  Corals are some really tough organisms – if conditions are corrected, they really like to survive.

[A.m.P]

4 hours ago, mcarroll said:

It's worth pointing out that it's possible that whatever happened has already had lethal effects on one or more corals, all you can do is watch the damage play out.

I'm just going to highlight this, corals don't decline on the timelines we notice, by the time you see something 9-times out of ten you're watching last-week's news play-out.

[mcarroll]

I haven't logged anything or paid attention that closely but my intuition is that there's something like a monthly (maybe lunar) cycle to these things.  Could be coincidence.