Issues with Euphylia

Tina.ferrari · Nov 27, 2018

Hi all.

This is my first post here. For the last 6 months or so I have been having issues with eyphylia.
First off, a bit of info about my tank:

90L 45cm cube with a pair of ocellaris clowns, a blue green chromis, a yellow assessor, coral banded shrimp, couple of hermits, turbos, trochus, nassarius and red fromia star.
Mixed reef that has been running for about 2 years now.
Pulsing flow varying from 35X at night to 50X roughly during the day.
AI prime for lighting.

Parameters:
- 7.5dkh alkalinity deviating by 0.2dkh in the last few months
- 410ppm calcium has dropped from 415 in the last few months
-1290ppm magnesium which was naturally dropped from 1330ppm to match the NSW i use for weekly 20% water changes.
- Nitrates are at around the 3ppm mark and phosphate is undetectable on Salifert and Aquaforest. ICP done a few months ago showed 0.04ppm but chances are they were elevated at the time as I didnt do a water change for a while when I collected the sample. I do want a reading of phosphate but its difficult to get despite feeding pretty heavily.

ICP showed elevated aluminium (LFS said it wasn't too high) and low iodine despite dosing (results attached).

Issue i have been having seems to pretty much affect euphylia. It started with a frogspawn that I had for a year and a half. It started shrinking in areas and bleaching in other areas then the polyps just bailed. Other half was for another couple of months and then bailed. I also had half a torch polyp bail also (not 100% if that was from too much flow). Also had a hammer starting to shrink from the outside in and what looked like a sort of cotton growth around the outside. I ended up losing that one. The same growth started happening on another hammer. This has only happened to 2. The others started shrinking from the outside in. A few days ago i took out all my euphyllia and dipped them all instead of just the affected one. Didn't see anything that was alive fall off. I did notice a dark coloured 'bug' a fair bit smaller than an amphipod with a large white spot near the head and another at the rear. This didnt come out in any of the dips so I don't know if they are the culprit. After some mixed advice, I will be upping the dosing of iodine.

Hopefully the dipping has ceased the issue but does anyone have any insight on what it could possibly be? I know it's difficult to answer but just seeing if anyone has some insight.

Thanks

Retro Reefer · Nov 27, 2018

Welcome to R2R! I don’t see anything obvious with your parameters, but I like to keep my dkh a little higher than 7.5.. have you checked for stray voltage?

Tina.ferrari · Nov 27, 2018

Tina.ferrari · Nov 27, 2018

Retro Reefer said:
Welcome to R2R! I don’t see anything obvious with your parameters, but I like to keep my dkh a little higher than 7.5.. have you checked for stray voltage?

New
Thanks for the welcome retro reefer

As i use natural salt water for changes, it would bring down the alkalinity value each time I do a water change. I did wanna keep it at 8dkh but i figured stability was more important and so long as I keep it above 7dkh its within an acceptable range. It used to actually be a lot lower for quite a while before i got into sps without any issues. Out of curiosity, have you noticed any major difference with keeping alkalinity at 7dkh in comparison to higher levels?

I actually haven't checked for stray voltage. I don't even know how to lol ;Facepalm how do i do that?

Thanks again for your response

Retro Reefer · Nov 27, 2018

Nothing definitive but my corals seem to grow better if I keep my dkh above 8 but stability is probably most important in the long run.. to check for stray voltage you just need a cheap multi meter, there are some good videos on YouTube showing the process.

Tina.ferrari · Nov 27, 2018

Retro Reefer said:
Nothing definitive but my corals seem to grow better if I keep my dkh above 8 but stability is probably most important in the long run.. to check for stray voltage you just need a cheap multi meter, there are some good videos on YouTube showing the process.

Hmm interesting! I dont feel like im getting shocked when i touch the tank and i feel that maybe if it was voltage it would be generalised through out the tank rather than just euphyllia but it is definitely a good suggestion and something worth checking. Cheers

Sorcha2 · Nov 27, 2018

Don't feel bad. I can't keep any sort of euphila either. It just wastes away in my tanks. I do pretty well with other LPS coral just not those ones. Sometimes there are corals that are just not good fits for our tanks and we never figure out why.

Tina.ferrari · Nov 27, 2018

Sorcha2 said:
Don't feel bad. I can't keep any sort of euphila either. It just wastes away in my tanks. I do pretty well with other LPS coral just not those ones. Sometimes there are corals that are just not good fits for our tanks and we never figure out why.

Does suck when you can't keep a specific coral in the tank and you don't know why :/ only thing that stumps me is that i had been keeping frogspawns, torches and hammers in that tank since i first even got coral but now in the last few months, they seem to slowly go down hill. Not all but a fair few! The frogspawn that bailed was my first coral ever so I was definitely upset to see that go! Has me pretty stumped!

Retro Reefer · Nov 27, 2018

Tina.ferrari said:
Hmm interesting! I dont feel like im getting shocked when i touch the tank and i feel that maybe if it was voltage it would be generalised through out the tank rather than just euphyllia but it is definitely a good suggestion and something worth checking. Cheers

You won’t always feel anything if you have a voltage leak in your tank but since your parameters seem ok it would be worth checking out.. another thing you may investigate is your temperature as one of the biggest culprits of LPS polyp bail out is temp swings, I recently had a issue where my controller failed and even though it said my tank was 78 when I checked it with a NSF prob my water was actually only 74 deg.. I had several LPS during this event that where not happy including receding flesh.

Tina.ferrari · Nov 27, 2018

Retro Reefer said:
You won’t always feel anything if you have a voltage leak in your tank but since your parameters seem ok it would be worth checking out.. another thing you may investigate is your temperature as one of the biggest culprits of LPS polyp bail out is temp swings, I recently had a issue where my controller failed and even though it said my tank was 78 when I checked it with a NSF prob my water was actually only 74 deg.. I had several LPS during this event that where not happy including receding flesh.

Ah ok that makes sense. Will definitely check it out

just need to find a volt meter.
I think my temperature is pretty alright regarding swings. I have 2 heaters and an external thermometer i also use to check and my chiller is complete overkill rated for 400L on my 90L tank so it cools down quite quickly. What do you use to measure temperature?