please help: coral problem

[rica5tully]

I have a coral that looks like it is at death's door. It's a bright green, branching, SPS but I don't know what kind it is. It might be a pocillopora.

My tank has soft corals (mushrooms, xenia, green star polyps), LPS (frogspawn, pipe organ) and SPS (monti-cap). I know that's not the best, but I've just collected whatever corals came along. So far it's been working fine. The little green SPS has been flourishing for several months and growing like crazy.

About a week ago, it all of a sudden started rapidly turning grey/white and retracting. Now some of it looks dead.

Everything in my tank has remained stable except that I fragged some pulsing xenia and put one frag near the SPS.

1) Can Xenia be harmful to SPS?

2) Can fragging Xenia put toxins in the water like a toadstool?

3) Any other suggestions on what could be wrong?

My levels are all normal, my bulbs are still young, temperature is about 82 (high, but normal) and everything else in the tank looks fine.

Thanks for any suggestions.
ET

[pearsonhurst]

Xenia near the SPS shouldn't hurt it, but I've always herd you should frag it out of the tank, presumably to kep some nasyies out of the water. Sounds like tissue necrosis which can be brought on by any number of things. If it's progressing rapidly, you may want to frag a couple of still healty pieces and place them in a different area of the tank. How often nad how much water do you change? With that mix in the tank, you could have a buildup of toxins and this could be a result of allelopathy.

[rica5tully]

Thanks. Unfortunately, there aren't any healthy pieces really, since it's such a small coral. I did frag the Xenia out of the tank, but maybe it is still releasing some toxins or something. I'm going to do a water change tomorrow. Hopefully that will help.

Thanks.

[pearsonhurst]

I'd recomend running some carbon as well.

[tim]

the temp is high imo which can cause problems