Leather Coral Help

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

jcarlilesiu

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Aug 1, 2005
Messages
1,020
Location
Chicago
I just have a quick question. I woke up this morning to find my leather coral (attached to a rock and in the tank for over a year) slumped over and laying on the rock next to him. :( The polups were coming out on the face of the coral that was still somewhat facing the top. The stalk looked shrivled and twisted and thin in the area where it fell over. Just yesterday, he was looking great... standing tall with all his polups fully extended. I carefully picked him up and put him in his up right position and moved a piece of live rock over for him to 'lean against". All of the somewhat exteneded polups then went back in, and he closed up a little.

I did a test on the water. Ammonia, Nitrite were zero, nitrate was slightly orange (didn't look at the chart because i know this was acceptable). The calcium was around 330 and alkalinity 1.5

I dosed a blue and yellow bottle of calcium and alkalinity (i think its called C balance) to attempt to get those numbers up a little because I know they are low.

I currently am being over run with Xenia, who I think are depleting the water. Is all hope lost? Did I do the right thing? Any insight is greatly appreciated.

As you can tell, this is really my girlfriends tank, so I don't know that much about saltwater. Currently she is out of town on an assignment for her job. So when you give advice, please be clear. Im a freshy :)
 
When did this start is this the first time it has done that ? Leather corals is a broad term any chance of a pic... Sometimes mine droops then goes erect again after lights are on for a bit ... what is your lighting , how old is it ,if you know what size tank .... I would not worry just yet it is normal for corals to be a bit tempramental at times.
Also I would not dose anything set up to do a water change of 10%-20%
if your salt water is already mixed airate it for 12-24 hours . If not you will need to mix it LPS usually have boxes of salt that are ammount specific. 10 gallon mix needs 10 gallons water .... check with a refracometer for spg.... IF you need to mix your own
Airate your water for 24 hours then add the salt airate for an addtional 24 hours ....
 
I noticed when I woke up this morning @ 6:45 a.m. Lights come on @ 7, so they had just came on. The tank is a 12 gallon nano cube. I have never seen it do anything like this before. Its about a year old. There is a post below this one a few with a picture. It looks just like that. I might be able to get a picture later on tonight if necessary.

The water I buy is pre-mixed RO salt water. I did a water change last thursday, and intend on doing another one later this week. Is the calcium=330 and alkalinity=1.5 at all a culprit? I know those are a little low.
 
While it is a bit low IMHHO that is not the reason you saw it before lights on ... The premixed is salt water that the LFS makes ? If so I would recommend doing a 2 gallon change ....airate as discribed above airate ...for 12-24 hours making sure that the temp , spg and ph are as close to the tank as possible .
Can you link atleast the post with the picture
 
Yeah, I will try to do that tonight, if it still looks bad when i get home. I really don't understand how its a water change issue as the last time i did a water change (about 3 gallons) was thursday of last week. Since then it has looked great.

I didn't know that I was supposed to arerate the water before doing the change. I don't even have a pump.
 
you can use a PH
Sometimes things die and we dont see it such as a snail ,or bacteria something small that you may not see as having happened ... A water change dilutes what ever the problem may be
 
jcarlilesiu said:
I did a test on the water. Ammonia, Nitrite were zero, nitrate was slightly orange (didn't look at the chart because i know this was acceptable).

If you're using a Aquarium Pharmaceuticals test kit for nitrates, slight orange isn't really "acceptable. I don't have one in front of me right now, but if my memory serves me correctly, the saltwater scale for nitrates turns slightly orange between 20 and 40ppm. Those are probably higher levels than you want, but as noted previously, PWCs will take care of that.


The calcium was around 330 and alkalinity 1.5

I dosed a blue and yellow bottle of calcium and alkalinity (i think its called C balance) to attempt to get those numbers up a little because I know they are low.

How much did you dose? If you overdosed the alkalinity portion from what was listed on the package (1ml per 4 gallons) in an effort to speed up getting the numbers back in range, I would think that may have caused a rapid pH change that could have caused some issues. But again, PWCs would help that out also.
 
Thanks for all the responses. I found out what the problem was. The heater malfunctioned and the tank was sitting steady at 90 degrees. Apparently coral don't like the heat much. When I got home from work yesterday the leather coral looked fine, but the pulsating Xenia wasn't pulsating much, and my star polups weren't really comeing out fully. I replaced the heater and hopefully that was the problem. I will be doing a water change tonight just to be on the safe side.
 
jcarlilesiu said:
Thanks for all the responses. I found out what the problem was. The heater malfunctioned and the tank was sitting steady at 90 degrees.

That will do it. I`m glad you found the problem.
 
Back
Top Bottom