Red Planet dying, need help please!

D

dmStewy

Member
my Red planet is, dying over the last week or so the tissue on my Red Planet has been receding any thoughts on what could be causing this? I only use RODI water, and I am running a GFO reactor that is changed ever 4 weeks. All of the other live stock in this tank is going fine and growing well no tissue recession
Tank is 90 gallon
Lighting is 2x250w MH(on for 6 hours), 4x54 actinic (on for 12 hours
Flow is: 1X Koralia 425, 1x Koralia 1050, 2X Koralia 1400 (=4275GPH)
Water parameters are:
Phosphate 0.21ppm
Calcium 425ppm
KH/Alkalinity 8.6ppm
Magnesium 1800ppm
Nitrate <10
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
SG 1.025
Temperature at time of testing was 78.9F (daily swing is 77.6-79.4F)


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Man I am really sorry I would be heart broken if I lost my piece.

Phosphates are kinda of high and is there a reason you are running the magnesium at 1800?

Could growth of the coral or surrounding corals diminished the flow?

It looks like STN, because the skeleton is not stark white.

Good luck and I hope you get to the bottom of it.
 
My 2 cents: I'd cut a few frags keeping clear of the poor tissue areas and then dip the main colony in revive or coral rx to see if pests are to blame. Dip in a white container to best see the fallout. If you see aefw or red bugs dip the frags too. (revive has no ill effects on red planet IME)

I've lost colonies before but the frags lived and became new colonies over time. Not great but better than the alternative. Good luck.
 
There is no reason that the magnesium is this high, it just jumped up on me. I have stopped dosing it for now until it drops back down to about 1500.
I fraged off the pieces that I could but from the way that the colony is shaped almost every Brach has an effected area. i am going to see if i can get some revive or coral rx tomorrow and i will try that
 
i would guess that nitrate and phosphate being a lot higher then I would want, combined
with not enough flow for the coral, and not enough light for the coral which seems to be
closer to the bottom then middle.

For the coral to continue to function and live on the bottom side requires a lot of light on
the top with plenty of flow all around it.. in my opinion. It looks like your 250 watt MH has
to cut through 18ish inches of water to reach it?

just guessing here.
 
The underside of your red planet looks like it turned to rock due to lack of flow and light, which is common on wild reefs as well. Do you QT your corals? You may want to do a water change and then check your water params again to make sure all is well. If you are experiencing rapid tissue loss, start fragging the coral.
 
I dipped the colony for 10 min in coral Rx with a small power head blasting it there was for sure two acro eating flatworms that fell off along with a lot of other bugs there were many tiny bugs that came off as well.
So what is my next step I know for sure that there were AEFW on this colony, what do I do next?
 
are you positive it was aefw? because that entails a lot of work to get rid of. i would be
very sure before i go down that path.

the underside was mostly dead and would naturally contain a wide array of small critters...
 
Try dipping a healthy acro and see if AEFWs come off that too... if you search, there are a few threads w/pics of AEFWs for you to compare too.
 
Red planet dying.. RESPONSE.

Red planet dying.. RESPONSE.

Your red planet should recouperate if u give it STRONG light.
It needs to be at the top half of tank. Make sure bulbs are less than 9 months old. Also, your burning the coral w magnesium at 1800..
1380 is PURRRRFECT.... Good luck..
 
Sadly it looks to me like that particular coral is a goner.

Diagnosing coral trouble online is usually a game of guessing, but in your case I think you have several important clues. Your rocks and sand are clean meaning either you have low nutrients or low light and your corals are all beige like tanks from the '90s before 20k intense MH lighting was around. So my guess is you have lighting issues like a) old bulbs b) poor reflectors c) light blocking tank cover d) bulbs of the wrong kelvin or e) any combination there of. Again that's more of a guess, but what's not a guess is the process you need to take to solve the problem. It's important to take one specific step at a time so you can see the results, and sadly that takes a long time (months at least) to find an answer. I only hope you'll share your journey with all of us and post the results once you've come to some conclusions.


Good Luck,

Joe
 
I too lost a big colony the same way. It's a mystery. I was able to save one small frag. It's sad but its the best you can do.
 
Sorry to see that.... I am dealing with trying to save two colonies experincing the same decay mine was easily traced to sandy and extreme fluctuations in temp. Positive though I cut a couple frags from the mother of my red planet and am all ready seeing encrusting. So my 2 cents are cut a couple frags and hope for the best with the mother and at least have a backup so not all is lost
 
Sorry to see this. This particular coral is a real challenge for many, including myself (it's the only coral that won't color up in my tank and doesn't look healthy).
 
In the images provided I do not see any new white tip growth. I agree with others frag it up, perhaps place the frags in different locations in the tank.

I keep in large colony in a Nano with no skimmer with MH lighting, for me it's a very hardy fast grower. For the life of me I can not understand why others with thriving tanks can not keep it, it's a strange coral.

At one point I had red bugs but they did not adversely affect the RP one bit.

I hope fragging it saves it.
 
smtank said:
Ok then, the coral if dying is long dead by now seeing as this thread is from 3/2011, oops.
Click to expand...

That's what I was thinking.

Hopefully this reefer figured out the problem about 9 months ago.

Would be interesting to know if he was able to save it though.
 
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