Am I in trouble??

[Greywaczera]

Over the past 2.5 weeks my nicely colored Acro has been loosing his color as you can see in the picture. All my other corals are doing fantastic! They are growing like crazy, great color, great PE except for this guy. My param's are as such:

Salinity - 1.023
Temp - 77
KH - 8.2
Ammo - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 10 PPM - a little high, i know
Phosphate - 0
Calc - 440

I know the water is good, can be better, but good. My fiance and i were looking at the tank and saw a pink colored stripe on the acro. Looking closer its was a pink worm, with many little legs. The legs were almost white or tan in color. I grabed the tweezers and was able to remove him from the tank. He was about 5-6 inches long. I did not take a pic of the worm (wish i had). Is it possible for that worm to eat the acro or cause him enough stress to react this way?

I quarintine all my coral, and use Lugos as a dip just incase. I'm obviously a little worried as I found an unwanted critter in the tank. What should i do going forward, should i freak out? and what do you think it was? I know there is no picture of it but any opinions/ideas would be great. Could it make the coral react the way it did?

 

[Collinrb]

Your nitrate's aren't high at all. In fact, if you brought them to 0, your alk could possibly be a problem. There are way better people to help you with this but I know they will ask...

What's your mag?

 

[Greywaczera]

My mag is 1250.

Thanks Collinrb. Everything else in my tank is doing great except for the 1 Lobo Brain issue i ran into but that was my fault as I shocked the brain when i first got him with too much light.

I have had this acro from the beginning. He was a smaller colony about 2 inches and have been watching him grow. He was doing great. Then all of a sudden this. and after 2 weeks of seeing him slowly loose color we found the worm on him. Ughhhhh

 

[Bett]

It's possible you had a coral eating bristleworm, but I think they're somewhat rare in aquariums and they will strip all the tissue off of the tips of an SPS colony. It was probably a regular bristleworm eating dying tissue or just sitting on the coral for other reasons.

 

[gar732]

Have your parameters fluctuated at all lately? I find stability especially with alk is the most important thing when it comes to sps.

I'm with bett as far as the bristle worm goes, probably not your culprit. If you could try and get a better pic of the coral that might help.

 

[Greywaczera]

It could have been. If this is the case, why did it just die out of no where. I mean parameters are good, my nitrate is actually fine at 10ppm. Nothing changed in my tank except finding the worm on it. IT does make sense for him to come out and start eating it. Another thing i find strange is that he was on it, doing his thing when the lights were on the highest. In middle of the day. I thought they only come out at night!

 

[ca1ore]

Bristle worms are generally good things to have in the aquarium. Doubt it was responsible for killing the acro - presumably it's been there the whole time you have had the coral. Acros do die, sometimes for no apparent reason. About the only thing that you might want to do is up your salinity level - though find a way to check level with a refractometer to be sure. My floater says 1.023 when actual level is 1.025.

 

[Chriskid]

my observation would be

1 possibly not stable alk, or ph swings
2 lighting,and or flow
3 AEFW,or red bugs

4 possible additive overdose? iron,potass, iodide.....ext

is it wild, or maricultured? what is your lighting? how long have you had it?