Trumpet Slow Death

[sen5241b]

A couple of my Trumpets have been slowly dying off. One is dead and another is dying. First the brownish lips around the blue center become like teeth instead of fatty lips and then the center looses its blue color. Then it dies.

They were fine for many months and all my other corals fine. About 2 or 3 months ago this problem began.
Water parms are all good, 'trates zero, Cal and Mag good. Alk does drop a little sometimes to 6 but I always raise it up soon thereafter.
Had it on sand with moderate flow. I raised it up higher in slightly better flow but not strong flow and it did not help.
I have a 150 Watt MH on a Biocube 29.
I have not fed them much.
In the first image you can see the one on the lower left that is dead. You can also see the elongated one on the upper right that is almost dead.
I dipped them about 2 weeks ago.

 

[daugherty]

do you feed them? maybe the 150mh is too much light for them?

try to feed them every day see if that helps them to recover

 

[bjohanson1234]

How are your phosphates?

DId they get any sort of physical damage?

Just some questions to try and narrow it down.

COuld it be brown jelly dissease? I have not dealt with it only read about it

Hope you do end up figuring thisng out.

Corals - Bacterial

 

[sen5241b]

do you feed them? maybe the 150mh is too much light for them?

try to feed them every day see if that helps them to recover

Good idea. I am going to aggressivley feed them.

How are your phosphates?

DId they get any sort of physical damage?

Just some questions to try and narrow it down.

COuld it be brown jelly dissease? I have not dealt with it only read about it

Hope you do end up figuring thisng out.

Corals - Bacterial

Phosphates are not measurable. My other stonies are fine.

There was some physical damage. They fell down just a couple days ago and the brown lip part looked scuffed. This is a possibility, maybe there was some physical damage a couple months back when the condition started.

 

[daugherty]

mine did that a year ago and i started feeding them for a couple weeks and they recovered nicely and i have not feed them since

 

[yote]

Look at the 3rd pic,right above the dead skeleton.It looks to me like it could be some kind of predator thats eating them.

 

[daugherty]

i was looking at that to but i could not tell if it was exposed skeleton or what but it looks odd with how rouond they are

 

[the reef kid]

Yeah, I noticed that too yote, also in the 4th pic, on the dead one there looks to be little worms? can't quite tell what it is, but i wouldn't be surprised if something was eating it. Try looking at night with a red flashlight...

 

[reeffreak]

I'm not sure what the problem is but great macro shots!

What is the white swirly things on the dead coral head?I swear it looks like the same egg sack type as the nudibranches that ate my zoas.There are aeolid nudis that specifically feed on zoas or leathers or SPS.

 

[Bifferwine]

I suspect a pest as well. In one of the pics, I may even be able to see nudis. Dip those suckers!

 

[sen5241b]

I examined the trumpets twice with a magnifying glass. I tried scraping the little white squiggly things with metal tweezers but it is just exposed skeleton. I am going to dip them again.

 

[bjohanson1234]

Those squigles look to me like the guts. When my mushrooms split, very similar looking squigley things appeared along the tearing edge. So that is how I thought about the physical damage.

 

[sen5241b]

Those squigles look to me like the guts. When my mushrooms split, very similar looking squigley things appeared along the tearing edge. So that is how I thought about the physical damage.

I hope you are right. I left the lights out today and then turned them on and those little squiggly things were all over the dead trumpets. They were NOT hard and calcareous as I previously thought. On the chance that they were nudis, I took them all out of the water and cut the dead ones off and then dipped them for about 3 or 4 minutes.

 

[dcantucson]

I hope that works for you Sen. I just read your thread and I would say pests of some kind because the living ones look extremely healthy. If it were water quality or lighting they all would be affected. I hope you got whatever was killing them.