Coral slowly dies

[adamsfour]

The Green coral in the attached photo has been going strong for years. All of sudden it’s loosing its color and dying. Check all the levels and they are fine and all other corals are normal. In an attempt to savage some are have frag off some parts. Don’t know if that works any idea what’s going on and is there a way to stop the loss before it consumes the whole coral.

 

[Euphyllia97]

In what way is it dying? Losing skin at the tips? At the base?

You say parameters are fine. What are they?

Sometimes more experienced reefers can find a correlation between your coral behaviour and parameters that look “fine”.

Do you have nutrients in the water?

 

[adamsfour]

Calcium 410, Alkalinity 9.06, mag 1300 Phosphate near .19, Nitrate 1.6, Nitrite .009, PH 8.35, temp 78F

 

[Bxr126]

Phosphate is way too high. Need to get that down under .1. Ideally around .05.

 

[Euphyllia97]

Phos and nitrates should have a different ratio. Try lowering your phosphate as it is quite high. Maybe increase nitrate to 5 ppm.

Your phos alone could be stressing out your coral. It might also be high lighting and low nitrates.

In what way is it dying?

 

[Silent]

You should provide picture of referenced dying or diseased part of coral.

 

[adamsfour]

Update: seems to be affecting another coral now. Somewhere I read there is a disease that can kill off corals but I can’t seem to find it. I did a large water change and phosphate are down to .05 now. Any ideas on how to stop the progression.

 

[najer]

As above, can you get pics of the damage?

 

[adamsfour]

this is all that is left of a large coral that all turned white like bottom. I thought I had stopped it from spreading but it clearly not. Second coral doing similar

 

[adamsfour]

Been during a of searches and it appears to be stony coral tissue loss disease. Doesn't appears to be any good treatment. One source indicates you can try to cut coral above dead area and try to Fire Stop the spread.

 

[Uncle99]

Is that a torch to the right?
Is it stinging it’s neighbor?

 

[adamsfour]

Yes it is but I just move the coral there after cutting away a dead section. They are actually no where near each other. Plus other Stoney coral is on other side of tank and showing identical symptoms

 

[OrionN]

Check your water. RO or RO/DI. A friend of mine lost a lot of corals due to Houston water district start using Chloramines to treat water instead of Chlorine.
Better yet, add an inline TDS sensor to your RO unit to monitor the quality of your RO water.
There are maything that can go wrong result in coral not doing well, but this can be one of those. Of course good tank maintenance is a must to prevent "old tank syndrome".

 

[adamsfour]

I do monitor my RO water but thanks for the suggestion.