Strawberry Shortcake Acro Faded

[AaronHartwell]

Hey everyone,

I have a Strawberry Shortcake Acro that has lost most of it's color. I have a mixed tank with roughly half SPS and half LPS. Everything looks great except the Strawberry.

It's encrusting at the attach point, growing, and has great polyp extension but the color has faded. Any ideas? I'm guessing it's light related but can't tell if it needs more or less light. It's currently in the middle of a 34 gallon Solana. The light is a 150W metal halide running at 14k.

Water flow is good. Water params are kept rock solid with weekly water changes and three dosing pumps.

Here are my params:
SG 1.025
Temp 76
Alk 9
Calc 420
Mag 1350
Nitrate 0
Phosphate 0

I've attached a photo. It's not quite as bad as the picture would imply.

Ideas?

 

[Psionicdragon]

It looks bleached, but at the same time, did you check for pests?

Did you light acclimate it slowly?

 

[Psionicdragon]

Wait...is your Mag correct??? 350????

 

[gon08]

Wow pretty severe. Anyway you can get a better picture?
Also is it the only coral affected?

 

[AaronHartwell]

It's been in the tank for a couple of months. I put it low and then moved to the middle to acclimate.

Sorry, my mag is 1350. I fixed the typo in the original post.

Yeah, everything else seems fine.

 

[Kreeger1]

Doesn't look like a strawberry shortcake, looks like the shades of fall acro. can you move it to lower light to help it recover some?

 

[AaronHartwell]

Here's a slightly better picture of the faded coral and one that shows some of the other corals growing around it.

Yeah, I can move it to lower light if it seems like that'd be the right thing to do. I wasn't sure if maybe it wasn't getting enough light.

Aaron

 

[dnov99]

I would check for AEFW, it looks like there may be some bite marks on there, but its tough to tell. Blast it with a turkey baster or dip it if you can.

 

[AaronHartwell]

Flatworms eh? Ok, I'll check. Will treating the whole tank with Flatworm Exit solve the problem if it turns out to be AEFW?

 

[tankaddict]

If you got AEFW the exit stuff wont cut it. These pest are the toughest things to rid. Once you get them you just gotta live with them and remove as many as possible. Hopefully its just bleached.

 

[blakers82]

I know many, including myself, that use heavy doses of Flatworm Exit in coral dips (in hopes of eradicating planaria and atleast angering any AEFW enough to help with removal from coral). I have not heard any success stories in using Flatworm Exit for an in tank treatment of AEFWs. Removal of acropora coral to quarantine tank and starving them out from the display system seems to be the most preached and successful route for total erradication. I was one of those guys that removed my acropora from my system for a long time when I found worms on my corals. I lost a good number of corals and expected some casualties. I now quarantine, lol. Many simply live with AEFWs and periodically blow them off the corals with a powerhead. This can be done and corals can be healthy. In short, Flatworm Exit most likely will not cure your aquarium of AEFWs. I'm sure we all wish it was that easy.

That being said, I can't tell from the pic if this is the culprit or not. I was just filling you in on my AEFW experience.

 

[dnov99]

FWE will do nothing to them. The coral needs to be dipped in something like coral RX pro or Revive, this is usually enough to irritate the worm and knock them off the coral.

Good luck, hopefully its not AEFW.

 

[Reefsi]

First put the coral in a white bottom container with tank water and use a turkey baster and bast it down. If you have AEFW you will see them on the white container.

 

[AaronHartwell]

Thanks for the info guys. I did some research on AEFW. They sound nasty.

I'll do the white container test. Fingers crossed...

 

[AaronHartwell]

I removed the coral from the rock and put it in a white bowel with some coralRX and my tank water. After swishing it around for 5-7 minutes there was nothing visible in the bowl. Doing this also allowed me to get a much closer look at the coral. I didn't see any bite marks that others mentioned. I went ahead and reattached the coral towards the bottom of the tank in a spot that gets less light than it was getting before. We'll see how it does in the new spot.

Thanks for all the advice guys.

Aaron