I have a millipora and a acro that are green with blue tips. One has been in tank for several months going great and growing amazingly fast. Last few days the polyps on the tips look to be gone, blue color gone, tips turning white with brownish color but not like when corals brown out. It's a diff brown. Like dark brown specks. Also I have a big birds nest doing great but a piece I fragged from it that have been doing good is now bleaching. Also encrusting monti bleaching out. But all other corals doing great. I dont understand. Here are tank specs Salinity 1.024-1.025 Dosing seachem reef fusion two part calcium and alkalinity. It keeps the cal at 420ish and kh at around 8 Lights mh 400w in middle and 250w on either side, run each one 5hrs but at diff times(2hrs apart) bulbs 7mounths old and 2x110w actinics All phos, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia at 0 225 gallon with refugium I feed the corals, coral frenzy ones a week and arctipods And just bought some phytofeast but just used once so far but this after problem started I'm not sure what all info would be relevant so please ask me questions Thanks for reading.
Tank temp ph and when is the last water change. also did you have your test kit verified by a lfs or anothe club member? or are you useing any products like kick ick witch says its reef safe but at one point in time killed all the sps in my tank.
If you can get some good closeup pics of the brown spots you are talking about we should be able to help a little more. Also, is the brown kind of like a jelly, or does it look like the coral itself is brown? Don't wanna jump to conclusions, but spots rather than all over brown may mean some type of pest. Either way if everything is dying, I would frag a healthy chunk of everything and get it into another tank. That way if you do lose the colonies, you at least have a small piece of your coral left to grow out.
Dark brown specs has me thinking somehting is eating it too... Pics would help and ANYTHING that you have done differently than before... retrace all of your steps.
Temp 78, ph 8.2. I looked today when I got home from work. It does not look like the actual coral is turning brown but rather that something brown like an algae is covering the tips. No changes to tank. Same old same old. I'm leaning to the pest problem. But I have been looking for red bugs or something with no luck. I have had lfs check water also. I'm probably due for a water change. I try to do 30-40 gallons every month but some times it's every other month because I test and everything reads 0 and I replace trace elements by using the reef fusion daily. I'm considering turning the mh off for a day or two to see if it will help if an algae problem, but it would be weird if the only place the algae was showing up was the tips of the coral and nowhere else in the tank. I'll try to post pics later the evening.
This comes back to the "every good reefer needs a good camera" deal... There is not much the general public hasnt seen but if we cant see it we cant tell anything. If its just your SPS then I can just about bet its not an algae problems. Only thing that an algae will do is burn it but usually you can see the hairs from the algae quite clear. Red bugs you almost never can see without a glass..... Dip them if you have any question and you can eliminate that option. If it goes away you know you had something.. if not then move on to #2. Just dont do much too quickly or you will not be able to tell what is working and you might lose the whole colony.
I looking at it since i got home and ive noticed it defiantly is something growing on the coral and i also noticed two very small bubbles on the brown stuff, like bubbles ive seen before in and on cyno. Â one of the affected corals that i had not glued down yet i took out and but into a container of tank water for a bit and shook it around to see if i could see anything in the water afterwards and nothing. Â One day last week i had a problem with my auto top off and a little extra ro water was added and brought salinity from 1.025 to 1.023 but i slowly brought it back up replacing evaporated water with salt water until back up to 1.025. i remember i also replaced the active carbon a week or so ago.
Whats the flow like.. SPS need heavy flow.. Should have been enough to not let anything attach but you might have some sort of brown cyno...
Looks like dinoflagellates to me. Go lights out for a couple days and see if it goes away. Also, is it not as bad when the light first comes on and gets progressively worse as the day goes on? Flow could be an issue if you have it growing on the corals - most times dinos attach to the sand/rock first. Â How about a FTS to get us an idea of what is going on?
I've been thinking about what happend and I bet the coral polyps were gone and the tips bleached and the algae probably started growing before I noticed this. I'm still puzzled as to why the millepora was going so good and then all of a sudden the polyp on the end just disappear and bleach, as did the other acro i have. Is there any chance that the polyp will come back or should i just break the dead parts off?
Just break it off... I have had things that had one white spot one min to completely bleached in less than 6 hours... hell if I know what happend to them. I have had some bleach at the base then come back later and live healthy lives and be the best coral I have... SPS is strange, why I dont worry with it. If it grows it grows if it dies it dies... I can never put my finger on the cause of either.
I also have this happen all the time for no apparent reason. A fish could have nipped the end and killed the polyp. I sometimes have several of the same frags all together in a row in my frag tank and wake up to see one frag white as a ghost right beside all the others. Thats just the nature of this hobby. There are a lot of things we can do well, but also a lot of things we can't figure out or prevent. Just do the best you can and don't get discouraged.
Hi Norman You hit the nail on the head. It looks like some form of algae and it is not the cause, it is the oppotunist. For whatever reason the coral is dying and the algae is just taking advantage of a place to grow. Sps sometimes do things for no reason that you can trace, not only in our tanks but in the wild too.
