SPS help

[Gordoe]

Looking for some suggestions to help my corals.

My SPS corals are dieing off slowly, one by one. Parameters are all ok. Fish inverts and softies all growing well..

The corals start to go white in one little section and eventually spread over whole coral. Is this a critter in my tank, or bacterial infection?

I'm ready to pull them and put them into a new tank, but I don't want to infect??

Calcium is hovering at 300-400ppm. If this is possible the reason, how quickly can I bring it up to 450ppm?

TIA

 

[nin0]

how long has your tank been up, how long have u had the sps corals and what kind of lighting do you have? Whats your PH/alk? Have you properly acclimated the sps to the lighting? Is your temp too high? There's a lot of reasons why sps bleach(turn white). The best you can do for now is to snip off the part or the branch thats bleaching and hope that the rest recovers until you find out whats causing your mass die off.....hope this helps...

 

[Gordoe]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

how long has your tank been up

Tanks been up for about 2yrs

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote

how long have u had the sps corals and what kind of lighting do you have?

M. digita and green acropora about 3 months.
Misc. frags about 1.5 months. Three of the frags are doing really well. M. digita was really looking good until this morning when i noticed the white area at it's base, and it wasn't there yesterday..

lighting is 80W NO 10K and Actinic
2 x 175W MH

PH/alk? Have you properly acclimated the sps to the lighting? Is your temp too high /QUOTE]

PH is 8.2 in morning and 8.4 at night. alk is between 9-10dKH.

 

[nin0]

your Ph is higher at night thats weird? You can do a coral dip after you cut the bleached part off just to see if that helps. I dont know too much about infections of sps though...

 

[HARRISON]

If you want to get your calcium up and alk levels right try to dose B-ionic. It is easier than mixing kalk and seems kinda fool proof if you follow the directions. Other that that I don't know as much about SPS as softies but I do know you need to get them used to the lighting. Start them low and work them to the top. Your lighting should be fine but not too overpowering once they are acclimated to it. Did you start them lower and work them up or did you find them a hole and put them right in? I don't know what else to recommend with SPS except if it were my tank and I was having these problems I would check my phosphate and nitrate levels as well. Keep temp in check and do some pretty good sized water changes over the next few days. Water changes can be an easy way to fix alot of problems and keep them from getting worse. Then you have to find out what is causeing the problem. It in effect buys you some time.

Hope you can save them...

HARRISON

 

[Gordoe]

I caused it!! Sitting here talking to my wife and thinking about what I've done differently.. I've been battling hair algae since the summer.. Some had moved onto my SPS corals... Around the base, I spread whatever the infection was from a sick acro to my other corals... 3" monti digita gone in a day....
What do they say, wisdom and knowledge comes from our mistakes.. Learnt something today..

 

[toptank]

Bleaching can be caused by several things, such as sudden light change. What kind of lighting did they have prior to you putting them in your tank?

As far as raising your ca. levels up, IMO you never raise any level up fast, raise it up slowly so that they animals adjust to the change.

You may need to frag above the bleached area besure to cut/snip well into the healthy flesh area.

On my web site, I have some great pic of "RTN" and some artical by Eric Borneman.

Good Luck.

Barry