Jestersix

Mysterious coral death

JAR

JAR

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I recently had two SPS colonies die of RTN that were fine for over a year.

All my parameters are solid and 99% of the coral in the tank is thriving.

The only thing I can think of is that in both cases another much larger SPS colony grew and encrusted to the base of the now dead colony(s) and just barely touched it.

Could that kill the entire colony?
 
Not IME, however, as tanks fill up it becomes a challenge to keep large colonies alive due to flow and shading issue. When one coral starts to go it can cause a very slow chain reaction that spreads STN from one colony to another.
 
Are you running carbon? When I had a lot of SPS I ran carbon in case there was chemical warfare going on and to ensure any undetectable pollutants would be absorbed.
 
ryanjiang said:
This reminds me of those comments that you have more headaches with more big colonies in tank, man this hobby is never ending battle.
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Yep, the minute you think "hells yeah, I'm king of the sea people" you all of the sudden become Hosni Mubarak :D
 
I think Thales is going to have a couple of five gallon buckets of coral from my tank before the end of the swap.
 
I think a larger problem becomes flow, once colonies become larger. Where there was once, uninterrupted flow to all the little frags in your tank, each new, larger colony, blocked the flow of water. Every additional bit of growth, on each coral, adds up to thousands of small additional blockages in the tank, and what once had clear flow, in the entire tank, now has very limited flow in a great many of spots in the tank.
One way to deal with this is to add more flow, or add flow in a Gyre pattern, so that dead spots are not as prevalent. In my 180, I added two extra Tunze 6100's after 6 months, and then added a wave box a few months later. In each case, I noticed that where detritus once piled, it did so no longer, and, in each case, I felt the corals revitalize with growth rate and in color.

So...find your favorite corals, and start cutting LARGE frags of the others, add some pumps, or just donate to Thales, as you suggest!
 
As of now I am running 3 MP40's. I have not had problems with detritus. I think I just need to do some chopping. I'm noticing that SPS corals tend to grow in the path of flow whenever they can.
I have one right now that is building a wall right in front of the Vortech.
I may have to pony up for an MP60.
 
I've had to do a ton of clipping and ditching lately, lost some real nice stuff. I believe it is a multitude of things, flow, shading, coral warfare. Once the ball gets rolling it is tough to stop, pieces of infected Acro flesh get moved around the tank and land on other stressed corals and boom, another coral starts to recede. At first I thought I could fight it, but it seemed to be a loosing battle, so I started clipping :(
 
I know how it feels Jon, I've lost a lot of corals myself in recent times as well. While I think flow has something to do with it, I'm not quite convinced. But then again your issues very well could (and probably are) different than mine.
 
Coral reefer said:
Ouch. That be a big pony! Wave box wave box wave box (crowd chanting)
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I don't think I can do a wave box. My tank water level is so high that any wave action over 1" high would go over the center brace and another 1/2 inch and it's on the floor :glasses:
 
Boooo (crowd noise again). You know that sound. Just gain zito taking the mound! I kid, I kid. Mp60 then! I'll have to check it out finally sometime. I've been wanting to build a wave box for my flat for awhile, maybe I will...
 
Maybe 4X MP40 can do some good gyre in your tank, long pulse 2 sync 2 anti sync.

I always think gyre is fantastic, but my tank is not big enough and coral are not filled up, got to try it in some point of life :)
 
on my 4' x 3' tank I've found gyres work nice from the front to back direction, however over a 6 foot span I'm not sure they'll be terribly effective given the relatively short duration of the pulse, since they would have to first stop all the water going in a particular direction before they reversed it.
 
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