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blastos die back

yardartist

yardartist

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Can anyone help me with what the blastos are telling me? I have had one DBTC for months and it is dieing from the outer edge. ( I was just telling Sherri how much it has grown) A second was a casualty after my recent trip. I thought it isolated until this next one started showing its skeletal 'teeth' on three side polyps and now the edge of one of the center.

They were eating OK up until now, but not great. The red is not puffed out as usual, and I did not get to see how the first one looked as it was mostly skeleton when I returned home.

The tank was very stable after the trip with the alk jumping to 13.6 and the calcium dropping to 390. last night they were 11.6 and 440. the MG right around 1290. sg 1.023 and temp 76. I lowered the heater setting about three weeks ago it was at 78 but would go over 80 during the day. I do more than 10% water change weekly, and dose Alk, Ca, and Mg by hand each day.

Also on the last day of the trip the fire shrimp died. Cleaner shrimp is normal. I did not run carbon after the green out from the caulerpa meltdown. Could this be a hold over from that event four weeks ago?

Ideas of anything I could do to prevent this one going, or others joining?
 
My blastos do best in low current and medium light. I gauge their happiness by the amount of change between night time retracted and daytime inflated. Any chance you could have been stung by a neighbor?
 
How long have you had the Blastmussa's for?
Often times they tend to do A-Okay for a given length of time, and without sign begin to go on the decline. This has happened to me before :( I currently have a colony of mint green Blastomussa's that I am giving a try; I have them in an area of low light, and low flow. They seem to be kickin' it down there :D I did notice when I first got them though that they were not opening. I took a much closer look a couple days later, and there was an aiptasia on the underside of the piece that was stinging the bejeebus out of them. A dollop of super glue gel later, they're dandy as candy.
Good luck!
 
Most our blastos come from deeper down so lower flow, lower lighting. The Malaysian ones are found shallow so they can take the light and flow of most our other corals (sps).

My luck with wild blastos is utterly poor. so bad I stopped attempting them. I'm waiting to get my hands on some Malaysian ones now.
 
I've had these two coloneys for 9 months. The larger coloney was under T5's in a 20 gal and the smaller one under CF's in a Nano Cube. They were both moved to my new 90 gal tank almost two weeks ago and have been living on ambient room light only. It gets "real bright' in that corner of the house, well not with the rain in the last couple days, still you can see they're pretty happy.


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Mine do great in my tank. I got a dying piece from 6th ave for free and another dying piece from aquarium concepts and after a few months they are back and really healthy. I have mine about 10" away from the water line in a medium to high current area. They love oyster feast. I turn off all my pumps and put a cloud over them and they go nuts. I always blow off the dying tissue with a turkey bastor. I guess I'm just lucky and have always had great luck with these beautiful corals. SPS is a different ball game for me. Oh yeah I have 2 ATI 8 X 39 T5 powermodules. they sit about 5" from the tank. don't know if that helps you. but if you want them to recover you can put them in my tank for a bit and take them back when they recover if you want. I don't need anything in return. just and offer
 
Water parameters spiked/dropped at one point and now some of the blastos don't look well?

I've seen where blastos have a hard time to recover from big or extended deviation in water parameters.

What Mg kit did you use for testing?

How did/do you determine your Mg dosing rate?

Daily hand dosing could be a problem depending on how you determine your rate.
 
Mg is tested by Salifert. Usually just before the weekly water change. It took several months starting back in May to get the dose adjusted to the current 10ml per day in the evening after lights out. I place it in the sump directly.

The flow did increase in the area of the tank for the blastos about two months ago. I did not notice the red one not opening well before it started loosing tissue. It did not extend today. I moved it to a similar lighting space with less flow on Sunday and that is when I saw the small polyps exposed skeleton. I thought they were overshaded until it grew on Monday.

I do have a new blasto frag from Sherri and it ate shrimp on Sunday evening, but it has not puffed up fully yet since getting it on Saturday.

Norman, the Caulastria took about three months to recover from the Mg low in May, and they look great and feed regularly now.

Gresham, the first blasto to go was the last bought new from a store. It had only been with me a couple months. I assume it was wild. I see no bugs on the red during the day. I will look at night with light to see if something introduced is getting it.
 
So at night the amphipods are at the buffet on both that are suffering. 3/8th inch long curly acrobatic guys that love all the hair algae to live on and in. I've read they eat dying tissue, but they are eating the good stuff too. The frag had been recently cut so they just started on the fresh edge before it had good time to heal. I will try to wrap the two corals in a very light filter sock today to see if keeping the scavengers away will allow the coral to heal. I have had success screening off coral before as the coral beauty angel scared the SPS at first and after a week behind netting, the angel stopped taking notice and now the coral are open and well without the partition.

I was able to pull out a couple dozen with a turkey baster and feed the dendrophyllia and tubastraea by hand with tweezers. That felt some good but the corals are very worn this morning. I am tired from getting up twice.

There is nothing around them to be stinging them to start the process. The only thing I can that could have damaged them to start the process would be my hand bumping them in the water, but the pattern of die is the reverse. They start on the backside out of view and then I see the skeleton like a rising sun roll over the head from the away side.
 
The filter socks kept the amphipods off them last night. The red one is puffed up and the new frag looks puffed too, but it had lost most tissue.

Maybe the sock had cut down the water flow and light so they are both in better placement now. I will keep them like this for now to recover.

Is 10ml of b-ionic Mg too much to add at once to the sump for a daily does?
 
yardartist said:
Is 10ml of b-ionic Mg too much to add at once to the sump for a daily does?
Click to expand...

What is the system volume, and what are your dosing rates for alk and Ca?

We can check the Mg rate against the alk and Ca rates to see if the numbers sound reasonable.

How old is the Mg test kit? Did some Salifert kits have misprinted instructions? Or am I thinking of Elos?

Worth double checking your Mg with another kit.

Also, a lot of times with blasto problems, it seems to help to stick them in a cave in your tank while they recover.
 
yardartist said:
So at night the amphipods are at the buffet on both that are suffering. 3/8th inch long curly acrobatic guys that love all the hair algae to live on and in. I've read they eat dying tissue, but they are eating the good stuff too. The frag had been recently cut so they just started on the fresh edge before it had good time to heal. I will try to wrap the two corals in a very light filter sock today to see if keeping the scavengers away will allow the coral to heal. I have had success screening off coral before as the coral beauty angel scared the SPS at first and after a week behind netting, the angel stopped taking notice and now the coral are open and well without the partition.

I was able to pull out a couple dozen with a turkey baster and feed the dendrophyllia and tubastraea by hand with tweezers. That felt some good but the corals are very worn this morning. I am tired from getting up twice.

There is nothing around them to be stinging them to start the process. The only thing I can that could have damaged them to start the process would be my hand bumping them in the water, but the pattern of die is the reverse. They start on the backside out of view and then I see the skeleton like a rising sun roll over the head from the away side.
Click to expand...

Just curious as to how you know the tissue is good and not dying as well?
 
Long day at work. Thanks for all the input.

The system is 51gal. I dose about 14ml of alk a day and 12ml of Ca a day. Ca in the morning to the sump and alk half dose twice a day in the top off water to the sump. I am topping of with about a pint of Ro/Di water twice a day. The Mg kit was new in May.

Got just the place for them to cave for a while.


Wish I had written seem to be eating the good tissue as well as any dying tissue. I cannot tell if the tissue is good or not. That they opened some after socking them, was a good sign to me that there could be tissue to regrow.

The best news is none of the other three blastos have any pods feasting on them in the cover of darkness yet. One green one from Boun has grown well. One of my first corals, from CL before I met BAR, was about seven small polyps over a year ago and it is now two colonies of twenty polyps and nearly fourty polyps each plus the two frags to DBTC. It looks to be a merleti all the others wellsi. The newest colony has been in a week and it is looking good. I was having such a good go of them before this one that is now dead. It had not been in the tank but a couple months so I was wondering if it introduced something to the others.

There were other frags sold of the one that died in my tank. I will be asking the LFS how the other frags are doing. And where the coral came from. The clam hitcher beside the tube shaped coral base is still opening and seeming to feed well.
 
After a couple weeks in a filter sock they are both now puffing out tissue rather than hugging the skeleton. I left them out the last two nights with no pods on them when inspected twice during the darkness. They are safe in the daylight. I will keep checking them at night for a while to see that they continue to heal. Will try to feed them this evening.

They were moved to the bottom of the tank under a ledge. I also turned off the K-4 two days ago.

The frag was about two nights from being gone at the rate it was disappearing so I am very glad they are still around.
 
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