Two out of five corals doing bad, can't figure out why.

[Mmckibben]

Hi, I need a little help. So my Candy cane coral, and Wild Eye Favia are doing bad. The candy can corals polyps have been 1/5 their normal size for around two weeks. The Favia's polyps have receded half way, and some look as if they are melting. Both have a very slight loss of pigmentation. I checked ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosophate, calcium, alkaline, magnesium, pH, and salinity; all check out fine. My sps and soft corals are doing fine. The only other LPS i have is a Wisker coral who has ups and downs, one minute he'll be big and healthy... ten minutes later he's all closed up. I first though it was my peppermint shrimps fault, but they don't go after the corals closer to their cave. I tend to get theses flat worms every other month, but they don't hang out on the coral, just the glass. My second guess is they don't like my phosphate reactor (some one told me some corals don't). I also have what look like the parasitic little white snails that eat other snails, and clams. They don't go near any of my snails, and I have no clams. That sums up all the problems, and possible causes I could thin of. If any one has any Idea to what could be causing this, I need you help.

Thanks for you time and help, Mike.

 

[Mmckibben]

Please, any thoughts are welcome.

 

[superkat]

hey there....the alk was okay? I can't keep candy coral to save my life. I have a couple that are doing okay...but not great. I did notice that whenever I did a water change...they perked back up. So i'm wondering what salt you use, and what you are dosing, if anything. If the reactor may be the problem, remove it for a day and see what happens. Flat worms are nasty insidious little creatures...if they are on the glass, they are on the coral. Lost whiskers to that myself. Hope you find an answer. Kat.

 

[Mmckibben]

Well, I found an answer, and it was the "water prof" metal plumping clams I had. Got a poly PAD, and now things are doing good. As for the flat worms, they are only on the glass. They were also there when the corals were doing well. Don't see them on the tops or bottoms of the corals. The flat worms I have don't look like the bad kind and stay smaller than a grain of rice. Do you dose Iodine? My old aquarium had lots of candy cane corals, and I found that they did better with small doses of iodine. You also need to feed candy cane corals once a week. you can either use plankton, or spot feed them at night with brine shrimp. I like spot feeding better because it doesn't raise nitrates as much.