Lost Coral

[Lionhead]

Hello. I just lost my small to medium sized Oregon Tort colony. I'm trying to understand what happened to it. Three days ago, I noticed a small section of the colony turning light in color. Then light green. Then white. Then started spreading like crazy. In three days. The entire colony turned white, which Im assuming means that its dead. I was able to cut two 1-inch frags. I noticed one of those frags had the light color in it. This morning. I lost that frag. The other frag, I have yet to see after I get off work.

Just wondering what happened.. In last than 3 days.. It almost seemed like the tort got something then spread. Never lost any coral that fast before. The sps around it are all fine.

Any ideas as to what happened to it?

 

[returnofsid]

Does it appear to still have it's flesh? If not, I'd say it was RTN, which has so many causes that it's hard to say, without having more information about your tank. Even then, I'm not real knowledgable on it. If it does still have it's flesh, it could be either polyp bail out or bleaching. If bleaching, there's a chance for it to come back. If polyp bail out, it's gone, but you might find it growing back in unknown areas if any polyps were able to land in an area conductive to it's growth. I'd ask to have this moved to Kevin's SPS forum. He'll have the best advice and possible causes.

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Rapid Tissue Necrosis
http://www.reefs.org/library/article/rtn.html
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it"

 

[Lionhead]

Does it appear to still have it's flesh? If not, I'd say it was RTN, which has so many causes that it's hard to say, without having more information about your tank. Even then, I'm not real knowledgable on it. If it does still have it's flesh, it could be either polyp bail out or bleaching. If bleaching, there's a chance for it to come back. If polyp bail out, it's gone, but you might find it growing back in unknown areas if any polyps were able to land in an area conductive to it's growth. I'd ask to have this moved to Kevin's SPS forum. He'll have the best advice and possible causes.

When you say, "STILL HAVE ITS FLESH" What do you mean by that? Flesh as in what?

 

[Herefishyfishy]

He wanted to know if there was white tissue covering the skeleton or just bare dead skeleton

 

[Lionhead]

No signs of the white tissue. I just noticed the colony fading its color.. From dark blue to light blue to light green to white... Never saw any white tissues hanging or coming out from it..

 

[eliterecon14]

I am taggin along I had this happen but I think it was polyp bail-out. The skeleton was all that is left with no polyps. It lost color at the tip and then went out to the base. I have an acro piec that had the same appen to it but the 1/4 inch tip left has polyps and is alive.

 

[returnofsid]

With polyp bailout, the flesh should still be there...I think. RTN will leave just a skeleton with no flesh at all. It can happen over night, or over a period of a few days. As apposed to STN, which is much slower and can take a longer period of time. Check your Alk and Magnesium levels. I've recently learned that these 2 elements can have an effect on both RTN and STN.

 

[Lionhead]

Is it high or low alkalinity..

So basically, the coral is pretty much gone?

 

[returnofsid]

I'll post a paragraph that Kevin PM'd me when I had a similar problem. Though my problem consisted of actual tissue sloughing off of a coral. I was able to save the coral. My problem was low Magnesium. I raised my Mg and moved the coral into an area with a little higher and more random flow.

From Kevin:

Some species of SPS are sensitive to swings in alkalinity and higher alkalinity is more of a problem than low. From the top down it is most likely to be a lighting issue. From the bottom up it could be, not enough flow, high alkalinity, flat worms, allelopathy, low magnesium, nudibranch. That's all I think of off the top of my head.

Regards,
Kevin

 

[eliterecon14]

i have multiple frags of the same stuff and the others are fine. One side of the tank is coral dead-zone the right side is coral metropolis. It doesn't make sense. In the middle of my tank my remaining frag is partway dead and the tip is ok. the flow goes from high to med-low from left to right.

 

[burning2nd]

i have a peice, that was doing great....

the one branch started to bleach... when i noticed it was not stoping.. i broke the ends off that where whitening. Laid the broken part on the glass...

since then only 2 ends of the branch didnt come back... the frag is growing nice again, and the main coral is fine...

no understanding of why, but somehow brakeing the ends off saved, it

 

[returnofsid]

If a portion of your tank is doing bad, while the same corals are doing good in another area, I'd say that narrows down the problem to light or flow, with flow being the most likely culprit. OR, if could be allelopathy (chemical warfare) especially if corals on that side are closer together than the other side or "downstream" from more aggressive corals

 

[eliterecon14]

I lost the remainder of my polyps from Polyp Bail-Out. I have t-5's and all were the same species except for 2 an acan, and a lettuce like sps, can't remember name right now