No Luck With Trachyphillias

[ThatAquariumKid]

Over the life of my tank i have bought and disposed of 3 trachy's. I have no clue what is killing them. for the first week to three weeks they look great and feed well. Then after that they stop puffing up as much. then they start to retract their flesh and within a week dead. Now they all have been in the sand bed of my 55 gallon tank. I think they are getting too much light. On my tank i have a 8 lamp T5 fixture. I tried putting one in the shady part of my tank and well it didn't last any longer as the other two did. i am pretty upset as i have dropped about $250 total on these corals and i really like how they look. If you have any advice please post. also all other corals in my tank have been thriving for the past year, so it must be something with these particular corals in my tank.

 

[bfam4t6]

Too much light can definitely be a problem, although the only open brain (mine was a wellso) that I've killed with too much light actually took several months to die. The flesh very gradually bleached until it began quickly peeling away.

Are you feeding them? If so, what? Try spot feeding IMMEDIATELY upon putting the new specimen into your tank. The way I imagine it, water currents are what deliver the food in the ocean. Presumably, those water currents also bring different parameters. Obviously, switching from the LFS to your tank is going to cause the coral to experience some parameter changes. To make this change more "realistic" for the coral, I ALWAYS immediately spot feed upon placing it into my tank. Nine times out of ten you'll see hungry tentacles almost immediately. Every coral that I can get to eat, I can get to live.

 

[ThatAquariumKid]

thanks for the advice i will try that if i decide to try one more time. is there any color that may be more likely to succeed in my tnk i found that my red color wellso and my red Trachy did not last as long as my green trachy.

 

[philosophile]

8 t5s on a 55g tank is a lot of light. You should probably take out half of them unless you were going for SPS. What are your water parameters? Nitrates? Ammonia? Flow? How long has the tank been up?

 

[ThatAquariumKid]

yes i have a mixed reef so i need the high levels of light. all tank parameters are good ( tested my myself and LFS). the tank has been up for about 1 year. the flow over the corals was at low to low/moderate

 

[philosophile]

Hmm.. What else is in the tank? Can we get a Full tank shot? Do you run Carbon? Whats your filtration set up?

 

[ThatAquariumKid]

i have a sump for filtration. i also use a BRS dual reactor ( carbon and GFO). i have a Bicolor Foxface, 2 gold stripe maroon clowns, 3 pagama cardinals, lawnmower blenny, diamond goby, and a six line wrasse as for fish. i just think the problem is over lighting.