LPS in trouble, help please?

Swanwillow

goby girl
alright, so I have had my orange fungia plate for 3+ months, give or take. Along with a green. Overnight one night about 2 weeks ago some of my lps went downhill. I blamed the angel... until today. (it is a cherub and is now in my sump)

My orange Fungia was one of the hardest hit, it did look like it had bites taken out of it-so maybe the angel started it. But I had to remove it from my tank today. Not because it died... but because its covered in either a fungus (what it looks like) or some sort of other growth. In-between all the ridges is a white substance. Maybe like a sponge, could be anything... There was some living tissue on it, but I removed it because, frankly, I don't want whatever the heck this is to spread.

Anyone have any places I could go look for this sort of thing? At the same time my orange one went I had 2 acans go 'bleh' on me, my green fungia turned brown (although ITS color is now coming back-it never lost flesh) and a blasto I got at a local swap in January is slowly losing polyps (although after breaking up the colony I think I've at least saved some of them, as it was working from one side to the other-the polyps were coming off one at a time)

I've done a reef dip (seachem) on everything affected except for the acans. One is slowly coming back, one still looks like hell, so I took it off its spot (it was glued to the rock work) and set it front and center in the sand bed.

Should I do another, longer reef dip? The first one was only for about 30 seconds... should I stretch it into minutes now that I know there's SOMETHING eating my hard corals? Should I dip every hard coral in my tank? (Yes, its feasible to do to save them!) even though its now only affecting 5 separate things.

UGH Advice is appreciated.

DSCN0558.jpg



Sorry. The white is the 'stuff' the red is cyano that decided a dying coral was good. So ignore the cyano, it means very little (my tank has cyano issues still, I cut back on feeding and am upping water changes)
 
Looks like cyano andf algae growing on it. Definitely need some water parmeters starting with SG and what instrument you are using to measure that with?
 
Shoulda just left it in the tank.
When fungia plates die, they are capable of budding out lots of new heads on the old skeleton.
Dunno what killed it, you need to do some water testing...
They need their own "sweetspot" in regards to light and flow as well.
 
The 'green stuff' was flesh that I killed due to pulling it out of the tank. I would not leave it in tank because of the WHITE stuff that seems to be a fungus or sponge growing over it. Yes, I'm aware that they have babies, but honestly-would you leave an lps in a heavy lps tank when an unknown white sponge is growing over it?

Salinity is 1.023 (checked with a hydrometer, need to invest in a refracto now since I broke the hydrometer. It had been previously checked against a hydrometer Last waterchange done a week ago)
amm and nitrite don't move from 0.
Nitrites occasionally creep up to 5. and 5 is the highest its been in a long time.
Ph goes, on average 8.1-8.3 depending on the time during the light cycle.
Phosphate I'd have to recheck-it was low the last time
Alk is 3.5
no calcium test yet
 
Since you are having issues with other LPS besides the fungia, I would be sure to confirm your SG, Ca and alo Mg. Depending on what salt you are using and how often you do water changes, either of those may be too low (especially at 1.023). This is speaking from personal experience I had with my LPS a while back.
 
after I removed the goner, the others have started to recover. But I certainly can get a fellow reefer from up here to do my Ca and Mg and borrow their refracto.
 
1 week today. And technically only the salinity is low. Alk is 'within normal ranges' I drip kalk in my ato system 24/7
 
That sg is not gonna be enough to kill a plate overnight, but hydrometers are so unreliable, if its reading low like that it could really be way way off.
All your other tests seem on track.

Imo plates are tough and not too demanding as far as water conditions.

You have nothing in there that was picking on it, clowns trying to host, large nassarius snails dragging across them stealin food?

After rereading the 1st post, it sounds like something died and you got an amonia spike, a brief and high spike could do its damage before you even notice anythings wrong, and your biofiltration could have caught back up by the time you tested.
Your kalk drip may have also malfunctioned...

Whatever actually happened, id start changin some water.
 
its meq/l

I DID have an angel that tried to eat it. Nothing died, except the plate. The angel has been banished to the sump after I saw the bite marks on the plate, it died about a week later-think all of this happened from that? (entirely possible, really) My acans are doing 'okay' and the other plate is definitely green today. Gotta say the acans took the beating the worst, where the plate didn't look as bad as they did.

my clowns are busy hosting my duncan and my bta's.

My tank inhabitants are 2 Barberi Clownfish, 1 scooter dragonet, 1 Trimma goby, and 1 cherub angel (now in the sump)
corals:
3 cup montis, 1 small red misc. monti, 1 catspaw, 3 other 'unknown' sps (I forget the names off the top of my head)
1 scoly
1 lobo
2 prism type favias
2 other favias (unnamed)
1 monastrea
1 gonistrea
2 multiple head colonies of trumpet coral
1 20+ duncan
war coral colony
Pagoda
10 acans (2 colonies doing bad)
4 blastos. (1 colony that's doing bad)
1 fungia (and the 1 that died)
3 chalices (watermelon, gold, and 'misc red and blue')
20+ zoanthids colonies w/multiple polyps
4 mini maxis
2 ricordea
2 grandi palys
and 3 different colored bta's


So I'm thinking out of all this, the angels nibbling let some sort of pathogen hit the fungia, turned the other fungia brown, and made the 2 acans go 'meh'
 
K so dont take this the wrong way....
Having all that livestock in a 36g tank doesnt leave alot of margin for error.

Can you post a full tank pic?
Im curious to see!
:)
 
heh, they're all babies so far! And no it doesn't. I assume that if something goes wrong the first things to die would be the anems or SPS.

I'll have to snap a pic in a few. But good news, one of my acans came out all the way for the first time, yay!
 
Likely, the Fungia was already ailing when the C. argi started taking chunks out. Dwarf Angels eat diseased coral polyps/coral waste on the Reef. They also do it in our tanks, as John "Cops" has explained/demonstrated many times.
I've seen this before. Its Rapid Tissue Necrosis. In my 36 gallon Reef I had it & Cyano. I believe it was caused by high Nitrate, but not 100% sure.

Sincerely,
Matthew
 
its definatly the angel the bites take a little wile to show when they start to get infected.one of the corals that got bit started to feter and that spread to the other corals that got bit in the tank weakest usually first.i have seen a lemon peel angel destroy one of the nicest tanks i had seen i n one weed.the guy put the angel in there cause he came from a lps tank and diddnt bite any corals in there but when added to the big tank it had a huge beautifull open brain.one bite and the guy was hooked trying all the corals.one of the bites got brown jelly and it spread in one night all over .long story short years of work destroyed .angels have no place in closed reef systems
 
IME, dwarf love any fleshy LPS, even healthy ones.

This one was healthy, before they started to go to town on it,

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