Problems with Euphyllia

[Purplelobst92]

Ive been having some problems with a few of my euphyllia pieces lately. Tank is a 20 gallon well established 3 year old reef packed with corals the tank was moved about 4 months ago and went through the move well ( only lost a few sps frags ) tank is looking phenomenal and water parameters are good and stable Kh- 11.5 / Cal - 450 / Mag - 1200 / Salinity - 1.027 / Phos - .01 ppm / Nitrate 0 ppm
Recently a green torch I've had for a while got brown jelly and died, now a couple weeks later my aussie gold torch which I've had for 2 years is shriveling and starting to recede all of the sudden after weeks of general improvements to its health.... i have no clue what has killed my torches or led them to bad health as they were doing great before, any advice is appreciated as I'm bored and stuck at home with nothing but time lol!
- I did recently notice i have flatworms but i have not seen any of them on the corals themselves just on the rocks, i also tried dipping the torch in coral RX which seemed to make the problem far worse and no flatworms came off the coral.

Tank is an all in one 20 gallon nuvo drop off abyss
I do not run a skimmer
i Do weekly water changes of 20%
I use tropic marin salt
lighting is an Ai prime Hydra at about 40%
i do have clownfish that host with different euphyllia at different times

 

[NS Mike D]

what test kits for NO3 and PO4?


You are running high ALk and low NO3 an PO4, you usually see high NO3 and PO4 with that alk, or low ALk with those nutrients.'

Sps folks tend to see tip burning with your numbers


Zeros aren't good. corals need some nutrients.

 

[lpsouth1978]

what test kits for NO3 and PO4?


You are running high ALk and low NO3 an PO4, you usually see high NO3 and PO4 with that alk, or low ALk with those nutrients.'

Sps folks tend to see tip burning with your numbers


Zeros aren't good. corals need some nutrients.

+1. Euphyllia need more nutrients to thrive. I feel that you are starving them. Try to get your P04 up a little, say .05, and raise your N03 to 10-20 and things should start to improve.

 

[Purplelobst92]

red sea for both

 

[Purplelobst92]

+1. Euphyllia need more nutrients to thrive. I feel that you are starving them. Try to get your P04 up a little, say .05, and raise your N03 to 10-20 and things should start to improve.

I feed quite frequently and have 3 fish 2 clowns and a neon goby maybe i should remove my makeshift refugium in the back of the tank? i grow chaeto with a mini cactus light in one of my filter compartments my tank used to run at 5 - 10 ppm nitrate before this hmmm and come to think of it after the chaeto took off and it started running at 0 things started to look worse.

 

[NS Mike D]

red sea for both

yup. lets fix this and reduce the light period on the cheato and cut the weekly water changes to 10% for now

 

[Thespammailaccount]

If it was brown jelly it could have spread to the gold torch. My tank is euphyllia dominate and I have to watch nitrate and phosphate. I try and keep nitrate at least 2 to 5 and phosphates at 0.08 but I have to feed heavy or both start to drop and the corals get really upset

Brown Jelly Syndrome (BJS) & Brown Band Disease (BrB)

Brown Jelly Syndrome (BJS) is, as the name suggests, characterised by a brown mass resembling jelly. It appears to be floating on the surface of the coral and moves. This disease is also often...

aquariumcoraldiseases.weebly.com

 

[Zoapox]

+1 nutrient problem.

Take off the fuge.

Alk is too high for such low nutrients.

Try for 10ppm

 

[lpsouth1978]

I feed quite frequently and have 3 fish 2 clowns and a neon goby maybe i should remove my makeshift refugium in the back of the tank? i grow chaeto with a mini cactus light in one of my filter compartments my tank used to run at 5 - 10 ppm nitrate before this hmmm and come to think of it after the chaeto took off and it started running at 0 things started to look worse.

You don't need to remove the fuge, just light it less. If you are lighting the chaeto for 12 hours, cut back to 6 for a couple of weeks and see what happens. Then adjust the time accordingly. Running a fuge is a balancing act. You want it to remove excess nutrients, but don't want it to strip them all.

 

[Purplelobst92]

If it was brown jelly it could have spread to the gold torch. My tank is euphyllia dominate and I have to watch nitrate and phosphate. I try and keep nitrate at least 2 to 5 and phosphates at 0.08 but I have to feed heavy or both start to drop and the corals get really upset

Brown Jelly Syndrome (BJS) & Brown Band Disease (BrB)

Brown Jelly Syndrome (BJS) is, as the name suggests, characterised by a brown mass resembling jelly. It appears to be floating on the surface of the coral and moves. This disease is also often...

aquariumcoraldiseases.weebly.com

Its weird though, the only torchs that are doing bad are the expensive rare ones.... my regular black with yellow tips and brown with green tips are doing amazing, as well as my bi color indo octospawns, I've got a jason fox beach bum monti that grows like a weed and a bunch of different high end zoas that grow like crazy too.

 

[NS Mike D]

Its weird though, the only torchs that are doing bad are the expensive rare ones.... my regular black with yellow tips and brown with green tips are doing amazing, as well as my bi color indo octospawns, I've got a jason fox beach bum monti that grows like a weed and a bunch of different high end zoas that grow like crazy too.

different corals have different tolerance levels

 

[Purplelobst92]

If it was brown jelly it could have spread to the gold torch. My tank is euphyllia dominate and I have to watch nitrate and phosphate. I try and keep nitrate at least 2 to 5 and phosphates at 0.08 but I have to feed heavy or both start to drop and the corals get really upset

Brown Jelly Syndrome (BJS) & Brown Band Disease (BrB)

Brown Jelly Syndrome (BJS) is, as the name suggests, characterised by a brown mass resembling jelly. It appears to be floating on the surface of the coral and moves. This disease is also often...

aquariumcoraldiseases.weebly.com

i figured this could be a thing maybe the bacteria is living in my tank now ?

 

[Purplelobst92]

different corals have different tolerance levels

what level of nitrate do you think is optimal for the torch varieties? and do you think i should drop my kh to around 9 over the period of a week or two?

 

[NS Mike D]

+1 nutrient problem.

Take off the fuge.

Alk is too high for such low nutrients.

Try for 10ppm

little steps. tanks don't need much to get nutrients up

that is why I suggested to cut the light period on the fuge and cut the water changes in half



I would agree that lower alk but one thing at a time. I don't think that level alk is an immediate concern unless it were sps tip burning. raising no3 and po4 should increase coral growth and thus increase alk up take.

we can discuss switching salt mixes once we fix nutrients

 

[NS Mike D]

what level of nitrate do you think is optimal for the torch varieties? and do you think i should drop my kh to around 9 over the period of a week or two?

lots of school of thought in this.

red sea recommends for a mix reef. 1-2 ppm NO3 and 0.08 - 0.12 PO4 AND,,,, get this: 11.5 Dkh alk

 

[Thespammailaccount]

Its weird though, the only torchs that are doing bad are the expensive rare ones.... my regular black with yellow tips and brown with green tips are doing amazing, as well as my bi color indo octospawns, I've got a jason fox beach bum monti that grows like a weed and a bunch of different high end zoas that grow like crazy too.

Lol that is generally the way it goes the reasonably priced pieces do so well you can hardly kill them then the expensive ones are so darn temperamental—similar to women so to speak. Do not own a gold torch but I do want one but have heard that for some reason many die after a year or so

 

[Purplelobst92]

lots of school of thought in this.

red sea recommends for a mix reef. 1-2 ppm NO3 and 0.08 - 0.12 PO4 AND,,,, get this: 11.5 Dkh alk

Interesting... This tank does suffer from detritus build up when I feed a lot to get nitrate up, its very difficult to get things right in a nano ... Im currently setting up a 60 gallon frag tank and hopefully I won't fall into the same traps as with my current tank.

 

[Purplelobst92]

Lol that is generally the way it goes the reasonably priced pieces do so well you can hardly kill them then the expensive ones are so darn temperamental—similar to women so to speak. Do not own a gold torch but I do want one but have heard that for some reason many die after a year or so

Yeah its ridiculous! LOL I just love torch corals so much I keep wasting my money on them with only heartbreak in the end.

 

[NS Mike D]

Interesting... This tank does suffer from detritus build up when I feed a lot to get nitrate up, its very difficult to get things right in a nano ... Im currently setting up a 60 gallon frag tank and hopefully I won't fall into the same traps as with my current tank.

it's not showing up in your numbers yet. You can always do a periodic sand bed rinse to get rid of any detritus build up as a preventive measure. @brandon429 has threads on this, but for now, let's see if we can get your NO3 and PO4 up and make the corals happy.

 

[Purplelobst92]

it's not showing up in your numbers yet. You can always do a periodic sand bed rinse to get rid of any detritus build up as a preventive measure. @brandon429 has threads on this, but for now, let's see if we can get your NO3 and PO4 up and make the corals happy.

Tank is bare bottom, i siphon out as much detritus as i can every water change.