Degenerating Corals???

[smtank]

I see what appears to be green star polyps (GSP)

Hydnophora: The green stoney corals that is dying. I agree too close to the other corals. Sweeper tentacles at night do the most damage. The bubble, goniopora, and hydnophora all have them and they kill other corals.

Goniopora: The round one that with what looks like long flowery tentacles.

Bubble corals and mushrooms.

Take everything your LFS advise with a huge grain of salt. You will get better guidance and more accurate information here by far. You will save a huge amount of money, frustration and livestock if you research purchases first.

 

[JohnnySquids]

I see what appears to be green star polyps (GSP)

Hydnophora: The green stoney corals that is dying. I agree too close to the other corals. Sweeper tentacles at night do the most damage. The bubble, goniopora, and hydnophora all have them and they kill other corals.

Goniopora: The round one that with what looks like long flowery tentacles.

Bubble corals and mushrooms.

Take everything your LFS advise with a huge grain of salt. You will get better guidance and more accurate information here by far. You will save a huge amount of money, frustration and livestock if you research purchases first.

lucky i came across this site a few weeks ago... i had most of that stuff in the tank already. would you please adress the bubble coral? is there something i could do for it? does it have a chance of regenerating?

 

[reeftanknewbie]

I have found in my experience with bubble, hammer and frogspawn corals that yes they can and will regenerate however I have worked very hard on keeping the water perimeters in check and stable; meaning little to no swings in any of the perimeters.

 

[kduen]

There has also been people on here that have had a bubble coral completly die and leaving the dead skeleton in the tank only to find out months/years later that it really didn't die and now is flourishing. I would't give up on it yet keep everything stable and it should come around.

 

[JohnnySquids]

thx guys

 

[Reverend Reefer]

thx guys

hey johnny, ok i'm gonna give you a breakdown about how to do your water maintenance, this is totally just advice based on what i do, obviously in the end you can do what you want and if you already know this stuff then i'm sorry if i end up sounding stupid but honestly i just wanna help.

1. top off water
- you need to add fresh water made from your ro/di filter somehow into your tank to replace the evaporated water
- this isn't salt water mix, its pure ro/di water
- to figure out how much water you'll need to add, just make a mark on your tank with a marker to set the level baseline, everytime the water line goes below that mark, you add enuff pure ro/di water to get it back up to the line
- you can do this daily or every other day, but if you wait too long, the fish and corals get more shocked because you're changing the balance of water in your tank too quickly
- before i set up an auto-top off, i used to add fresh water every 2 days (just to give you an idea, but what this means is if you don't have an auto-top off, you'll need to do this step manually )

2. water changes
- you can do water changes every week, this is what you've been doing, i think if i read correctly, every day
- you need to mix your salt mix with the ro/di water for like a day or so, meaning you put a powerhead in it to mix the water and the salt mix, and leave it there for a day while it mixes and balances out etc.
- if you're impatient like me, you can add a heater and an aerator (bubble thingy) and this will help speed it up but you still have to wait a couple hours, you can't just put it in right away (5 minutes is too short to mix it)

- everything you have lives in water, so its important to have good water and do your water maintenance properly, especially with a smaller tank like yours

don't worry, your corals should bounce back pretty soon once you start this regiment of water maintenance.

everyone else's advice about keeping certain corals with stingers apart and getting better lighting is good advice too!

 

[Reverend Reefer]

once you get your water right, and the conditions seem to stabilize after a couple water changes and maintaining your evaporated water, you can start reading up on feeding some of the corals you have, and of course dealing with the balancing out of feeding and polluting your tank water.... fun fun fun!

btw, i have a bubble coral that has outlasted everything my tank has gone thru from the beginning. yours will likely be fine once you stabilize everything.

 

[JohnnySquids]

once you get your water right, and the conditions seem to stabilize after a couple water changes and maintaining your evaporated water, you can start reading up on feeding some of the corals you have, and of course dealing with the balancing out of feeding and polluting your tank water.... fun fun fun!

btw, i have a bubble coral that has outlasted everything my tank has gone thru from the beginning. yours will likely be fine once you stabilize everything.

thanks a whole bunch mr.RR. i dint know that i was supposed to top off like that once every 2 days. very good advice. for the last 3 weks have i been letting my salt water sit for 2-3 days before i put it in.

 

[Reverend Reefer]

thanks a whole bunch mr.RR. i dint know that i was supposed to top off like that once every 2 days. very good advice. for the last 3 weks have i been letting my salt water sit for 2-3 days before i put it in.

that's good. do u have a powerhead and a heater running in the salt water while it sits for awhile? you want the temp of the water to be close to the temp of water in your display, hence the heater, and you want the water to be agitated/aerated, hence the powerhead.

the top off water that you put in will depend on how much evaporation you have in your system. every 2 days is a good idea to check on the water evaporation. if you skip this step, your water will just get saltier and saltier over time.

you want your system to be as stable as possible so this is why people eventually start to automate this part with an auto-top off setup cuz it is a pain in the arse to keep adding freshwater every 2 days or so. some people who live in drier places, have lots of fans running, or have a lot of heat from lighting, have to add lots of top off water daily even! it isn't that hard to automate this or even that expensive. it just seems complicated at first.

if you ever do decide to automate your top off water, you might want to look into adding kalkwasser to your top off water to keep your alkalinity (dKH) high. its a better solution than adding that chemical you added before to up your alk (i think i remember you said you did that).

 

[Reverend Reefer]

you also have to read up on some of the weird corals you buy. things like goniopora are hard to keep and need to be fed different foods than let's say your bubble coral, which is probably fine not being fed specifically. the goniopora coral probably needs to be fed foods that are small enuff for them to eat. also different corals also have different needs in terms of lighting, for example most SPS need strong light, so you might want to put those higher up in your tank, while others like bubble coral and acans are better lower in the tank (further away from your light). some corals like to be on the sand. different corals like more flow and some hate flow and will close up, so again, placing the ones that like flow near a powerhead will make them happy while others might close up if they're too close to a powerhead. and of course, like other people have said already, some corals have stingers or release toxic poisons, so you don't want to put them too close to some corals that might get stung. its fun to look up in google (or reef central search) the different needs of different corals. have fun!

 

[JohnnySquids]

yea RR, advice well heeded sir. thx alot =)

 

[JohnnySquids]

seems like my bubble coral is actually getting worse, everything else is the tank is doing better tho??? any ideas??

 

[JohnnySquids]

bump

 

[BFG]

Your bubble and hammer are on the way out. Take a look at the area where the polyps appear, are there tissue covering the hard skeleton area? If there are none, you have a problem keeping them alive. Also, I do not know if it's a typo on your part but you list your specific gravity as 1.26. It should be 1.026. Get a refractometer and a Pinpoint Salinity 53.0 mS Calibration fluid. Calibrate the refractometer to this fluid and check where your sg really is. This looks like a salinity and also coral placement problem. Act fast or they'll be gone.

Hope this helps!

 

[James404]

Your bubble and hammer are on the way out. Take a look at the area where the polyps appear, are there tissue covering the hard skeleton area? If there are none, you have a problem keeping them alive. Also, I do not know if it's a typo on your part but you list your specific gravity as 1.26. It should be 1.026. Get a refractometer and a Pinpoint Salinity 53.0 mS Calibration fluid. Calibrate the refractometer to this fluid and check where your sg really is. This looks like a salinity and also coral placement problem. Act fast or they'll be gone.

Hope this helps!

I would say that is likely to be a typo, 1.26 would be extremely high.

 

[JohnnySquids]

Your bubble and hammer are on the way out. Take a look at the area where the polyps appear, are there tissue covering the hard skeleton area? If there are none, you have a problem keeping them alive. Also, I do not know if it's a typo on your part but you list your specific gravity as 1.26. It should be 1.026. Get a refractometer and a Pinpoint Salinity 53.0 mS Calibration fluid. Calibrate the refractometer to this fluid and check where your sg really is. This looks like a salinity and also coral placement problem. Act fast or they'll be gone.

Hope this helps!

haha yea sry, it was a typo... i dont think id have life in there for more than 6 hours if it was .26..... anyway, my hammer coral is growing nicely, my polyps dont want to reproduce tho, and my bubble is dieing...

 

[JohnnySquids]

bump

 

[JohnnySquids]

when does calcium and mag dosing become necessary? id really love to get some really nice corraline algae growing in my tank, iv had i fora bout 6 months now and so far theres very very little....

 

[kingfisher62]

can anyone tell me wat this coral is??? its been doing wonderfull in my tank for the last 4 months... this is when its not opened, as soon as the light goes on. you can see what it looks like when it is opened at the very top picture in the first post of this thread, its sorta in the back

Some sort of Green star polyps.

 

[Peter T]

The coral picture two posts up looks like green star polyps. Those are IMO one of the fastest growing softies I've seen.

If you believe you may have flatworms, try googling some images of marine flatworms to identify the species you may have. You can also read about their behavior and characteristics. May help you PID what it is.

As for sand, you can try using nassarius snails, cerith snails. The white leg hermit is a pretty good sand sifting crab. They look pretty funny as they sprint around the tank. You can also look into brittle stars and serpent stars, although you probably wont see them out and about. In terms of vacuuming, if your sand bed is over 3 inches deep, I would suggest that you do not vacuum it and for the most part leave it alone.

I would also look into upgrading the lighting to at least power compact lighting. Oh btw, what is your water temperature at and how much does it fluctuate during the day?