birds nest all of a suddent starting to recede

jhuntington12

New member
I have what looked to be a rather healthy growing birdsnest frag that was growing quite a bit since I first got it.

Just a couple of days ago it has lost almost all its polyps and I noticed some bleaching white spots.

Nothing per lighting, flow, chemicals, etc has changed in the tank.

sg: 1.025
amm: 0
nitrite: 0
phos: 0
nitrate: >1
ca: 400
mg: 1250
alk: 7.5-8

Now one thing I did notice is that I have a rather large mushroom leather that decided to shrink down and seems to be peeling off its waxy layer. it has done this before and the birds nest never looked this bad, but could this be the cause of the problem? I hear that leathers can be rather bad to sps, however this isn't touching at all. they are in the vicinity but never come within 6-8 inches of each other.

Poor birds nest looks like this now:

 
I experienced this with my Birdsnest due to a sudden drop in p04 using gfo. Try moving it to a spot that has more flow, maybe a dip . IME, once tissue recession started fragging was the only option to save the coral, it's a tough call though... when to frag. Sucks to frag a nice specimen like that; however, I now have 6 Birdsnest pieces that have been healthy for a couple of months and growing like weeds.

Good luck.
 
I experienced this with my Birdsnest due to a sudden drop in p04 using gfo. Try moving it to a spot that has more flow, maybe a dip . IME, once tissue recession started fragging was the only option to save the coral, it's a tough call though... when to frag. Sucks to frag a nice specimen like that; however, I now have 6 Birdsnest pieces that have been healthy for a couple of months and growing like weeds.

Good luck.

and I always thought to have as little phos as possible. Maybe I should remove by chemi-pure elite bags from the sump and keep a little phos?
 
it is normally i good thing to keep phosphates low. but it is possible to remove it too rapidly like dsovetsy mentioned, but considering you didnt make any changes i doubt that is the case.

running carbon should eliminate any toxins the leather might give off. i personally find using less carbon and changing out every few weeks to work best.

any alk swings?
do you feed?

you could try to pull the chemipure for few weeks and see what happens.
 
I experienced this with my Birdsnest due to a sudden drop in p04 using gfo. Try moving it to a spot that has more flow, maybe a dip . IME, once tissue recession started fragging was the only option to save the coral, it's a tough call though... when to frag. Sucks to frag a nice specimen like that; however, I now have 6 Birdsnest pieces that have been healthy for a couple of months and growing like weeds.

Good luck.

Moved it to high flow like you said....also pulled out 2 of the chemipure's and just left one in there.

Did a few water changes, but other than that......check out what's going on! Looks like its coming around!!! Thanks for all the tips!

 
Back
Top