Help! What happened to my Coral???

ReefnAv

ReefnAv

New member
I just got home from being gone since 5:30AM this morning and I came home to this.

the picture is horrible since I just took it with my camera phone. It looks like someone/something had an night buffet on mr green poly birdsnest. One of my favorite and biggest growing corals! Half of it is bright white like the polyps were picked off clean.

All I can think of was maybe my pincushion urhin did it? Or maybe my coral beauty likes to pick at it at night. I've never really seen him pick at it before... You guys have any ideas.

It was fine yesterday????:eek1:
 

Attachments

Sorry about the Zip file...Never can figure out how to post pics...

I have to leave the house right now and will be back later tonight! Please post if you have ANY Ideas. I would hate to see this coral waste away:( :mad: :( :mad:
 
Here ya go:
jeffsBirdsnest.jpg


I hope someone can give you some good advice on how to save your Birdsnest. Might want to frag off the unaffected part. I think that is the first thing recommended for RTN, but don't know if that is the issue with yours.
 
Without a better picture, it's hard to tell but it looks like RTN to me

I would get an unaffected frag off that colony ASAP.

If you can, get a frag into another tank or at another reefers house ASAP.
That way, in case your colony goes down hill anymore, you will have a backup..
 
Check your Alk and PH. Looks like RTN to me rather then something eating it. Also are there any other corals near this one that could have stung it?
 
RTN baby.....RTN......find what is wrong and frag the living parts before you loose it all.

Get a photobucket.com account for pictures. Go to the photography forum for detailed instructions pinned at the top.
 
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My only advice is to get every healthy frag you can from the colony and glue them close together. As they encrust to one another you will get a growth spurt and it will grow quickly. I would venture to guess that if you do a full test of your levels something will be seriously off. Best of luck and sorry for the mishap :(
 
Another possibility that hasnt been mentioned which Ive noticed in my tanks is mishaps with euphyllia corals, like the hammer you have off to the right of your birdsnest. Sometimes what we think is plenty of space is really not the case durring the night when they can extend there sweepers up to 6-8" being nothing uncommon. Another thing that commonly happens is somehow the tenticle becomes unnattached whether bitten, ripped etc. ends up floating around the tank and can get stuck to other corals, especially branchy ones like that one there. Ive seen 1 half inch tenticle from a frogspawn burn and infect 5 inches of sinularia to mush, and obliterate ricordeas, and ya, burn the holy hell out of any sps well past the point of contact.

-Justin
 
Dang. Sorry Jeff. I only hope to learn from this one... I have seen some similar issues in some smaller frags and was puzzled by the lack of obvious cause...
 
i had that hapopen to me and i foind those so called safe stars (small white pest stars) all over it haveing lunch. i ended up fraging off a piece and the rest died. i assumed it was them.
 
Update:

I think you were all correct at it being RTN....

Well I got home late last night and checked it out w/ a flashlight. You can tell that most of the colony was not going to make it. So I tried to frag as much of the "Healthy" coral as I could..

Woke up this morning to nothing.... The entire colony dead. All the frags, everyhing.

My only saving grace was a frag I made a few weeks ago that was seperate from the main colony. So on the bright side, I did not lose EVERYTHING...

I am going to check my parameters now and see if I detect anything different. I am really in shock at how quickly this coral died. Less than two days... No other corals show any sign of stress in the tank? In fact, I have noticed huge extension from everything lately. I thought my tank was doing great?

As far as the branching hammer next to it, I'd be surprised if that was what caused it. It is only about 2" in diameter and is 5-6" away from the birdsnest. The hammer is growing and sprouting new polyps all the time so maybe....?

Well time to start testing everything....
 
I have had this happen with a birds nest colony where everything looked perfectly healthy, then one day - all dead. I finally found out that it was stung by a nearby anemone and the poison was so powerful, even with the frags being cut off well above the affected area, the next day it was all dead. Lots of anemones and LPS have very potent stings with sweepers that come out at night (on the LPS).

Sorry to hear about your loss amigo... :(
 
Test Results:

Ni - 0
Na - 20-30
Am - 0
pH - 7.9 - Low....
PO - 0
CA - 560 (always high, think it's a faulty test bottle)
KH - 8
Salininty - 1.025

I don't have a mg test right now unfortunately. Would my slightly high Nitrates and low ph be the cause?

I am going to do another water change today of 30-40 gallons. I did one three days ago as well. So I am going to test my premixed salt water to see if there's anything wrong there...
 
Thanks Mike - Even though common - it was a beautiful piece that was striving in my tank. It had doubled in size since I bought it and was the size of a Baseball. It will be missed...

I pray that I can keep this last frag going...

Every day is a lesson... I'm going to do some more research on RTN.
 
You're nitrates are high, but I don't think it would cause that..

And I'd check with a better kit on the CA cause that could cause problems as well!!
 
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