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Brain Coral With Amnesia!

Euphyllia

Euphyllia

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I went to the LFS a week ago (JUST ONE WEEK AGO. KEEP THAT IN MIND) and bought a beautiful piece of brain coral. it used to be big and puffy in the mornings but yesterday it wasn't. This morning it suffered from amnesia (Brain Coral, Amnesia, Get it? ;D) IT WAS COMPLETELY DEAD! no tissue was left on it. just a big white skeleton. I'm going to bring it to the LFS along with my dead Xenia. My hammer coral died about 1 1/2 months ago and my torch isn't coming out as much. All my level were perfect two days ago including my Alk (Don't have mag test kit yet) but the only flaw was the PH. It was 7.6 so I buffed it up to 8.3 and it is fine now. The only piece on living Xenia I had left is starting to die but on the bright side, my mushrooms and frogspawn are flourishing! Is it something wrong with my water? it does look a bit cloudy but not much. My last water change was a week ago and I even scraped all the algae! What wrong?
 
are your corals fighting each other (sweepers)?
Are your temps stable?
Are your readings of salinity/Ca/Mg/Alk reliable (tested against a standard)?


A pH of 7.6 is crazy low. The only way I can imagine that happening is if you are dumping a ton of CO2 into your tank (Ca reactor) or your refractometer is way off and your water is way under buffered. Speaking of which, what is your salinity/specific gravity. Do you use a refractometer or a swing arm?
 
I would recommend you find out what is causing your problems, before adding anymore corals or animals to you system. I was going to ask about your temperatures as well. If there are drastic swings in temp during the day, it causes a lot of stress on your system. Also a pH of 7.6 is very low and raising it so quickly causes additional stress. Definitely complete a battery of tests before adding any more animals.
 
My salinity is 1.022, Alk 200, Mag??? (THE TEST KIT IS EXPENSIVE), and my temperature only swing about 4 degrees between day and night. I bought my brain for $50 just for it to suffer from amnesia! My mushrooms, polyps, and xenia are touching but they are not killing each other. My frogspawn and torch have had adhesive mucus fights in the past but they came to their senses. I've never really seen night sweepers out even at midnight on any of my corals except for the brain that died.
 
Uh, is a Mag test more expensive than loosing a 50 dollar brain coral? Common sense in this hobby goes a long way.
 
Salinity should be higher, Alk 200??? did you mean CA? if so it should be double that. If you meant 2.0 it should be double that. A $30 test kit for CA + $30 for MG would have saved you the $50 on the brain. ... didn't we just talk about this is another thread....??? maybe that was someone else? anywho, you gotta test before you invest :) get it... I thought it was funny :D
 
BAR seeks to promote, foster and encourage education and appreciation for the ethical husbandry and propagation of marine life.


It has been "gone over". You do realize these animals are not an act of spontaneous generation correct? Dealing with simple water quality issues can lessen the impact on reefs, it's simple. These animals are not Sea Monkeys, they are living creatures removed from a natural environment, an environment that is continually under scrutiny by the environmental movement. If you keep placing these animals in your tank with you not even making the simplest effort to understand how to care for them, you are part of a very large problem of which I have no trouble calling you out on. If you want advice, ask about how to improve your situation, don't ask why things keep dying and ignoring prudent advice.
 
the mag test kit is $30 and the Carbonate Hardness (KH is what I meant to say by ALK) is like $7 so I bought it and it's level is 200. I'll boost the salinity to about 1.024 and boost the Ph again (IT WENT BACK DOWN TO 7.8) and my CA is at like 600. is that bad??? :eek:
Oh by the way, can someone post the CA test kit # of drop to CA level chart? I lost mine.
 
are you getting any ammonia readings with the cloudy water and low ph? I'm not sure what 200alk is? Normally its measured in meq/ml your numbers will looke like 3.0 3.5 4.0 or degrees of hardness ie. 3-4-5-6-7-8 and so on and so on.. What exactly does your test kit say.. With your calcium so high isn't it hard to maintain alkalinity?
 
you don't have 200 alk. double check your measurements and instructions. also, you need to report units. ppm, dkh or meg/mL
600ppm Ca is pretty damn high.

CA is at like 600. is that bad??? Shocked
Oh by the way, can someone post the CA test kit # of drop to CA level chart? I lost mine.
Click to expand...

..and here you say you know Ca and then you say you don't. charts are dependent on the specific brand of test kit.

I'm going to say that you really need to understand the fundamentals of reefing before you buy anything else. Jeremy is right. Currently, you are basically buying animals to kill.
 
Is the alk reading in ppm? 200 ppm is 4 meq/l (what most people around here use) or 11.2 dKh. That makes sense.

You shouldn't be using buffer to adjust the pH. If you have sufficient alkalinity (which is what buffer provides) and sufficient aeration the pH will stay in the appropriate range (8.0 to 8.3).

Think of pH as the symptom and low alkalinity as the disease. If you tell the doctor that you have a pain in your chest she doesn't just prescribe heart medicine. Instead, she'll do tests to figure out what the problem is and treat the problem. It's the same with pH and alkalinity. If you have low pH you need to understand why it's low and address the cause.

If your calcium and alkalinity are really 4 meq/l and 600 ppm, then it's very unlikely that you have low magnesium. It's hard to maintain calcium and alkalinity levels when magnesium is low.

Did you add the buffer after you got the brain coral? A sudden jump in pH (caused by a sudden increase in alkalinity) certainly could have killed it. If you added the buffer before getting the coral then it's probably something else. Temp swings and ammonia seem like good first things to rule out.

Finally, I also really agree with Jeremy. You need to understand the requirements of the animals you're trying to keep. The book "Water Chemistry for the Marine Aquarium" really helped me understand pH and alkalinity. It's a short little book with lots of pictures but great information. And only $10!

http://www.amazon.com/Water-Chemistry-Marine-Aquarium-Tullock/dp/0764120387
 
You need to slow down with what you buy, almost evey thread you start you talking about corals or fish dying and yet you never fix the issues and keep buying more stuff.

Alos in the future rasie things slowly, think of your water as your blood pressure, you would want someone to rasie you from 30 beats per minuite to 150 beats per min instanstly cuz it would kill YOU, well thats what you are doing to your fish and corals, they are living things please stop killing them.
 
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