Anyone ever seen anything like this before (sps death)?

[untamed]

That coral looks beyond saving. Take it out and frag off any remaining healthy bit ASAP. As it goes, I think it is causing the reaction you are seeing elsewhere. You've got one coral there sending out chemical signals of stress and death. Of course it is upsetting to the others!

[christyf5]

Originally Posted by untamed

That coral looks beyond saving. Take it out and frag off any remaining healthy bit ASAP. As it goes, I think it is causing the reaction you are seeing elsewhere. You've got one coral there sending out chemical signals of stress and death. Of course it is upsetting to the others!

The funny thing is yesterday before I left for work at 11am there was a completely different coral doing that white stringy thing and the green birdsnest looked perfectly fine. Then I come home at 7pm, the "different coral" looks fine and the birdsnest is half gone. I fragged a couple pieces off the unaffected side (as well as clipped off all the "gunky" parts) and put them in different spots in the tank (ie, the two frag racks I have on either side of the tank). Those frags that were near the birdsnest went the same way but the one frag on the opposite side of the tank is perfectly fine, like nothing ever happened. Weird!!

I did turf the affected coral this morning, there was no saving any bit of it as it was almost completely gonzo and I could see if was affecting the other two photos and would pollute the tank even further if that amount of tissue sloughed off.

[PoonTang]

Geez those poor things look awful. Let me know if you need anything.

[lngrhaul]

boy, this is the frustrating part of this hobby. You do all the right things like water changes and then something hits out of left field that you can't identify, can't treat and can't save the affected corals.

no advice to offer, but plenty of sympathy and well wishes.

[christyf5]

Well sadly at this point, I'm really jazzed about the real estate its opened up with that coral being gone. Hows that for pathos? Either that or I've just become jaded as this happens to me repeatedly

Anyway, everything in the tank is back to normal. Currently I'm cleaning all the powerheads and wavebox and have siphoned the generous amounts of cyano that were produced overnight it seems (I had cyano before but man its just going crazy now).

[daniella3d]

You could identify it probably if you took a sample and simply look at it with a microscope. It's much easier than most people think and it's very interesting to see. You would not beleive all the wierdo that I have seen with mine. Personaly I think a microscope is one of the most usefull tool in this hobby but unfortunatly practicaly nobody use them.

Identifiying the culprit is often half way solving the problem. I used to have discus and most people in that hobby and in the forums I was attending had a microscope because discus are plagued with so many parasites and diseases that it was nearly a requirement. Do a scrape and see if there are flukes etc... Funny that in saltware it's like nobody use a microscope.

Originally Posted by lngrhaul

boy, this is the frustrating part of this hobby. You do all the right things like water changes and then something hits out of left field that you can't identify, can't treat and can't save the affected corals.

no advice to offer, but plenty of sympathy and well wishes.

I use a microscope this could have been a spawn and the water became too polluted and the coral that started it all was to week from it's spawn it has happened before. I was on a US forum last year and read some thing about coral spawn. I also seen a documentary about corals many years ago that showed corals spawning and it looked just like the photo's. They did say it is pretty rear for it to happen in hobbyist tanks but it could if conditions are right at the right time. Remember these for for the most part wild corals even the cultured ones are wild we just harvest the parts we want. The only way to get true corals that were not wild is to have them spawn in a tank and the spawn grows.

Bill

[PoonTang]

Originally Posted by bvlester

I use a microscope this could have been a spawn and the water became too polluted and the coral that started it all was to week from it's spawn it has happened before. I was on a US forum last year and read some thing about coral spawn. I also seen a documentary about corals many years ago that showed corals spawning and it looked just like the photo's. They did say it is pretty rear for it to happen in hobbyist tanks but it could if conditions are right at the right time. Remember these for for the most part wild corals even the cultured ones are wild we just harvest the parts we want. The only way to get true corals that were not wild is to have them spawn in a tank and the spawn grows.

Bill

And we did see the evidence of other corals that have successfully spawned on the tank.