Superman montipora in distress

[crivero]

I have had my superman monteporo for years. It has always been healthy and has grown in a great way. Lately however it seems to be in distress. I am seeing a green growth that looks like algae. My parameters are perfect.Having just tested the water professionally and personally. Anyone see this before? Looking for help. It really sems to be targeting one side.

  Additi.
Onally what action would you take in mysituation. I would hate to lose it.

 

[griss]

You state your water parameters are perfect but, can you expand on that? Specifically, what are the following readings/test results:
Ammonia
Nitrite
Nitrate
Temperature
pH
Alkalinity
Calcium
Magnesium

Additionally, have you changed or added anything recently?

NOTE: I'm moving this to the proper forum.

 

[crivero]

You state your water parameters are perfect but, can you expand on that? Specifically, what are the following readings/test results:
Ammonia
Nitrite
Nitrate
Temperature
pH
Alkalinity
Calcium
Magnesium

Additionally, have you changed or added anything recently?

NOTE: I'm moving this to the proper forum.

Ammonia - 0
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite - 0
Temp- 77
PH - 8.2
Alk- 143
Calcium - 380
Magnesium - 1360

I did add a power head (gyre) wave maker. I was concerned it was too strong so turned it down, and pointed it further away.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[griss]

Nitrate is low, it should be 1-10 ppm.
Calcium is at the lower level of recommended, it should be 380-450 ppm.
I'm confused by your alkalinity number of 143. Is that in dKH or meq/L? It should be 8-12 dKH or 2.86-4.29 meq/L.

What is your phosphate (I should have asked this in my previous post) level? Phosphate should be 0.01-.0.3 ppm.

Do you have other branching Montis in the tank? If so, are they showing the same issue? It looks like you have a plating Monti (M. capricornis) in the tank, is it losing tissue?

Have you added any corals or changed anything other than the gyre? Changed salt mix, lighting, added a coral, etc.

A couple possibilities:
1. Montipora eating flatworms
2. Alkalinity (depends on what your answer to the above questions re: alk is). Improper alkalinity or swings could cause tissue loss.
3. Increase in flow due to the addition of the gyre. A strong focused flow can cause them to lose tissue.
4. Disease
5. There's a Candy Cane fairly close to it, does it send out sweeper tentacles at night? If so, it could be stinging the Monti.

Regarding water parameters, here's a handy chart that shows what the currently accepted parameters should be.

 

[crivero]

First of all thank you so much for the overwhelming amount of information and response. I greatly appreciate it.

Secondly,I'm sorry. On my chart alkalinity is 142.9 which is an Alk of 8. My Phosphate is at 0. Here are a couple of pics with the lights on. The affected area is also further away from the Candy Cane. Also, I donr have any others in the tank so I can't tell if it would be affecting other areas.

I will definitely check for the Flatwoods.

Thanks.

 

[griss]

No need to thank me

Alk is on the lower end of good.

You might need to bring your nitrate and phosphate up a tiny bit, but I don’t think that’s what’s causing tissue loss.

When you added the gyre, was the flow strongly hitting the Monti?

If you’ve recently (in the past couple months) added ANY coral, rock or sand from a store or another tank, I’d be concerned about flatworms. If not, it’s less likely you have those.

I always dip any coral I get for pests unless it’s from a very trusted source. Basically, I dip all corals unless they come from one or two people I know personally.

 

[griss]

Let’s keep talking through this and we’ll figure it out. @JCOLE any thoughts?

 

[JCOLE]

@crivero sorry about the issues you're having. First, please don't take this the wrong way but your parameters are not perfect. 0 No3 and 0 Po4 is not good. The coral looks pale and more than likely is starving. Your calcium is low and your mag is out of balance with your calcium number. General rule of thumb is 3:1 for calcium and magensium. So if you calcium is 380 then your mag should be around 1,140 which is way too low. Get your calcium up to around 440 and do not dose any magnesium until it starts to fall within range. Need to get your nutrients up by either feeding more or dosing nitrates and phosphates.

From your pictures it doesn't appear this just happened. The STN on the corals have older algae growth and you can see the edge of the flesh is already healed and looks to be growing. Unfortunately, I feel whatever happened in the past to cause this damage is over and there isn't much you can do to reverse what happened. Can you remove the coral from the tank without destroying it? If so, then it could benefit from an Iodine dip.

Personally, I would give it an Iodine dip if possible. Do a couple of water changes, raise calcium and nutrients and then just wait a month or two to see how it goes. If you correct what is making it unhappy then the flesh should grow again over the dead parts but this will take some time though.

Best of luck. We all go through this. I just moved some acros over to my new system and some stags did the same thing. They do this if they are not happy with the conditions they are in.

 

[griss]

@crivero sorry about the issues you're having. First, please don't take this the wrong way but your parameters are not perfect. 0 No3 and 0 Po4 is not good. The coral looks pale and more than likely is starving. Your calcium is low and your mag is out of balance with your calcium number. General rule of thumb is 3:1 for calcium and magensium. So if you calcium is 380 then your mag should be around 1,140 which is way too low. Get your calcium up to around 440 and do not dose any magnesium until it starts to fall within range. Need to get your nutrients up by either feeding more or dosing nitrates and phosphates.

From your pictures it doesn't appear this just happened. The STN on the corals have older algae growth and you can see the edge of the flesh is already healed and looks to be growing. Unfortunately, I feel whatever happened in the past to cause this damage is over and there isn't much you can do to reverse what happened. Can you remove the coral from the tank without destroying it? If so, then it could benefit from an Iodine dip.

Personally, I would give it an Iodine dip if possible. Do a couple of water changes, raise calcium and nutrients and then just wait a month or two to see how it goes. If you correct what is making it unhappy then the flesh should grow again over the dead parts but this will take some time though.

Best of luck. We all go through this. I just moved some acros over to my new system and some stags did the same thing. They do this if they are not happy with the conditions they are in.

Sounds like a good plan. IME, M. digitata are pretty hardy corals and bounce back from things like this fairly quickly given the right conditions.

 

[C.Eymann]

Sounds like a good plan. IME, M. digitata are pretty hardy corals and bounce back from things like this fairly quickly given the right conditions.

100% agree with everything that's been recommended so far, particularly with raising your N/P and getting your mineral levels balanced out like @JCOLE explained

however I wanted to point out a common trend of misconception I have been seeing a lot in the hobby, especially in the US and it might apply here as it looks like OPs coral has wider spaced corallites than M. digitata, but would need better pics to confirm.
Some of the montipora digitatas / "digis" particularly named pieces like "Bubblegum digitata" - which I have also seen sold as Superman digitata like OPs coral and also "forest fire digitata" actually aren't the tough as nails, go-to beginner SPS we know as M. digitata, these two popular corals commonly sold as "digis" are actually montipora samarensis, which seem to be substantially more finicky for many reefers than actual M.digitata

I have seen even fairly experienced SPS keepers including bubblegum "digis" in their first batch of hardy "tester" corals in new systems where the green slimer acro, monti "cap" , stylophora etc etc from the batch do great but their thought to be bulletproof bubblegum "digi" frag fades away and dies which leads to some confusion. It's a case of mistaken identity, in the farm systems at work, I use bubble gum and forest fire colonies as one of my indicator corals, if something in the system is "off" they seem to be the first to show it via reduced polyp extension. In my experience they are infact one of the more difficult species of montipora to keep happy.
It seems that many vendors in Europe do list these corals as the correct species, but almost none do here in the US.
If you compare a bubble gum or forest fire M. samarensis next to a classic red or green M. digitata up close the morphologies are noticeably different, M. samarensis has wider spaced slightly immersed corallites separated by prominent coenstrum ridges with branches typically fanning out a bit more towards the growth tips than M. digitata.

OP, take the wise advice on adjusting your parameters as other users have instructed and hopefully it will pull through! Keep us updated

 

[griss]

@C.Eymann I haven’t kept Montis in decades so, thanks for the updated info. I gravitated to Acros a long time ago, then got into Caribbean corals and now getting back into Acros.

 

[C.Eymann]

@C.Eymann I haven’t kept Montis in decades so, thanks for the updated info. I gravitated to Acros a long time ago, then got into Caribbean corals and now getting back into Acros.

Id love to setup a Caribbean biotope one day, but we are pretty much limited to gorgonians, sponges, ricordia/ shrooms and a few zoas. I drool sometimes when I'm browsing through Caribbean stony species in Corals of the World.

 

[griss]

Id love to setup a Caribbean biotope one day, but we are pretty much limited to gorgonians, sponges, ricordia/ shrooms and a few zoas. I drool sometimes when I'm browsing through Caribbean stony species in Corals of the World.

I’ve got a couple Caribbean stonies that grew out of my live rock. Porites and I can’t remember what the other one is.

 

[C.Eymann]

I’ve got a couple Caribbean stonies that grew out of my live rock. Porites and I can’t remember what the other one is.

I must say, I'm quite jealous. I have thought about ordering some mariculture Florida keys live rock from KP Aquatics mid fall after the spawn and driving down to pick it up/ transporting it in bins of water hoping there is some settled larvae of porites, eusmilia, agracia or maybe even some a. cervicornis present on the rock.

 

[griss]

I’d kill for a. Cervicornis.

My Porites is out of control, I actually might have to prune/kill it back.
Here’s a really bad pic of the other stony I got.

 

[griss]

I’d kill for a. Cervicornis.

My Porites is out of control, I actually might have to prune/kill it back.
Here’s a really bad pic of the other stony I got.

For the record, that wasn’t on the rock when I got it. It grew after the rock had been in the tank a while. And, yes, that pic is on a frag plug

 

[C.Eymann]

Very cool, obviously pic is bad, but id probably start off with comparing it to mussa angulosa perhaps.
I'm super jelly, I know you have been in the hobby for a very long time ,did you acquire the rock from an Atlantic mariculture live rock outfit? Or did you acquire the rock before the 91' Ban ?

 

[griss]

Very cool, obviously pic is bad, but id probably start off with comparing it to mussa angulosa perhaps.
I'm super jelly, I know you have been in the hobby for a very long time ,did you acquire the rock from an Atlantic mariculture live rock outfit? Or did you acquire the rock before the 91' Ban ?

It’s maricultured rock from KP.

Thread 'Caribbean Stony Corals'

Mar 24, 2024

Yes, it’s possible to have Caribbean stony corals.

Here’s just a tiny bit of the Porites Porites I received several years ago on my KP Aquatics live rock.

• griss
• Replies: 0
• Forum: SPS Keepers

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