HELP needed. LobophylIia tissue receding

[VJV]

Hi, my brain coral seems to be developing some sort of tissue wounds, as bits of flesh seem to loose all color. I have no fish in the tank for 2 months so I do not think anything is nipping at the coral.

What can I do to cure the coral? I have been told to use Lugol's but than again I have also heard that with LPS I am better off leaving it alone.

Any help on why is this happening and how to cure it would be much appreciated. Apologies for the poor photo as it was taken with the iPad.

 

[kurt_n]

Yeah... pure actinic photos make it tough to give good advice.

That coral looks fine to me, except for that little white tissue area at about 9 o'clock. Can't tell if it's bleached or just damaged.

Could something have fallen on it? A snail? Some salt creep/crust from the lip of the tank?

It doesn't look so bad that I'd consider dipping it in anything... I'd probably just keep an eye on it. But that's just me.

So no fish in the tank at all? Why is that... have you dosed something in the tank? Just trying to figure out if something else might be going on to bug the coral.

 

[VJV]

Thanks! I will take a photo with my reflex cam and adjust colour temp to make it more visible. Basically every bit of whit tissue was not there before, and it is transparent. No fishes in the tank because a couple died and I moved them to a QT. Did not dose anything. I am struggling with precipitation and Alk has dropped to 5.2 dKH. Will do a large water change today and bump up my Alk dosing slowly to correct this. Anyway, the tissue wounds appeared before the Alk dropped below 8.0dKH. I was dosing 50ml of Red Sea Buffer daily, and the return nozzle of the sump is above ( but nt directly) the lobo. 50ml in my tank would be the equivalent of 2.0dKH boost, even thoug I was still not managing to increase Alk because the more I dosed the higher the precipitation. Than decided to stop dosing and that is when in a week Alk dropped to 5,5dKH.

Back to the Lobo, before these white patches appeared the coral was looking fine and than one day it was completely sulked. It was like that for two weeks and when it finally became fleshy it had these white lashes in the flesh.

If anything I suspect the electric blue zebra hermits I had added recently! Those buggers are mean! They have eaten my cerith snails and have seen them on other corals like my elegance trying to nip at the skeleton...

 

[VJV]

Now with some better pictures.

 

[VJV]

As you can see on the bottom left there are a couple of places where there is no tissue, and the skeleton seems to have pierced through. Also, it has several patches that seem to have lost color. Should I be worried? What can I do about it?