Is My Candy Cane Coral Dead?

[King Detritus]

My tank has slowly become infested with hair algae (it is only six months old). I'm battling it and it has covered my candy cane coral. Is this because it is dead and is only helping to feed the outbreak? If not, any ideas on how to save it besides possibly peroxide dipping? I did Brightwell's Razor and it has helped mitigate it while I do manual removal and scrubbing with weekly water changes.

[Murphs_Reef]

It might be... but I have learned with LPS to NEVER EVER EVER put it in the bin. You would be surprised what I've had come back to life.. it's a thing... And if not you have a sweet structure for zoas, gsp etc to grow over... 

 

By the way.. looks dead.... But I've seen stuff recover from there 

[King Detritus]

 Can leave it in and see what happens. Just afraid it is the source. I'm slowly building up my snail population and hoping to catch up. Currently have two turbo and three cerith. Nit counting the two Nass since they don't eat it. Also considering a lawn mower blenny or diamond goby at some point.

[mcarroll]

15 hours ago, King Detritus said:

Currently have two turbo and three cerith.

What size tank?

 

How big are the Turbo's?  

 

If you don't already know, CUC more or less won't eat long (mature) algae.  You'll have to groom it all down to their level first, which sounds like you're in the process of doing.  You definitely need enough CUC to keep it all mowed as you clean it though.  👍

[King Detritus]

It's a 16 gallon. One turbo is a smedium and the other is medium. I keep scrubbing the algae on water change days. That's okay for now as I want to slowly increase my cuc staff as to not upset the tank. 

[King Detritus]

Update on Hair Algae and Sick Candies: I continued dosing Razor according to the directions and stopped once the recommended schedule was achieved. During this time, I continued doing some manual removal (didn't pull from corals as I didn't want agitate them) while running carbon and GFO. I went on vacation in early July and returned to a very clean tank. I believe I mitigated the tank to a point where the newly bolstered clean up crew were able to do their job. I've been back for a few weeks and the hair algae has not returned. Unfortunately, I do believe the sick candies are dead as they look even worse, but have left them in there for now. I'm not sure went wrong with these guys but they were one of the first corals in the tank so maybe that had something to do with it (tank is 7 months old and candies were brought in with ricordea and about 1.5 months old). 

[mcarroll]

If you are testing your water, can you say what your levels have been for ca, mg, alk, no3 and po4?  

 

Numbers from both before and after your cleaning might be interesting if you have them.  👍

[King Detritus]

@mcarroll I started test to alk regularly during the issue. The lowest low got was 7.7 and I have brought it back up to 8.5 since then (not all at once) which my salt baseline. Beforehand, I had religiously done about 10% water changes (weekly) during that time. It took a few larger water changes at about 25% each to get it back up (not all once but over a few weeks). I'm thinking of either sticking with 25% or trying 15/20% next. I'm guessing that'll meet current needs. It's my understanding that cal and mag aren't necessary to monitor on a nano soft/lps tank with decent warer changes. I started testing to monitor if I never need to dose. During this time, all other corals have been happy and growing - including other candies. Any constructive feedback is and always is welcome.