It is sometimes difficult to figure out what is going on since most of us don't know precisely what the requirements are for optimum health of many coarals and we don't have ways to assess them all anyway. I have been having trouble with a trachyphyllia for about a week and a half. It was a beautiful full specimen every day and then began to shrink down to its skeleton over a period of about a week. Everything I can measure in my water seemed OK except that my ORP had dropped to slightly less than 300. I did about a half dozen water changes anyway to try to get some improvement. It didn't help (either the ORP or the trachyphillia). I tried feeding, changing my MH lights, increasing skimming, bringing my calcium up closer to 400. That didn't help either. A thread about someone else's problem suggested a number of remedies including dosing iodine near the max limit. I decided to try adding 3 caps of Kent Tech I in my 90 gal tank. The speciment now seems to be improving somewhat. Was it the iodine that helped? Something totally different that was creating the problem that cleared up on its own? Or will it improve somewhat and then go back into decline? I don't expect anyone to answer these questions. My point is that others who don't know the history of our tank and can't check things out themselves can only be of so much help. Sadly, sometimes specimens die for no apparent reason (there is a reason, we just cant figure it out). I think the best thing is to keep asking questions, keep reading, keep experimenting and preferabley keep a log of everything you do. Even our failures teach us something (like what didn't work). Good luck! I hope you manage to nurse it back.
