Sudden acropora colony loss

[authentic]

I had two nice size colonies growing together.first I noticed some bleaching then the next day the colony was losing all of its tissue,it looked like slime but was still attached to the skeleton,blew off easily with a waving of my hand.the next day the colony next to it was doing the same.everything else in the tank seems fine.across Millies etc.any thoughts on what would cause this?alk stable at 8,mg 1500, nitrates 2ppm salinity .025

 

[77railer]

Some Acros will fight each other when they touch. Looks like one of them lost the fight in a bad way.

 

[Tahoe61]

Where these maricultured pieces? What type of acropora were they?

 

[authentic]

Definitely maricultured,,,no names,,,maybe lesson learned...I have ALOT of colonies in my tank and I had just let them grow to the point I was running out of room,letting them touch each other .I think I will have to start triming things back.one good thing is I now have a clear area in the middle of my tank to grow something else

 

[erky]

i have ordered a bunch of maricultured in the past and to be honest with you this happens. I have had the best looking pieces just up and vanish over night. I think the stress of shipping and acclimation/dipping really puts these corals on the brink of death.

the airlines might put the box in a cool or hot location stressing the corals even more. there are a million things that could cause these corals to look good one minute then die the next, a risk you take when ordering large pieces from a farm.

 

[authentic]

Things sometimes going too well can still cause issues

 

[29bonsaireef]

I don't think this is an issue with them being mariculture or touching each other. Imo, it's from a fluctuation in params or some kind of bacterial infection. I've seen this a couple times in the past with aquacultured pieces as well. Could never pin point the exact cause, but I feel its more of an infection that maybe be brought on from stress due to small fluctuations. I had this happen to a couple colonies once, the polyps were literally blowing off in the flow. It happened so fast I didn't even have time to frag them, and only effected a couple of colonies. All frags and other colonies looked perfect the whole time.

 

[OnPointCorals Verified Sponsor]

It happens. You will have plenty of sudden unexplained deaths that you may never get an answer for. Unfortunately this seems to go with the territory of keeping Acros.

 

[BoomCorals]

Sometimes this just happens. There are a lot of reasons this can happen, and assuming none of the obvious jump out (temp/alk big fluctuation, pests, etc) don't chase it if the rest of the tank is doing fine. There are things that kill acros that most people aren't even aware of like green boring algae, or any other number of diseases.

 

[authentic]

When this happened I paid a lot of attention to the problem area but then I stepped back and looked at the tank as a whole,, still looks awesome to me
Just part of the hobby I guess but paying attention to the details is important in a day to day

 

[HB AL]

Just wondering how long the maricultured colonies were in the tank before this happened? All my corals in my tank started from small frags, then around 6 months ago my lfs got in a large shipment of maricultured acros. Well for the size of them and the 50$ price tag I couldn't resist and figured I would get 1, ended up getting 4. Within a week I noticed one just started to rtn, I quickly fragged off what I could and gave them a coral dip. I figured they where gonna be toast too but for some unknown reason they made it and are still growing slowly but looking good. The other 3 colonies I bought that day have had no issues and are doing great. Really just leaves you scratching your head sometimes.

 

[reefwiser]

I guess but paying attention to the details is important in a day to day

With SPS one must always be on your toes watching.

 

[jda]

Even the best lose a colony/frag from time to time. Chasing the reason oft compounds the issue with more deaths. I would not do anything for this small case except to take measure and pay more attention.

 

[authentic]

from frags to 6+in colonies in 2 years...and i have recently been amiring how well they seem to be doing

 

[jda]

If you are talking about legit colonies at 6+ inches and not the 1.5" frags with a few branches that lots of folks call colonies, then that is a different type of animal. Not only might their lighting needs change (more shadows), but they also usually need more flow than they did when they were small. Colonies are much, much harder than frags.

 

[rosshamsandwich]

agree with jda