Hello everyone,
I acquired this Favites spp. on the 17th.
When it came in, some of the polyps near the top were irritated and swollen from shipping. Over the next two weeks, that area began to receed -- slowly. It spread to a ~1.25" patch and was growing. During this time I mostly left it alone, making sure the area was clean of debris and changing the orientation a few times to see if a different flow pattern would help. The tissue continued to receed in that area. It was closest I could come to a diagnosis is "Large-polyp recession condition 1" from Borneman's "Aquarium Corals" book. I never saw anything that looked like jelly. During this time The rest of the coral looked great and extended feeding and sweeper tentacles at night.
After some research, I decided to try a FW dip. I temp and Ph matched the water, and dipped for 3.5 minutes. This did stop the recession, but the rest of the coral unfortunately has suffered quite a bit.
'Favites-acquired' is how it looked when I got the coral. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the recession before I did the FW dip. The circled area is where the recession occured; hard to see in the photo but not really important at this point, I think.
'Favites-after-closeup' is a closeup shot -- the coral tissue is still there, but not expanding and it is loosing color.
~5 hours after the dip (I dipped Sunday ~4pm), I started to notice areas around the disk looking 'cracked' or 'broken' -- in that the 'cracks' were not flourescing as the rest of the oral disk. They were all still extending feeder and sweeper tentacles.
Monday evening -- coral was looking worse, but still extending feeding/sweeprs
Tuesday evening -- more decline, only one! feeding tentacle extended after dark.
Wednesday -- here I am, the photos are from ~30 min ago. :-(
Any suggestions on what to do next? I was going to observe it after lights out, and if feeding tentacles don't come out, try placing some pellets near the mouths (ala the 'rescue corals' thread)
Tank params (All Apex probe or Red Sea test kit)
Temp -- 80-80.5
Salinity -- 53.3us
Ph -- 8.3-8.45
Alk - 9dKh
CA - 420
NH3,NO2,NO3 - 0
Po4 - 0
My params are pretty stable -- except for Alk, which seems to be near the limit of what I can do with Kalk alone, so had taken a diver down to 7.6dkH when I refilled the top-off with RO and not added kalk for a day and a half. I used Randy's recipie 2 to get it back to 9 over 2 days. That was on the 31st.
Any thoughts/advice much appreceated. Definately looking for feedback on what I could have done differently to treat the recession as well.
-Ian
I acquired this Favites spp. on the 17th.
When it came in, some of the polyps near the top were irritated and swollen from shipping. Over the next two weeks, that area began to receed -- slowly. It spread to a ~1.25" patch and was growing. During this time I mostly left it alone, making sure the area was clean of debris and changing the orientation a few times to see if a different flow pattern would help. The tissue continued to receed in that area. It was closest I could come to a diagnosis is "Large-polyp recession condition 1" from Borneman's "Aquarium Corals" book. I never saw anything that looked like jelly. During this time The rest of the coral looked great and extended feeding and sweeper tentacles at night.
After some research, I decided to try a FW dip. I temp and Ph matched the water, and dipped for 3.5 minutes. This did stop the recession, but the rest of the coral unfortunately has suffered quite a bit.
'Favites-acquired' is how it looked when I got the coral. Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the recession before I did the FW dip. The circled area is where the recession occured; hard to see in the photo but not really important at this point, I think.
'Favites-after-closeup' is a closeup shot -- the coral tissue is still there, but not expanding and it is loosing color.
~5 hours after the dip (I dipped Sunday ~4pm), I started to notice areas around the disk looking 'cracked' or 'broken' -- in that the 'cracks' were not flourescing as the rest of the oral disk. They were all still extending feeder and sweeper tentacles.
Monday evening -- coral was looking worse, but still extending feeding/sweeprs
Tuesday evening -- more decline, only one! feeding tentacle extended after dark.
Wednesday -- here I am, the photos are from ~30 min ago. :-(
Any suggestions on what to do next? I was going to observe it after lights out, and if feeding tentacles don't come out, try placing some pellets near the mouths (ala the 'rescue corals' thread)
Tank params (All Apex probe or Red Sea test kit)
Temp -- 80-80.5
Salinity -- 53.3us
Ph -- 8.3-8.45
Alk - 9dKh
CA - 420
NH3,NO2,NO3 - 0
Po4 - 0
My params are pretty stable -- except for Alk, which seems to be near the limit of what I can do with Kalk alone, so had taken a diver down to 7.6dkH when I refilled the top-off with RO and not added kalk for a day and a half. I used Randy's recipie 2 to get it back to 9 over 2 days. That was on the 31st.
Any thoughts/advice much appreceated. Definately looking for feedback on what I could have done differently to treat the recession as well.
-Ian
