Looking for a little help with unknown disease..!!

chenwon54 · May 28, 2012

So long story short... all of my LPS in my nano are melting away in a particulary weird way. They start out with displaying their stinger tentacles in mass all at once then a few days later progress to mush... It appears to be alot different the brown jelly though. Any ideas would be nice.

This happened right after i setup the nano, so i took it down and started over thinking i had some kind of pathogen. I cycled tank, cooked rock, added new sand..ect. put in some tester corals and all seemed well. Ordered some acans.. and a few days later two colonies are doing the same exact thing. Other colonies are completely unaffected. However the last time they were hit one by one and all eventually died.

All params are spot on. 78 Deg, dkh 8 sg 1.026 ca 420 mg 1350. p04 is undetectable. No ammonia, or nitrate either. Any soft coral varieties seem to be unaffected. Fish/inverts are also fine.

Pictures are below.. they show how it starts out and what is progresses too. Also dipping just finishes them off completely - so thats not an option. I tried lugols, revive and others all to the same effect. Any ideas what is going on here? I was thinking some kind of contaminate but have done my best to rule that out by tearing down the tank and starting over. I switched salt, changed ro/di, food, cooked rock, new sand, not dosing anything, new carbon and gac.. basically new everything! ANY IDEA what this is?????

Thanks in advance!!

dmatt88 · May 28, 2012

How long has it been since u calibrated ur refractometer? As with any water issue I do a major wc n add charcoal. Good luck buddy.

....... I'm Matt n i have a reef obsession.

chenwon54 · May 28, 2012

sg

Thanks for the reply. Always use two different refractometers also a probe. Calibrate every single time before use with solution! Used to keeping SPS so pretty familiar with everything at this point. Water changes aggrivate the condition... so im taking it easy on that. change 5 gallons every thursday on the 16 gallon system.

dmatt88 said:
How long has it been since u calibrated ur refractometer? As with any water issue I do a major wc n add charcoal. Good luck buddy.

....... I'm Matt n i have a reef obsession.

revsgirl · May 29, 2012

:bump2:

jonbar1 · May 29, 2012

Not something I've seen, and it looks as though it's happening to pieces you've had for a while. I could only guess something bacterial attacking the polyps from inside out. If it does damage that fast and moves from coral to coral it really makes me think bacterial. Usually something wrong with parameters would make all the acans look stressed at the same time, and I wouldn't expect a picture like the last one if that were the case.