Joe The Coral Help...

TruRacr314x · Jun 9, 2014

I'm a bit devastated right now as I came home tonight to find my Joe The Coral in pretty bad shape. As a backstory...this coral has been in my tank for quite some time and has grown and looked fantastic. This past weekend, I was gone Thurs-Sun...and wasn't able to see my tank under lighting until this evening. Wednesday night it looked great...tonight, terrible. I looked around the tank to see if I could find anything else in distress, but everything else seems perfectly fine. I decided to test the water to see if something had jumped out of whack. Here are my results...

Alk 9.8
Calc 375
Mag 1300
Nitrates 5-10
PH 8.1
Temp 77.6*

Everything is pretty much in line with where it normally is. I have an ATO and monitored my tank via webcam throughout the weekend..so no evap issues. I have an automatic feeder for pellets..but that's pretty much all the tank was fed. I've got a few guesses...but I'd like you guys to look at the pics and see if you can lead me in the right direction.

Sorry for the crappy cell pics....

As a comparison so you can see the difference...the color pretty much resembled this other piece in my tank. You can also see this coral in the background of the 1st pic for color comparison.

For a better description...the branches which were deep blues and greens now appear almost as a browned out color. It seems to have a white film on it. The polyps are still extending, but not nearly as much as before. Only the tips seem to have kept the blue/green coloring...

So what are you thoughts? Something eating the skin? Stinging from something?

Tahoe61 · Jun 9, 2014

My Pocillopora used to pack a mean punch. I caught it trying to kill my acropora a couple times, they were about an inch or two away. All other corals are fine?

TruRacr314x · Jun 9, 2014

Tahoe61 said:
My Pocillopora used to pack a mean punch. I caught it trying to kill my acropora a couple times, they were about an inch or two away. All other corals are fine?

Everything else looks perfect. The Pocillopora has been right next to it for prob 6 months...you think it could be attacking it?

Tahoe61 · Jun 9, 2014

All I know is that I was surprised when my Pocillopora was able to kill of branches of my Red Planet. I had to give the Pocillopora frags a rack of their own because they kept killing all the corals around them. The white film you describe sounds like something is stinging it.

You've ruled out all fish?

Joe the Coral is one of my favorites, I hope you figure it out and can save it. Might start thinking about fragging off some of the unaffected pieces.

TruRacr314x · Jun 9, 2014

Tahoe61 said:
All I know is that I was surprised when my Pocillopora was able to kill of branches of my Red Planet. I had to give the Pocillopora frags a rack of their own because they kept killing all the corals around them. The white film you describe sounds like something is stinging it.

You've ruled out all fish?

Joe the Coral is one of my favorites, I hope you figure it out and can save it. Might start thinking about fragging off some of the unaffected pieces.

I've not ruled out anything yet. I will be kicking the Poci to a new spot tonight. Unfortunately, there's not an unaffected spot on it...all pretty much uniform in crappiness....

Triggreef · Jun 9, 2014

Hope it turns around for you. One of my favorites as well, I have 2 good size colonies. I haven't seen many corals fix them selves after beginning to die, other than monti. I also recently began getting pocci out as my one colony turned into pocci everywhere.

TruRacr314x · Jun 10, 2014

Anyone else have any insight?

Triggreef · Jun 12, 2014

How have you made out? Only thing I could suggest is to lower lighting a little until it can recover. But not too optimistic.

Stoneyman · Jun 24, 2014

Are the lights controlled by a controller or a timer on a power strip? Before i got an apex, i used a power strip. Went on vaca for a week. Came back to find the lights stayed on 24/7 for 5 straight days.

jservedio · Jun 24, 2014

Silly question - but what are your phosphates at? If you were gone for a few days and were using an auto feeder, maybe you just spiked the phosphates and it browned a little bit? My JTC acro is one of the more sensntive acros when it comes to losing it's green. When I moved cross-country and it was in a cooler for 3 days, the green turned brown, but the tips stayed blue like yours. As long as you have PE, it'll recover if you keep things stable.

Usually, an attack will leave dead tissue/skeleton exposed, some recession and stringy mucous (from both corals fighting).