Need help with LPS skeleton

mrcoffee2 · Oct 27, 2014

I am hoping you can help. I noticed this morning my open brain coral started to show skeleton. It has been thriving for the past year and just last month asexually reproduced a small colony. All other corals including my SPS seem to be doing very goodl. I did recently find out I have zoa pox on a couple zoa colonies as well.

Here is what I changed over the past 2 months.

I added a skimmer and I have been skimming wet. This was due to adding SPS about 2 months ago.

I have elevated MAG levels to fight a byprosis problem I have been having. I am not sure what my mag level is but I am dosing 16 ML into a 16G nano tank once a day that has probably 18lbs of LR.

Here is what I am doing...

I adjusted my skimmer to skim less wet

This morning instead of putting 16ML of mag in I only did 14ML and plan to cut back 2ML every day until I am no longer dosing it.

Could either of those two things cause my LPS open brain to do this? I have a chalice that is about 4 inches from it down stream could that be effecting it?

Any help would be great. This coral is my favorite one... Really hurts to see it like this.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 27, 2014

IME, open brains are hard to keep alive long term. I've had a few over the years with the same issue: the flesh gradually shrinking away. I don't know why that seems to often happen.

I cant' see either of the two actions you took being a problem, but I'd stop dosing magnesium if you think the levels may still be high. I'd suggest measuring it, or not dosing magnesium at all.

mrcoffee2 · Oct 27, 2014

Here is what it looked like at the start of the month. Personally it looked pretty good. Do you think it was doing something like a bailout?

https://www.reef2reef.com/forums/general-lps-discussion/174059-anyone-ever-seen-something-like.html

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 27, 2014

I don't know why it did that.

Do you have a picture of the skeleton issue?

mrcoffee2 · Oct 27, 2014

It looks like the skeleton is on the right side of the coral down to the bottom.

mrcoffee2 · Oct 27, 2014

Also, can I stop the mag all at once or should I gradually reduce it?

mrcoffee2 · Oct 29, 2014

I think I figured it out… I am so dumb… Did a top off on my tank this morning and decided to check salinity. Was sitting at 1.027-1.028… I brought it down to 1.026 and the brain's feeder tentacles came out immediately. Going to gradually bring it back down to 1.024 over the next few days...

I am sorry for creating this thread. I am so foolish.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 29, 2014

No problem, but 1.026 should be fine, even the higher salinity is probably OK.

I keep my tank at 35 ppt (1.0264).

But if the coral responds positively, go for it!

mrcoffee2 · Oct 29, 2014

Yes I agree, but this is a 16G nano and I do manual top offs so it was swinging between 1.027-1.030 depending on when I did my top off. Normally the tank sits at 1.023-1.024 so the swings only get to 1.026 at most.

The tank evaps a half gallon a day that half gallon is enough to bring it up .002 if I let it go another 24 hrs then it can potentially be up .004

With it sitting at 1.028 the normal day would bring it up to 1.030 then if I did not do it for another 12-24 hrs I could see it getting to 1.031-1.032 which I do believe would cause that stress correct?

Randy Holmes-Farley · Oct 29, 2014

OK, I agree a salinity swing could be a problem.

But, many corals do very well in the Red Sea, which varies from 36 ppt (sg = 1.0271) at one end to 41 ppt (sg = 1.0309) at the other. Average salinity is 40 ppt (sg = 1.0302)

It doesn't swing around a lot in a given location, however.