Colt coral care. not having luck

[Guy]

I purchased a colt coral about 2 months back and it was doing well. Each week it seemed to grow a bit more and was looking very healthy. Almost overnight it shrank and looked terrible. The tank is lit by a 175 watt 10K MH. This coral was at the bottom of the tank. I first thought this was the typical cycle of some soft corals when they shrivel a bit, shed some mucous, and than rebound.

 

Well 2 weeks have gone by and it have not recovered in size and it seems to have split into many smaller colonies, all of which have detached from the rock. I moved some of these frags or pieces into my 10 gallon nano lit by 2x36 PC’s. to see if they would recover, but there seems to be no change. So, I now have about 5 smaller pieces that combined are nowhere near the mass of the original colony.

 

I need to mention that this is not the first time I have lost a colt coral. I keep reading how simple these corals are to keep and I seem to have issues with these corals that I can’t trace back to anything specific.

 

Here are the tank parameters:

 

29 gallon

Lighting 175 watt MH

SG 1.024

Temp78-79

Calc 425-450

DKH 10-11

Bi weekly water changes

 

Any suggestions are appreciated

Guy

[tinyreef]

usually they are hardy. i've got a couple right now doing great but one not so good. it's alwasy been the runt of the pack tho.

 

the splitting sounds like a stress spawn to me. this happened on a colt of mine earlier this year when i fragged it too close to the main column (imo). also it was very new to my system but i was kinda of forced to frag it (plus i was too cocky X) ). did it suffer any injury or did you use anything different right before the deterioration?

 

do you dose iodine? i've been using more lugol's lately and getting a much better expansion and growth rate. i had always used kent's iodine and tech I.

 

do you have actinic supplementation? my colts in my hospital haven't been doing as well (10000K mh only) vs. my usual actinic/daylight balance in my other tanks. i'm looking to switch to 20000K next week to see if there's any immediate improvements.

[Guy]

Tinyreef,

No actnics on this set up, just the straight 10k. I do supplement with seachem iodide didn't see any difference with or without. At the time of the "disaster' I hadn't added anything different or even perfromed a water change right around that time. But as I mentioned, I have lost one or two others in another tank over a 12 month period. These were under PC bulbs and my other corals are doing fine in that tank.

 

One thing I did not mention was that there are a few SPS corals in the 29 gallon as well that are doing fine. Could they be poisoning the colt? I am reaching but I don't want to purchase another colt until I know what I am doing wrong.

 

Another thing that might help is that I do not have a calcium reactor. I keep calc and DKH maintained with seachem chemicals. specifically, reef builder, reef complete and reef calcium

anyone have thoughts on the reaction of colts and these chemical additions?

 

Thanks

Guy