Coral dying?

[Bitcoin Reefer]

It looks like you may have dinoflagellates, zero nitrates and the brown patches on the sand bed seems consistent with it. An option would be to dose calcium nitrate, potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate to elevate your inorganic nutrients.
not sure if that’s the cause for your corals not doing well although it may well be connected

I am not sure but I think the stuff on sand is GHA which is main thing I’ve been battling for a while. Doesn’t look like images of dinoflagellates I see online. Here is a closer picture if you can give more feedback

 

[Cali Reef Life]

Do you have any cuc in that tank as well hermits snails?

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

On the nitrates no but I'm assuming the brain coral wasn't doing the best before you got him. Think there are a bunch of things that can stress a coral out. If you have multiple changes well a coral is recovering it only takes a couple of things to put it over the edge. Your zoas are going to be fine. I just think your brain coral might not make it. Run some carbon work on the algae problem and be consistent with parameters . Keep it simple and stable and you will have long term success. Siphon the algae out every water change.

Good point. Ya I think it may have been weak or damaged when I bought it. I did notice skeleton showing maybe next day or two? I should’ve looked closer.

I actually never have tried siphoning the GHA. I normally pull it by hand every week or so. I use a pump to drain for water change so I don’t even have a siphon. I do 100 gallon water change as it’s a 300 gallon tank with 40 gallon sump/refugium. Would take long time siphoning i think haha.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Do you have any cuc in that tank as well hermits snails?

Ya

4 medium/large trochus snails
4 nasarius snails
Like 8 hermit crabs
3 small Sea Hares
2 tuxedo urchins
Cleaner shrimp
Fire shrimp
Banded shrimp
Had 5 tangs before ich outbreak. Now 2 in hospital tank.
Xmas wrasse is also in hospital tank

Lately thinking I may need a lot more CUC. What do you think for 300 gallon?

We’ve bought a lot more snails but they never last long for us. I’m reading trochus snails are more durable and can breed in tank, so just bought those 4 I mentioned above.

 

[Cali Reef Life]

Good point. Ya I think it may have been weak or damaged when I bought it. I did notice skeleton showing maybe next day or two? I should’ve looked closer.

I actually never have tried siphoning the GHA. I normally pull it by hand every week or so. I use a pump to drain for water change so I don’t even have a siphon. I do 100 gallon water change as it’s a 300 gallon tank with 40 gallon sump/refugium. Would take long time siphoning i think haha.

I totally understand that but go get between a half inch and 1 inch siphon at home depot or tubing online and pull out some water well using siphon to pull algae out. Yes you can get some turbo snails or margarita. Low calcium and high mag can kill snails. Snails need to be acclimated slowly. I am assuming you don't test for mag since not posted or I missed it.

Tip get the siphon a little longer then you think you need like 7-10 feet . Think of it this way you pull algae out by hand 20% of it floats around tank then dies to give food to the next cycle of algae. Also with the siphon you can suck out all the crap in the rock so less of a big water change and more of a maintenance for a tank that size. You can also use this to get some of algae off rock.

 

[Reef-_-Noob]

A Lot of recession going on here. Calcium slightly low and keep an eye on alk as it is at low end of dsclae and both balance together. Phosphate elevated.
Are you using tap water from faucet or RODI water ?
What test kits are you using?

Some causes other than mentioned above:
temperature to warm
Salinity elevated
levated or Low nutrients
Inadequate light intensity
Too much flow
Toxins from leathers or cyano/dino
Inadequate maintenance

I'm just a noob but the first remedy that worked for my corals was lowering the the salinity. I had a couple frags and they were not looking good, all heading south.
After a top off one day I noticed them perk up so I added fresh water again. I was in the .26 .27 range. It dropped to about .24 and now corals are growing for about 1 month. Maybe my hydrometer isn't accurate**

Here's a pic of my hammer. It was in full polyp evacuation mode prolly had about 10 polyps left. You know those pics of hammers when reefer say "yea thats a goner"? That was my hammer. It's still recovering and doesn't have much color but looks like he will make it. Just a suggestion for ya that is pretty simple won't break the bank. But I am also just a noob.

 

[Reef-_-Noob]

Ya

4 medium/large trochus snails
4 nasarius snails
Like 8 hermit crabs
3 small Sea Hares
2 tuxedo urchins
Cleaner shrimp
Fire shrimp
Banded shrimp
Had 5 tangs before ich outbreak. Now 2 in hospital tank.
Xmas wrasse is also in hospital tank

Lately thinking I may need a lot more CUC. What do you think for 300 gallon?

We’ve bought a lot more snails but they never last long for us. I’m reading trochus snails are more durable and can breed in tank, so just bought those 4 I mentioned above.

Just bought 15 trochus for my 100 gallon tank. They actually remove all the algae on the rocks and glass but man are they slow. They cover only a couple inches a day it seems. Thinking about getting more! The sand has been difficult tho, that's been manual work, lucky if I clean an inch a day

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I totally understand that but go get between a half inch and 1 inch siphon at home depot or tubing online and pull out some water well using siphon to pull algae out. Yes you can get some turbo snails or margarita. Low calcium and high mag can kill snails. Snails need to be acclimated slowly. I am assuming you don't test for mag since not posted or I missed it.

Tip get the siphon a little longer then you think you need like 7-10 feet . Think of it this way you pull algae out by hand 20% of it floats around tank then dies to give food to the next cycle of algae. Also with the siphon you can suck out all the crap in the rock so less of a big water change and more of a maintenance for a tank that size. You can also use this to get some of algae off rock.

Interesting. Ya we had low calcium for a while around 350. Maybe that was problem with snails?! Thanks!

I ordered the toothbrush thing you linked!

I’ve been pulling the GHA by hand then use net to grab most of the floating GHA. I’ll try siphon though!

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I totally understand that but go get between a half inch and 1 inch siphon at home depot or tubing online and pull out some water well using siphon to pull algae out. Yes you can get some turbo snails or margarita. Low calcium and high mag can kill snails. Snails need to be acclimated slowly. I am assuming you don't test for mag since not posted or I missed it.

Tip get the siphon a little longer then you think you need like 7-10 feet . Think of it this way you pull algae out by hand 20% of it floats around tank then dies to give food to the next cycle of algae. Also with the siphon you can suck out all the crap in the rock so less of a big water change and more of a maintenance for a tank that size. You can also use this to get some of algae off rock.

Are turbo or margarita hardy? From my experience and what I read online, turbos generally no, especially the Mexican ones which I can’t tell difference lol. Margarita I can’t remember if we’ve tried.

I got Trochus now because they apparently are more hardy and breed in tank so essentially last forever if they keep breeding!

 

[Cali Reef Life]

Are turbo or margarita hardy? From my experience and what I read online, turbos generally no, especially the Mexican ones which I can’t tell difference lol. Margarita I can’t remember if we’ve tried.

I got Trochus now because they apparently are more hardy and breed in tank so essentially last forever if they keep breeding!

I get different types of snails because certain snails like different types of algae I believe Trochus eat film algae dinos cyano but do not prefer Green hair which you have. Still great snail but certain snails eat different types of algae. You need to flip them if they fall over but I don't have issues with them.

 

[vetteguy53081]

RODI reads 0

using Hannah for phosphate and nitrates, API for calcium and alkalinity.

78 is too warm?

salinity 1.0255 too high? What do you recommend? When I had lower salinity my calc and alk were even lower, so I increased my salinity with water changes and it helped bring up calc and alk.

light intensity too low? I read that brains don’t need much light? All the coral nearby it look amazing. Chalice, Zoas, acropora, daisy polyp, torch, ricordea mushroom.

flow doesn’t seem too high. I can try to post a video if that would help, but I couldn’t post videos in the past on R2R for some reason.

toxins from leathers, interesting. I do have Kenya trees spreading. I think that’s the only leather I have, but unsure if others may be classified as leathers. I have had several sea hares die over the last 2 months. Maybe concern?

inadequate maintenance: I spend probably 1-2 hours on tank almost daily, except over last couple weeks of vacation.

78 ideal. I gave you reasons this MAY happen, not causes.
As for Kenyii- they too were my problem child for SPS- but now eliminated, See pic as to how bad they got:

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

78 ideal. I gave you reasons this MAY happen, not causes.
As for Kenyii- they too were my problem child for SPS- but now eliminated, See pic as to how bad they got:

Oh wow lol. My Kenya is dropping lots of babies. I have been trying to put all the babies back on the rock with the mother so they all stay together lol

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Bump. It’s not improving, and the Zoa is looking worse probably almost dead. Any ideas guys?

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Bump. It’s not improving, and the Zoa is looking worse probably almost dead. Any ideas guys?

Here is Zoa at the moment. The dying one is on right and a healthy one is on the left.

if it was just one coral dying I wouldn’t be so concerned as I know weird stuff happens, but since the brain and Zoa are both dying, I’m concerned and want to find problem before others have issues.

should I remove Zoa if it seems likely it won’t make it? Can it release poisons if it dies?

We’ve only lost 1 coral ever out of like 15, that was a very small Xenia that died when our corals all showed issues during tropic Marin salt contamination. Losing 2 at once now is very concerning.

 

[Reef-_-Noob]

Maybe the flow is causing some disturbance in that area. The 2 problem corals are in the same zone. Just an observation...

 

[Reef-_-Noob]

How long have all of the corals been in the tank? They have pretty nice colors

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

How long have all of the corals been in the tank? They have pretty nice colors

Many in the pic are only 3 weeks old. I have many others though that have been in tank up to 7 or 8 months. Tank is like 9-12 months old I forget exactly when we got it lol.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Here is our Goniopora. It’s tripled in size in about 3-4 months

Also Pagoda looks super health, but hasn’t grown a crazy amount. Maybe 30% increase in like 4-5 months.

Two candy canes we got at same time. One has one new mouth in 4-5 months which seems very slow? The kryptonite has no new heads, but seems like it is getting ready to split?

Red mushroom has tripled in size in 5 months.

one Zoa we bought like 7 months ago has gone from 6 heads I think to 18

orange Montipora maybe tripled in 5 months

green slimer has only increased by like 10-20% in 5 months.

anemone has 4x’ed in 8 months.

We had very low calcium for a while around 340-360 because we weren’t mixing enough salt our salinity was like 1.024. Once we increased to 1.0255 calcium is a bit better and we’re dosing calcium now slightly.

we also had poison or whatever from tropic Marin for like 2 months until we figured it out, and in last 2 months since then did many water changes.

things are overall good except the lobo and that one zoa.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Ok so I did Koral MD dip. The Zoa heads were dangling so i figure I’ll dip the Zoa to see if I find any perpetrators lol. Also dipped the lobophyllia.

attached photos.

Off the Lobophyllia came maybe 50+ small bugs I assume are multiple, at least 3 or 4 types of copepods? Also 1 weird creature I think I’ve seen pictures of. Moves a little like a shrimp in the dip. Squiggles around, curls it’s lower end in at some points, not a shrimp though.

1st picture is of him (came off lobo and another of his species that came off the Zoa.

2nd in sunlight photo is same guy, you can see white dot on him.

3rd is a bristleworm, probably harmless? Came off Zoa.

4th photo is crack in base of lobo. The weird creature from first photos lived in there. I saw something popping it’s head out, which is why I decided to dip. He came out of that crack.

5th photo is an odd man made hole drilled in bottom. Maybe drilled in the rock before this coral grew on it?

6th is showing that I can see my blue glove through the mouth on the right. It has hole in the mouth and that’s the same side that man made hole is drilled, so I can see all the way through.

7th is a smooth worm, maybe spionid? Has 2 antennae that come out here and there.

any ID on this critter with white spot