Going to pieces

[reefer_head]

I have a colt coral in my tank, and latley I've noticed it was a little deflated. I didn't think much about it thought maybe the destructive hermmit crabs that I need to get rid of had been crawling on it. Today I noticed that it had been breaking up into smaller pieces. Is this normal for this type of coral or is there something I should be worring about.

[bkv1997]

It could be dropping children.... this is common with some leathers.

If the adult and pieces look healthy then I would assume thats whats happening. Hard to say with out pictures or seeing your tank/setup.

Brandon

[reefer_head]

This is all thats left.

[bkv1997]

Yea its not looking good.

What are all your water parameters.

I would check your alkalinity and PH plus the normal Ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.

[jhnrb]

Several thingscome to mind. look closely at the piece for any indication of nudibranchs, and make sure your current is moderate for the coral.

[reefer_head]

All my parameters check out fine except my nitrate level is a little high, around 40 ppm. I've always had a nitrate problem and keeping them down. I do regular water changes at least every two weeks. I buy bottled water and tested for nitrate and it is 0. All my other soft corals are doing fine. In fact my star polyps are growing like mad. I have a ton of coraline alage growing and no hair alage problem. Only film alage on the glass that requires weakly scraping. There are still a couple of small branches left that I am keeping an eye on. They are not shrinking, so I hope they will atach themselves to the rock and start growing.

[Doc]

Are you dosing amino acids? LPS and soft corals need additives to keep them healthy. Basically, without them, they starve. Softies like amino acids with water changes. LPS and SPS like calcium, alkaline, etc. If you are only changing the water once every two weeks, they might be using up the salt nutrients faster than you put them in. What kind of salt do you use? try a premium salt (I.O. or Oceanic), try changing your water once a week (same amount of water) and have your LFS check your levels of trace elements. Hope this helps, good luck!!!

-Dr Marco

[bkv1997]

I have never known a LPS coral to starve due to not supplementing Amino Acids.

Infact I have never once dosed my tank with it and have numerous LPS including Frog Spawn, Hammer, Acan Lords, Acan Echins, Blasto Merletti, Blasto Wellsi, etc..

Keept things simple do your bi-weekly waterchanges and use the test kits atleast once a week. I recommend atleast Nitrate, PH, Alk, Calcium, and Phosphate for an established reef.

Just my
Brandon

[jhnrb]

well at least it seems there is a consensus pointing to water parameters. do a new set of tests weekly and keep a log. when nitrates are down see how your animals look, and when nitrates are up again see how they look and record your observations. do get the test kits and test as noted above. try to get your nitrates down if you can. this can be done several ways if it is chronic. a nitrate reactor, or increase your water changes. however, if this is the only coral you are having trouble with sit tight and see if the pieces attach. it seems that the light at the spot of the coral is fairly bright. do you think maybe it could be too bright of light? just a thought. good luck and sorry to hear of your problem. i would not get to nuts over this unless other animals are showing signs of distress. a final thought, maybe other corals sloughed off or dewaxed and it contacted the colt. hmmmmm. keep us posted.

[reefer_head]

well the verdict is in. I lost my first coral. All of it is gone except a little piece of the stem. I definitly have a major nitrate problem, so I decided to change a little more water weekly for awile. The way my aquarium is set up everything is built into the system, so I dont have much room for add on equiptment. As for lighting I am running standard flourcsent. one actanic blue and one white. So I dont think that was the problem. On a different subject I noticed all these tube worms or something growing on the bio-balls in my tank. Should I just leave them there or move them to the main tank. If so how do I go about it without disrupting the biological filter.