what the heck is wrong

greg1786

greg1786

Active member
I noticed a few days ago that along the " trunk" of my purple stylo, it had turned white and looked almost like it was losing tissue. After further inspection, it is just extremely bleached but only in this one tiny area. I am now noticing tonight that on the only other acro in the tank that is actually a decent sized colony has developed the same bleaching or tissue loss in the exact same place. it literally happened overnight for both of them and both pieces it happened in the area beneath all the top branches where no light can get to the base. here is pictures for reference. let me know what you guys think and if this is something to be worried about or just normal.
 
I have a green stylo and notice bleaching on the parts underneath due to lack of light. But if this happened overnight I'd be checking water quality.
 
I check everything weekly and just checked earlier tonight here were the params. Alk 8.2, cal 440, mg 1300, po4 .02, no3 undetectable(red sea), sg 1.025, temp 79.2. Everything else is doing extremely well in fact lately the tank has been in better shape than its ever been. The only major change ive made recently was switching from t5s to MH but I would think if that were the issue more would be affected and it would be the areas where the light is hitting the corals most. Otherwise I started vodka dosing but tonight was the 47th day and ive been very meticulous about documenting the doseage and keeping track of my po4 and no3. Ive been at the current dose of 1.8ml for the last 12 days.
 
Not 1.8ml for the vodka sry that was a brain fart on my part its actually currently at 2.3 ml and it has been for 12 days
 
I have seen this happen many times and most of the time when everything checks out with water quality and no pest it comes down to Sps not feeding. Try feeding your Sps by target or entire tank and see if you see any change for the better. There are my my types of Sps foods out there. I personally like pappone and reef booster to mention two
Hope this helps
 
Feed your tank with Oyster Eggs and it should come back. My SPS were starving and i thought I had some issues with my water quality. After purchasing an oyster eggs and started feeding the tank a little more than what I usually feed my fish ( pinch daily ) , my sps started coloring up and splitting within 2 weeks. Just don't overfeed because you'll have some algae issues.

Goodluck.
 
Thanks guys i will try upping their feeding. I target feed about once a week and soak the food in reef energy a&b for aminos but with the vodka dosing and lowering nutrients it definitely stands to reason i need to increase to every day or every other day. I use goniopower, rods coral food, algagen coral smoothie, and a homemade blend
 
trueblackpercula said:
I have seen this happen many times and most of the time when everything checks out with water quality and no pest it comes down to Sps not feeding. Try feeding your Sps by target or entire tank and see if you see any change for the better. There are my my types of Sps foods out there. I personally like pappone and reef booster to mention two
Hope this helps
Click to expand...


Any chance that the alk at 8.2 is too high with the minimal po4 and undetectable nitrates?
 
greg1786 said:
Any chance that the alk at 8.2 is too high with the minimal po4 and undetectable nitrates?
Click to expand...

Well there are several threads on Reefcentral that talk about this issue. I dont think 8 or even 9 is bad when running ULNS it's when you start getting. 9.5 and higher is when thing change for the worse. But there are a few around here that break all the rules and the have outstanding reefs but that crowd is not the norm.

Also running to much GFO can cause Sps to get upset.

Hope this helps

Michael
 
I dont run gfo cause of vodka dosing and only minimal carbon. I am noticing a third acro today with this odd stn in the base its really starting to worry me now
 
greg1786 said:
I dont run gfo cause of vodka dosing and only minimal carbon. I am noticing a third acro today with this odd stn in the base its really starting to worry me now
Click to expand...

I'd suggest a water change and knocking off the carbon dosing to see if things start to improve.
 
greg1786 said:
Rods coral food, homemade blend, coral smoothie, goniopower.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good selection of food so now I am stumped. Hey wait a second here two thing just came to mind while typing this. First do you have and matrix crabs or hermits etc? Seeing it's at the base I am thinking maybe it's a critter picking at them at night. Second idea that comes to mind is, are the foods you are feeding contain sugar ? You maybe be over doing it with carbon dosing and if the foods have it as well then your stripping the tank to fast. These are just some ideas for you to think about.

Michael
 
trueblackpercula said:
Sounds like a good selection of food so now I am stumped. Hey wait a second here two thing just came to mind while typing this. First do you have and matrix crabs or hermits etc? Seeing it's at the base I am thinking maybe it's a critter picking at them at night. Second idea that comes to mind is, are the foods you are feeding contain sugar ? You maybe be over doing it with carbon dosing and if the foods have it as well then your stripping the tank to fast. These are just some ideas for you to think about.



Michael
Click to expand...


No crabs of any kind. In fact, nothing with claws goes anywhere near my reef tank after a couple peppermint shrimp went rogue on me a couple years back. I actually think I figured it out last night. I spent hours on here searching for similar situations and the one that stuck out to me more than any was AEFW. I kept dismissing it because I always dip everything in bayer and inspect it thoroughly. After pulling a few acros that didnt have the base recession, I realized that upon further inspection about 75% of my acros had bitemarks and or eggs on the backs and undersides of branches. I removed the three big colonies and a few frags and dipped them in bayer to find a TON of adult flatworms and eggs😔. I removed all frags from my frag tank and am going to give it about 4 weeks with no acros just in case any AEFWs made it to the frag tank. I will continue dipping the acros in dt each week until frag tank has gone through its 4 week "acro fallow" time. Then I plan to begin a bayer treatment dipping all acros and then placing them in the frag tank until I can get the DT acroless so the aefw can die out. I plan to do an eight week dipping protocol while in the frag tank. If anyone has any suggestions or anything to add im very open to anything at this point
 
whats your skimmate look like? pee colored or sludge brown or somewhere in between. I might lower your water level for the skimmer and feed a bid more if its towards the pee end of the spectrum. I just mention this because its how I keep my nutrients in check
 
animalkingdom said:
whats your skimmate look like? pee colored or sludge brown or somewhere in between. I might lower your water level for the skimmer and feed a bid more if its towards the pee end of the spectrum. I just mention this because its how I keep my nutrients in check
Click to expand...


I skim on the dry side its sludgy stank dark brown. Im 99.9% sure its aefw unfortunately
 
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