Corals dying slowly. Please help!

DerekG4

DerekG4

New member
My corals have been dying for some unknown reason and so far it's p*ssing me off :headwalls:

So far, only the LPS are getting affected and maybe one red mushroom (Randomly started to close up and has some streaks of transparency.

The symptoms include: Polyps closing (Not completely, unless it's on the side of the coral that's dying) loss of color, then eventually death.

From what I'm seeing, it's not because of some sort of hitchhiker, not from a disease (No visual problem, no slimy substance, no abnormal growths), and MOST LIKELY not from params, or at least not from something I can measure with my kit.

I've had a mini acan colony die on me as it was growing somewhat well, a small red and green blastomussa frag that's been growing very fast and is currently on it's last 2 heads, an acanthophyllia that is starting to lose color (Luckily it was free for me) a chalice that also started to die just yesterday, and a wall hammer that I just took to my lfs to cut it for me, hoping it'll live.

Only suspect I can think on the top of my head was from chemicals from the corals themselves (I've had my wall hammer close to a small branching hammer thinking they'd be perfectly fine, then soon after, both of their tentacles started to get longer and eventually the branching hammer died. That was a while ago but it's the only thing I can think of at the top of my head)

Temps: 79.6-82.0 (Been like that for about a couple months now) Alkalinity: at 8.5. Salinity: 1.027. Calcium: I don't remember, but I know it was fine, almost on the border of being too high. pH: I don't know either, just ordered a meter for it, should be here tomorrow. My tank is 150 gallons and is about 6 months old.

I never had a problem like this at all. (I've had a 30 gallon tank for about a a year before I got the 150) only problems I've had was a couple of aiptasias, a thick hair algae bloom, a bit of red algae here and there, and ich which luckily was fixed after about a month of feeding caviar.
 
You say that only LPS are affected, do you have any SPS that are doing well? Also do you have any leathers that are doing badly?

If both of these are yes then your water is probably too clean! You need some nitrates and phosphates for LPS and leathers to do well. Also SPS will do fine with low levels of each as they too need the nutrients to thrive. I've seen this happen quite often
 
Well yes, my SPS (few monti caps, a couple Hollywood stunners, and an acropora) are doing pretty well, but my leathers are doing well too, I have 2 green finger leathers, a tiny finger, and another that's been growing very fast, a colt coral, that isn't doing well but not too bad either, and a toadstool that has barely grown but opens occasionally. I don't know if it could be because of the water being too clean since a lot of hair algae is growing. If it is too clean, how could I fix it?
 
Stop using your skimmer or over feed your fish a bit. I have seen many tanks be too clean to support LPS. As our tanks mature they become more efficient at getting rid of nitrates and phosphates. So if you are doing anything to export them stop doing it.
 
yeah I have had this problem the last two months in my tank as well just the LPS. makes me want to cry.
 
Take all dying corals and put them another tank. If you another tank is not available then put them in the sump or refugium with enough lightning. I did this and and corals recover.
 
vietnamfan that makes no sense as the sump or refugium is the same water. But welcome to Reef Central :thumbsup:

Derek, that very well may be however, you have classic symptoms of too clean of water for your LPS and some of your leathers. It's a fine line to be able to keep all three in the same tank due to different water requirements between SPS and the others.
 
Every single coral was doing very great except just recently when I've had this problem, I'll try dirtying the water up a bit. Hopefully not to much algae will grow. Should I add some Fuel (or anything similar) to see if it helps?

Before I do this, is there anything else that could possibly be doing this? Just wanna make sure before I potentially ruin my dad's tank.
 
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No, I wouldn't add anything. Just over feed a bit and kill the skimmer for a week and then test your parameters. The best thing you have to tell you something is wrong or right with your corals is them.
 
I just lost all of my lps for no known reason along with a few of the guys on my local forum as well. I tested and tripple tested my water, all my lps were growing like crazy for 2 years then one day one of my colonies stared to look ticked off, then got sick and heads started dying. It went from colony to colony until i was left with 1 head of branching hammer and 2 heads of frogspawn. In total i lost 6 mini colonies, probably a total of 60 heads. All my zoas and my select few sps are still thriving but my lps parished. Its a complete mystery to me. I did read that alot of people have issues with lps this time of year. I really hope your outcome is better than mine
 
I'm glad to see this thread. Ditto on LPS losses for me and other local reefers. I've also talked to LFSs seeing the same LPS slow deaths.
 
I've never heard or read anything about a seasonal coral die off. If you think such a thing is real, perhaps it's due to fall pollen, mould spores or the fact that less fresh air is available in the average home? Just a stab in the dark....

My first instincts if I was faced with the same situation would be to:
-Do significant water changes
-Run GAC
-Make sure fhe light intensity isn't too high
-Make sure the water isn't being stripped clean. Feed if possible.
-Rule out parasites, stinging, fish nipping, improper flow, out of range parameters etc.
- Check the integrity of your RODI water

Also...check your salinity with a calibrated refractomefer. 1.027 could easily be 1.030 in reality if your using an uncalibrated instrument or a hydrometer. This is a biggie. Sometimes it's the simple things that gets overlooked.

Good luck.
 
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I've overfed the fish a bit and I spot fed a lot for the corals during the week. I'm not seeing any difference. If the algae is taking the nutrients, I'm definitely gonna yank most of them out to see if there's a difference. I really hope the rest doesn't die, so far, $60 just died lol.

One other thing I noticed is that some of my zoas polyps have shrunken a bit. I doubt it's from the same problem though.
 
Do you run GAC? Sounds like you have quite a few softies, so mabe there's a little chemical warfare going on. Before you go dirtying up your water, test for nitrates and phosphates.
 
It's more than likely your water quality......if you have a reactor to run ecobak pellets...use it, but if you are running a phosphate reactor.....turn it off. The ecobak and the phosphate will cancel each other out. The ecobak will in time take care of any nutrient issue. You need a little phosphate for the ecobak pellets to do their part due to the pellets require some bacteria and the phosphate removal will hinder this process. I am dealing with this issue right now and it seems to be working.
 
Sorry about not replying in a while, almost forgot I had this thread.

What's GAC? Yes I do have a lot of softies (Lots of zoas, mushrooms, xenias, and GSP) I was thinking it may have been chemical warfare but I wasn't sure. Tested it the other day, no nitrates and low phosphates.

I don't have ecobak pellets or a phosphate reactor, but those pellets do sound interesting. I'll go check them out at my LFS.

Good news is there's no other LPS (at the moment) that's been affected, the last LPS that had it was one of my blastomussas which'll die off an day now as it's tissue is already just swaying in the current.
Bad news is a colt coral of mine has been shrinking lately (Been shrinking for about 2 months now but now its really small. Used to be about 4 inches tall and now it's about an inch and a half) and losing a bit of tissue by the base where it's attached, there's also a few zoas of mine that have their polyps smaller than normal. Not sure if this is from the same problem as the LPS.
 
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I haven't tested the alk in a while, I gotta test it later

My dad adds alk once a week (The bottle we have has a lot of alk, it's pretty potent.) and we change the water (20g-35g) about every month or 2. Back then for the first 4 months we only did 1 water change and never again did we do it. Matter of fact, the problem started when changed the water more regularly. The owner from another LFS told us either we could change the water weekly (5g) biweekly (10g) or monthly (20g-35g) so we did it biweekly and after that we just started doing it every month.
 
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