Paly problem?

[JJ-SLC]

I have a Red Sea 170 that has been up for 7+ years as a mixed reef with more LPS than SPS with very few problems. A couple of weeks ago a group of about 50 Palys turned brown and most of them died off and now my tank has all this brown stringy stuff all over it, see the couple of pictures. Does anyone know if this brown gunk is from the Palys or do you think it’s from something else, it’s not algae of any kind.
Anyone ever have a large group of Palys just crap out on them if so what did you attribute it to. My parameters are Calcium 460, Alk/dKH 11, Mag 1360, Pho’s 0.04, Salinity 1.023, Temp 79.
Thanks for the help
Jim

 

[G Santana]

Have your phosphates and nitrates bottomed out?
The exact thing happened to my tank recently so I took the filter sock out, took off the skimmer cup until the nitrates and phosphates started to elevate and the red strings of death dissapeared

 

[JJ-SLC]

I haven’t checked the nitrate level in a while but I have been working on bringing the phosphate level down, maybe to fast.
One other thing after cleaning the gunk from the tank make sure you wash your hands very very good. I didn’t wash my hands good enough and after taking out my contacts my eyes looked worse than the gunk in the tank.