Euphyllia help

[Devin R.]

Hi,

I just recently bought a complete aquarium setup which included all equipment and livestock. This setup has been running for about a year before I took it off the persons hands. The setup included two large leather corals, and I read that leather corals produce a toxin that can stunt the growth or even kill LPS and SPS. I moved everything from my nano into this tank and after a day I saw signs of stress, while other just died. The people before were having trouble with Euphyllia coral, as well as I am now that I have the setup. I was thinking that it was these two huge leather corals that are killing every Euphyllia and SPS that I put in this tank, could that thought be true? If so, should I get rid of these corals immediately? I'm including photos of the two corals:

 

[kurt_n]

Not seeing the photos, but yes... leathers can not play nice with other corals. Actually, all corals have the ability to not play nice, but leathers seem to be the worst offenders. That's kind of why I shudder when people recommend leathers to someone just starting out. Personally... I've never kept them - and that's why.

However...

More than likely, you're experiencing a cycle in the newly moved tank. Have you checked your water parameters? (Ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/pH) Depending on how the tank was moved, if things were exposed to air for too long, or the sand bed disturbed or reused, you may see an ammonia spike from some die off.

Without additional info, I'd say the immediate issues you're seeing are from a mini-cycle. But yes, in the long term, the leather could be an issue.

 

[Devin R.]

Not seeing the photos, but yes... leathers can not play nice with other corals. Actually, all corals have the ability to not play nice, but leathers seem to be the worst offenders. That's kind of why I shudder when people recommend leathers to someone just starting out. Personally... I've never kept them - and that's why.

However...

More than likely, you're experiencing a cycle in the newly moved tank. Have you checked your water parameters? (Ammonia/nitrite/nitrate/pH) Depending on how the tank was moved, if things were exposed to air for too long, or the sand bed disturbed or reused, you may see an ammonia spike from some die off.

Without additional info, I'd say the immediate issues you're seeing are from a mini-cycle. But yes, in the long term, the leather could be an issue.

Hi, thanks for the reply!

When we were moving the tank we put all of the live rock in tubs of tank water so that we could save as much coral as we could. We left some water in the tank (about sand bed level) so that the inverts left in the sand wouldn't be out for to long.

BUT when were fixing the live rock for display a lot of them did stay out of the water for quite some time, and I have been having a lot of corals die since the move. I do believe you're right about the mini cycle that's going on, because I have recently check my chemistry levels in the tank and the Ammonia was a bit high. Now, should I remove the bleached bodies of the dead corals?

Before the move the guy was having trouble with keeping Euphyllia, so that's why I was thinking it was the giant leather corals that were producing there infamous toxins. Also, because he never ran carbon on the tank, so yesterday I went and bought a Phosban Reactor and began running carbon in it.

Do you believe that this (the leather corals/not running carbon) is also part of the reason we both were/are having trouble with keeping these types of coral?

So these are all of the possible reasons that could be causing the sickening and dying of some corals:

• Mini cycle/Ammonia spike
• Die-off from other corals producing Ammonia
• The toxins from the Leather Corals
• Not running a carbon reactor the whole time

Here's a link to the picture of the Leathers if you still are interested in seeing how big they are:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B56YAxEWfHa5QWh0elZyWTdpZHc/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for the help.

 

[kurt_n]

You mention "the ammonia was a bit high". So yes... sounds like you've got yourself a cycle going on. Ammonia should be undetectable with coral present. I just got done doing a tank swap, and there's really no way of taking the rock out and *not* disturbing the sand bed which releases a whole bunch of nasties. I'm guessing the water left in the tank was pretty nasty looking after the move?

Without seeing the "deal corals", I wouldn't remove them. They might not really be dead yet. I had an issue once with a powerhead dieing in my tank and I was 100% sure one of the corals I had was dead. Absolutely no color to it. But after a few weeks it started inflating again and over time the color came back. So what might look dead might just be really really ticked off. Now if you start seeing tissue peeling off the skeleton, yeah... I'd remove the coral rather than have the decaying tissue mess up your water parameters even more.

As far as the Euphyllia/Leather... running carbon isn't going to hurt anything, so I'd keep doing that. Those leathers could be the reason the previous owner was having issues. Then again, you never know what was going on in the tank then. Only thing you can do is get your water parameters back to being acceptable, then see what type of problems *you* are seeing, and go from there.

One thing you could try is to place the leathers "upstream" from other corals. Many corals go in to attack mode when they can "smell" (for lack of a better term) a different species nearby. So if you have the current in your tank going across a bunch of corals before it gets to the leather, the leather thinks it really has to crank out the defense mechanism to protect itself. The flip side of that is that now the other corals can "smell" the leather and they might go on the attack! Placement is kind of a trial and error thing with reef tanks!

 

[Devin R.]

You mention "the ammonia was a bit high". So yes... sounds like you've got yourself a cycle going on. Ammonia should be undetectable with coral present. I just got done doing a tank swap, and there's really no way of taking the rock out and *not* disturbing the sand bed which releases a whole bunch of nasties. I'm guessing the water left in the tank was pretty nasty looking after the move?



Without seeing the "deal corals", I wouldn't remove them. They might not really be dead yet. I had an issue once with a powerhead dieing in my tank and I was 100% sure one of the corals I had was dead. Absolutely no color to it. But after a few weeks it started inflating again and over time the color came back. So what might look dead might just be really really ticked off. Now if you start seeing tissue peeling off the skeleton, yeah... I'd remove the coral rather than have the decaying tissue mess up your water parameters even more.



As far as the Euphyllia/Leather... running carbon isn't going to hurt anything, so I'd keep doing that. Those leathers could be the reason the previous owner was having issues. Then again, you never know what was going on in the tank then. Only thing you can do is get your water parameters back to being acceptable, then see what type of problems *you* are seeing, and go from there.



One thing you could try is to place the leathers "upstream" from other corals. Many corals go in to attack mode when they can "smell" (for lack of a better term) a different species nearby. So if you have the current in your tank going across a bunch of corals before it gets to the leather, the leather thinks it really has to crank out the defense mechanism to protect itself. The flip side of that is that now the other corals can "smell" the leather and they might go on the attack! Placement is kind of a trial and error thing with reef tanks!

Yeah, the water did look really nasty. It was cloudy and there was stuff going everywhere as it took a while to settle.i started to get the brown algae bloom already. How long do you think it's going to last, and what should I do to help out the livestock? I have quite a deal of fish, corals and inverts that I don't want to lose.

Okay, I'll leave them in there. They just look really ugly because they don't have any color anymore, and they're kind of an eye sore to see.

Yeah, I'm trying to find a new home for them, because they are show piece sized, but I'm not very fond of leathers because they aren't really fluorescent unless you have the green polyp species', also because they're not as pretty as LPS/SPS, which is why I'm trying to save the Euphyllia (also because I paid $80 for my blue hammer, and he looks really pale). How can I get the parameters back to an acceptable range?

I'll will definitely try that if I end up keeping the leathers!

Thanks for all of your help so far!

 

[kurt_n]

...How can I get the parameters back to an acceptable range?...!

Water changes... especially if you're seeing an ammonia spike. You can use Seachem Prime to neutralize the ammonia, but you are still dealing with a cycle. Do you have another cycled tank set up that you could transfer the fish to until the main tank finishes up?