Problems

[airinhere]

Leathers would be my guess. Toadstool, devils hand, finger leather, almost any leather is a major offender of alleopathic chemicals. Zoanthids, green star polyps daisy polyps, xenia, shrooms and rics are all pretty mild (unless they touch something physically). Somewhere two (or more) corals are likely competing for space and they are both releasing chemicals intended to kill the other. Unfortunatly, the chemicals sometimes kill other stuff as well.

You need to figure out what corals are competing and seperate them. (Wow, is this a stretch on my part or what?)

 

[Brent Porterfie]

what you are saying makes alot of sense and I will try but, if some other coral is not looking down, how do I tell which are competing.

 

[airinhere]

I would start by looking at what corals are closest to each other. Touching corals (even slightly) is a major indicator.

Then I would consider your newer corals. You added something before everything started dying. What was it? Odds are, if your other corals are healthy and adjusted to your tank, the chemicals being released are hurting the corals, but not able to kill them. New additions are likely to fare poorly though.

Last, I would look carefully at each coral. Not look for how it 'normally' looks, but how is it supposed to look. Like if it was out in the wild. Are the polyps extended? and opened? Is the color right or is it a little bland? Many people have corals for months that I would consider badly bleached or in seriously unhealthy states and never realize it because that is how their coral has always looked. Sometimes you literally have to see one in really good condition to realize what I am talking about. (I am never buying Yumas again!)

What types of leathers do you have? Some are much worse than others.

 

[Brent Porterfie]

The leathers I have are devils hand, a toadstool, and a finger leather. I added a gargonian tree(that may not be spelled right but you know what I mean) that looks better in my tank than it did in LFS. All my leathers are growing with polyps on all three extended and the wife just commented on how good they look. the color on all three is great, there is atleast 3 inches between the leathers and anything else, the only thing that is touching is a ric is overlapping a shroom and some zoos have intergrown with each other. I recently figured out how to post pics if this would help.

 

[airinhere]

I would love to see a pic of your tank.

But I think its pretty evident that you have three of the strongest alleopathic corals in your tank.

Hate to say it, but even if the other corals and the clam died from unrelated causes, those three leathers will eventually put out enough toxic chemicals to kill any other new corals.

So embrace the option of having a softie tank. SPS and LPS will largely be difficult to keep alive, but almost any soft coral will be able to do fine in your tank.

I have always liked the look of a tank that is densely populated with only a few species of coral. I think it looks much more natural.

Maybe you could try fragging one of your leathers into a whole bunch of frags and then placing the frags all over your tank.

Or, run lots of carbon in a reactor. Change the carbon every two weeks.

 

[Brent Porterfie]

Here are a few pics that I have of the tank

 

[Brent Porterfie]

One more Question--Are the leathers competing with each other? So if i cut back to only one of them, would this solve my problem or is even worth a try?

 

[airinhere]

Well first off, Your tank looks great.

All your corals are obviously in very good condition.

The size of the Toadstool and the Devils Hand is much larger than I was expecting. They are both what I would term as 'likely candidates' to be putting out alleopathic agents.

In all honesty, you would want to remove both if you wanted to cut the alleopathy down to minimal levels in your tank. But looking at them, I would not recommend doing that. They are just too nice.

If it were me, I would frag each one and tie the frags to your rockwork or to some frag plugs. Then I would let them grow out. I am actually preparing to do the exact same thing to my 2 large Toadstools.

But, then I am partial to monospecies tanks.

As a good rule of thumb, never mix leathers with other types of corals. Just like you wouldnt put anything downstream of a Galaxea or Platygria (LPS often have very long sweeper tentacles that can injure other corals.)

And I do not want to come off like I know for sure that alleopathy is the issue you are facing. There could be something else. But alleopathy is a realistic possibility.