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Coral help please

Mark_C

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Officer Emeritus
NJRC Member
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So I'm playing my favorite game, 'What the ^&$% is wrong with the tank today!', and today's contestant seems to be my torch coral.

Its a good size torch with 3 large heads.

Parameters are all good.
110 total system gallons.
Temp: 78.5
Salinity: 1.026
Alk: 7.3 dKH (going to increase by a couple ml a day)
pH: 8.2
Cal: 390 (going to increase by a couple ml a day)
Mg: 1300
Nitrate: 0
Ammonia:0
Phosphate: 0.1 (little high but this is normal for my tank, I feed a bit heavy, I'm running some GFO)

So, parameters are stable and haven't varied in a number of weeks.
The torch has always been in this position in the tank and has been doing fantastic.
I've changed none of my habits with feeding, dosing, etc..
Nothing is growing into its space.

The only thing done over the past 10 days was increasing the flow in the tank. I brought my gyre up a notch or two and my MP10 up a notch or 2.

Yesterday I noticed the complete loss of 1 head on the torch, just the skeleton remains.

This morning a second head is drastically withered, the appendages are very flat and thin and about half of them have died out.

Is this normal behavior for a torch?
I plan on reducing the flow back down to where it was, but can a minor increase in flow do this?

Any advice or input appreciated. Want to make sure this isn't the beginning of a coral die off.
 
Last edited:

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
any chance it's that brown jelly disease or bacterial? Whenever i had a problem with lps when i had them, i would put them through a coral dip like coral rx or revive, seemed to help.
 
Can you take a video of the flow. Torches are touchy with too much flow. As stated above brown jelly is also a possibility. If that is it tank that torch, it will spread to other lps such as hammer frogspawn etc
 

Mark_C

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Officer Emeritus
NJRC Member
Moderator
Did a dip in Revive.
Took a shot while it was in there.
Visual inspection didn't reveal anything that looked like it might be Brown Jelly,
but unsure if the pink/red things are around the rim are dangerous or just an incidental finding.

IMG_3228_zpsrwbnpfrc.jpg
 

Mark_C

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Officer Emeritus
NJRC Member
Moderator
Tang nibbles on the odd algae but I've never seen him hit a coral, been keeping a dubious eye on him lately. Don't think he's the problem.
Not to mention the arms on the surviving head are seemingly beginning to atrophy.
 
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