brain coral die back???

[treeoflife]

My brain coral is starting to show parts of it skeleton at the bottom edge, is this normal?

[treeoflife]

a picture of coral

[treeoflife]

parameters

0/0/20
ph 8.4
Cal 540
s.g. 1.024
temp 28 c

just did 20% water change have been trying to remove bioball and no3 has started to climb did 10% yesterday as well

[rayme07]

Showing skeleton and a slight bleaching is not a good sign. What type of lighting do you have? Do you feed him? or what are you feeding him and how often? I would keep doing water changes to get those nitrates down too that is not helping. :)

[treeoflife]

I have an atinic and a 10k for lights I feed him every other day with a frozen plankton, he has been in my tank for about a year

[rayme07]

From what I can guess is that it may be the mixture between not enough light and the high nitrates. I would look into getting at least 2 to 4 more bulbs on your tank, preferably 4 more if you can fit and work on those nitrates by doing small water changes every day till the nitrates are lower.

[treeoflife]

my tank is a biocube 29 each bulb is 36watt and there is no room for more bulbs and balasts, would moving it higher in the tank help? Also I was woundering about just pulling all the bioballs as they seem to be the problem, but would that just cause spikes in no2 and amonia? would that be worse right now I am changing 20%/day to keep no3 around 10. I could do 10% moring and night to level out the spikes.

[treeoflife]

my brain coral is getting much worse, skeleton is showing through about half of it now, how much can they take before they can't be recovered. started treating with a resin nitrate/phospate remover today.

[rayme07]

Moving him up wont do to good since they need to be on the sand and removing all the bioballs at once will be bad for the tank and will raise the nitrates. I have seen brains go through a lot and come back. The only thing I can think of doing right now is lowering those nitrates and keeping them low. Also keep him fed, and make sure not to over feed, give him a couple days to digest. I wish you the best of luck and hope he turns around for you.

[CarmieJo]

I would say he is unhappy about more than the water quality. Is there a possibility that another coral is stinging him?

[treeoflife]

no, he was in his own area but he is no more today he turned slimy and everything came off of his skeleton what a mess been scooping it out for hours. no3 is now around 50, i did 20% water change.

[techguy]

:eek!:

Sorry to hear it died. Hopefully you can clean out your tank and get the levels in normal range pretty quick.

[treeoflife]

now my toadstool looks like it has a fungus growing on it and my candycanes are all shrivelled up

[techguy]

I would think everything was irritated by the mess and the jump in no3. Hopefully cleaning out the mucus and doing water changes will help them recover.

[treeoflife]

the only good thing right now is my fish seem happy

[treeoflife]

after removing my brain coral I noticed that the DSB under it is completely excavated by the pistol shrimp right to the bottom of the tank, could its activity have caused the release of toxins?

[treeoflife]

My tank seems to be returning to normal no3 still a bit high around 15 going to give another day or so and then start removing bioballs again.

[CarmieJo]

I am sorry to hear that you lost the brain. How's the toadstool? I don't think that excavating under the coral would have caused the problem but if that was causing the brain to get buried it could have. Are you running any carbon? It would help remove the chemical effects from the die off. I wonder if the back side was dying before you noticed and that was what started the run up in nitrate?

[treeoflife]

I think that the brain coral dying is what caused the spike in the no3 as my tank has settled out and all of my corals are now looking great again no3 is sitting about 10-15 and I have started removing bioballs again. When the brain coral died it turn to slime in about 2 hour what a mess I skimmed out what I could get with a next and the protein skimmer went crazy for 2 days and I just replaced my carbon filter last night.

[treeoflife]

Many thanks to everyone for your advice and opinions

[CarmieJo]

I'm glad your tank is looking good again.