Overnight Tragedy...

[RDuhb]

I've had my bird of paradise frag for exactly 6 weeks and up until this morning it was doing GREAT. It had great polyp extension and even showed signs of growth. Attached is a pic from this morning. Yesterday it was fine! I have not added or changed anything to the tank. I'm at a total lost as to what happened. I once had a green birds nest go south on me, but it was gradual. This one tanked overnight! Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Specs:
75g tank with 40g sump and skimmer (16 months old)
ammonia - 0
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 2.5
phosphate - <0.25 (I'd guess closer to 0, but had to tell with API kit)
Alk - 9.0
Ca - 425
Mag - 1500

I'm running both carbon and GFO. 10% water changes every other week. Calcium and alk dosed daily.

 

[Reefer54]

I would be inclined to say that it was water related.....often alk is the culprit. do you carbon dose, the alk at 9 and carbon dosiing will be detrimental to sps particularly

sorry for the loss, its a bummer, especially when we cant point the finger definitively at something.

 

[ormet]

Cloud be flow. Also, What is your po4 reading? Lack of nutrients of you don't feed sps. But i have to agree, alk swing is always on the shortlist of suspects. though i find birds nests to be quite tolerant of that.

 

[triggreef]

I wouldn't call that a game over yet.

What do you have for lighting? I might just try to get a little more flow towards it. IME 2 things that cause the bottom to die off on birdsnest is lack of flow, lack of lighting.

I wouldn't move it toward more light though unless your running only compacts or some thing. I would try flow first.

 

[RDuhb]

Thanks everyone for the responses.

Alk has been consistent at 9.0 for the past several months. Good flow to the area. Again, I've changed nothing in the tank. It was fine yesterday, but today it looks like crap. And by the way, all of the other corals are fine, which includes a pink and ponape birds nest.

Lights are a RapidLED kit with 2:1 royal blue, neutral white. I also have a couple of reds, greens, and uv mixed in as well. I control it with an Apex.

Probably will never know for sure what happened, but do you think it can recover?

 

[Reefer54]

pests.......question mark

 

[RDuhb]

pests.......question mark

I thought about that, but I haven't seen anything, nor have I added anything that could have brought in a hitchhiker. Actually, the birdsnest was the last thing I added to the tank.

 

[iced98lx]

if it stops dying, it certainly can recover and regrow over all the dead eventually too.

 

[RDuhb]

if it stops dying, it certainly can recover and regrow over all the dead eventually too.

I hope so. It's actually looking little better than this morning.

 

[msderganc]

Looks like a predator to me...

 

[RDuhb]

Update!! IT FULLY RECOVERED!! Something must have seriously irritated it, but it's back.

 

[Denadai]

SPS is just like some woman...hard to understand

 

[GroktheCube]

I'd put money on something pestering it. Mine has looked JUST like that after being picked at by a peppermint.

 

[ltbt8]

If you have any limpet snails, those could be the culprits. I had to remove all of mine, because they would do the same thing to mine when lights were off or moon lights on. You can still see the retracted polyps in your pic, it wasn't dying.

 

[caribbeanguy]

SPS is just like some woman...hard to understand

possibly the most accurate description!!! Good that it recovered!!!

 

[sahin]

SPS is just like some woman...hard to understand

:lmao:

 

[a.browning]

I'd put money on something pestering it. Mine has looked JUST like that after being picked at by a peppermint.

Exactly what I was thinking. Anytime I have added peppermints, they eat the polyps off my birdsnests and pocillopora.

 

[Mael]

Hm, i had 2 peps and they left both ponapes alone, actually all my SPS was left alone....although more recently I find it hard to find the peps so my crab may have got to them which would explain why they arent bothing the coral.

I have also seen a very similar picture of SPS where a turbo snail crawled over half of it, took a cpl days for the polyps to re-extended at least.