HELP! green monti cap has RTN! dead white skeleton spreading fast

[lilleahseafreak]

i noticed a white patch of dead skeleton on the green monticap frag i have had for over a year. the frag is about 3 inches.

i chipped off the white spot as well as 3/16 of an inch of the surrounding healthy tissue.

the next day more white was showing but i let it slide hoping it was a little tissue loss due to chipping off the bad area

well its spread more and has consumed my favorite little "frilly skirt" of the coral

i fear it will consume the whole coral in no time at all, 1/6 of the coral is now white

the remaining tissue is bright green with polyps extending, there are no corals within 8 inches of the monti so i know its not being stung

2 months ago i did buy a orange monti frag that began to turn white and i lost it 2 weeks ago buit i paid no mind to it as i am used to loosing new corals, but i have owned this one a long time and its been through alot and always recovered.

but now i fear its doomed

is there anything i can do to save it?

 

[Reefugee]

Please post your water parameter. It would help.

For now - you might consider fragging the coral where there aren't any RTN.

 

[lilleahseafreak]

i don't have a test kit so i can't post my parameters (i have not tested for anything for a year now and so far i have been lucky....)

all other corals seem fine

the frag is fully encrusted to a rock so i don't think i can break off what its unaffected

would it help to cover the affected area with super glue and cover 1/2 an inch of the good tissue to keep it from spreading?

 

[mpoletti]

Are they white spots? Can you post any pics?

 

[rigleautomotive]

if you do not test,changing water is your only option as i see it.do a few water changes over the next week .good luck

 

[funman1]

With out water prams we are going to be of no help.
If you can get your water to me I can test everything on it for ya.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Look for montipora nudibranchs. They might be hiding under the coral. They might have eaten your orange cap and moved on to your green one.

 

[dots]

I think you are seeing how sensitive SPS are and how on top of your params you need to be. I am thinking you have had a temp, salinity, or alk shift.......

You can get away with a bunch more with softies and LPS than SPS.

For instance, just for an example to illustrate and the numbers are wrong.

Say with freshwater fish you can get away with 50ppm Ammonia and they are fine.

But the max with Marine is 30ppm.

The same can be said for coral, softies can tolerate a much greater degree of water parameter shift than SPS. This is what makes them so difficult. You look at some SPS wrong and they die.

Knowing, that you have smaller tanks, and atmitingly do not test, I think you will have problems with SPS until you tighten up your params and know where they are at all times.

The very first two pieces I bought, two $40 Aquaculture colonies from Aqualife, I killed in less than a week. I was an expensive lesson. After that I spent 6 months researching here and reading the SPS forum, tightened up my params and realized how much my alk was fluctuating. After killing some by not topping off one day and shifting the salinity, I learned how important that was. With SPS it about contantly trying to get to a tank that NEVER changes, but that is nearly impossible to achieve. Some say SPS stands for Stability Promotes Sucess

SPS tanks need STABLE or as near to params as possible to survive and even more to thrive.

If you want to keep and be successful with SPS, I think we need to look at what you are, but more importantly are not, doing to cause this or else you will have many problems to come, only to be lucky for a while as you gain more and more and due to poor husbandry habits crash a tank and watch hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, just peel away........that is my motivation.

And loosing SPS occasionly does happen........I lost two spendy ones that I grew out and was quite attached to recently, because I let my params move too much when busy with school.

SPS are WAY more of a commitment that softy and want to make sure that you understand that they are, even the "easy" ones.

 

[mcurl98]

agree, params are most important and nothing will save it if they are out of whack. I had a new, small frag STN. I, like you, cut away at it but it kept coming back. When it was close to being gone (the frag), I did a Lugols dip and put glue on the STN part. The STN has stopped and the coral is growing back-but all my params are good and steady.

 

[Eclectic Taste]

Re: HELP! green monti cap has RTN! dead white skeleton spreading fast

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10121191#post10121191 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by lilleahseafreak
...i paid no mind to it as i am used to loosing new corals...

I am very disturbed by this statement. I've only been reefing for 6 months, but just losing one branch of an admittedly sick monti frag has been difficult for me. The one thing I've learned in 6 months is stable water parameters are super important in SW - ever since I tightened up my husbandry I've had much better luck with all my livestock.

I have no idea what triggered your monti to start going white, but that's probably a symptom of the underlying cause, poor parameters.

 

[lilleahseafreak]

i chipped off the white area along with more of the good tissue as last time and this time it seems to have worked as its been more than 24 and no new white has shown up

i don't think the water quaility is to blame as the coral is neon green with polys extended and it was rather brown when i first got it. i also have some kind of sky blue pavon that has doubled in size since i got it and it came to me as a dark brown mass. plus my pagoda, favia, blasto, maze brain, plate coral, clam, zoanthids and mushrooms are all going nuts in my tank and i have been supprting this hobby with the frags i get from my corals

as for "loosing new corals" it mainly applies to frags of new kinds i have never had before, i basically hold my breath and hope they do well and if they don't then i don't buy that kind again, and if the frag does do well then i consider buying a bigger specimin.

but yeah, SPS are not my fave as they need such perfect water and i don't have the time to be that fussy with my tank, i feel lucky that the pavona and this monti like me so much but i am in no hurry to buy any more SPS, ever.

 

[Eclectic Taste]

Leah,
I just re-read my post, and I apologize if I came off a bit harshly. I didn't realize it was doing so well before. However, I still wonder why you would buy frags that you don't know much about. I'm guilty of this, too, but I at least ask the seller about care requirements before buying.

Good luck with the monti