How to save dying corals

[jacob4]

Posting this in the LPS thread because most of the corals are LPS, but there are a few SPS as well.

Hi everyone, a while back I had dinos for the second time in my tank, and during that time There was a slow spike in alkalinity which I slowly lowered from 8.9 to 8.1, and a possible salinity spike. I lost most of my SPS frags and some of my LPS started to struggle. Since then I fixed the issues in my tank, and all corals that were added after the dinos, or weren't affected much are doing great now. I still have a lot of corals that got have been struggling since dinos that range from receding tissue to 99% dead. Obv I don't expect to save every or any coral, but I was wondering what I can do to bring them back. There's a torch, dragon soul favia, goni, deshi, trachy, lobo, green goblin anacropora (no longer green) and some sort of birdsnest. They have been like this for around a month, and haven't gotten much better or worse from what I can see.

Parameters (have been consistent for the past 2 months except kh):
Salinity 35ppt
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 15
Phosphate 0.25
kh 8.15
calcium 420
mag 1380


Let me know if you need any more photos
Thanks

 

[Glenner’sreef]

Hi Jacob, Sorry about your losses. Your tank looks relatively young. I’m guessing you might be doing things you don’t really need to be doing…… like, dosing 2 part, kalk, carbon dosing etc. your salt at this stage of your young reef with a handful of small frags in your tank should be enough to sustain your corals for many, many months. Alk and calcium and trace elements are present in the periodic water changes that you should be doing. Am I close or do you know the cause for these swings?

 

[jacob4]

Hi Jacob, Sorry about your losses. Your tank looks relatively young. I’m guessing you might be doing things you don’t really need to be doing…… like, dosing 2 part, kalk, carbon dosing etc. your salt at this stage of your young reef with a handful of small frags in your tank should be enough to sustain your corals for many, many months. Alk and calcium and trace elements are present in the periodic water changes that you should be doing. Am I close or do you know the cause for these swings?

Yeah, it was cause I kept dosing and wasn't testing enough, and the corals stopped using kh in the water when dinos took over. I wasn't doing water changes at the time though because I was trying to raise my nutrients. It was only kh that spiked though, even though I was dosing both kh and calcium. The tank is about 8 months old.

 

[gbroadbridge]

Posting this in the LPS thread because most of the corals are LPS, but there are a few SPS as well.

Hi everyone, a while back I had dinos for the second time in my tank, and during that time There was a slow spike in alkalinity which I slowly lowered from 8.9 to 8.1, and a possible salinity spike. I lost most of my SPS frags and some of my LPS started to struggle. Since then I fixed the issues in my tank, and all corals that were added after the dinos, or weren't affected much are doing great now. I still have a lot of corals that got have been struggling since dinos that range from receding tissue to 99% dead. Obv I don't expect to save every or any coral, but I was wondering what I can do to bring them back. There's a torch, dragon soul favia, goni, deshi, trachy, lobo, green goblin anacropora (no longer green) and some sort of birdsnest. They have been like this for around a month, and haven't gotten much better or worse from what I can see.

Parameters (have been consistent for the past 2 months except kh):
Salinity 35ppt
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 15
Phosphate 0.25
kh 8.15
calcium 420
mag 1380


Let me know if you need any more photos
Thanks

Some of those coral perhaps will recover but it will take a long time.
Maybe the torch will come good faster.

If you have someplace calm to put them you can try save them, but if you have only one tank I think I'd be tempted to write them off and put some nice plump new coral in there, rather than staring at mostly dead coral for months.

Just one point of view.

 

[Glenner’sreef]

Yeah, it was cause I kept dosing and wasn't testing enough, and the corals stopped using kh in the water when dinos took over. I wasn't doing water changes at the time though because I was trying to raise my nutrients. It was only kh that spiked though, even though I was dosing both kh and calcium. The tank is about 8 months old.

No problem, you shouldn’t have to dose anything in an 8 month old tank. Your salt mixture provides all of that. Just keep up on every two weeks or once a month water changes (10 or 20%) giving your corals time to grow then through testing your water say, a year from now, you’ll notice your Alkalinity and Calcium are depleting faster than normal (after your water changes) And that’s when you should start dosing. Good luck.

 

[jacob4]

Some of those coral perhaps will recover but it will take a long time.
Maybe the torch will come good faster.

If you have someplace calm to put them you can try save them, but if you have only one tank I think I'd be tempted to write them off and put some nice plump new coral in there, rather than staring at mostly dead coral for months.

Just one point of view.

Yeah fair enough. I think I'll leave it for a about a month and see from there cause I feel bad throwing out coral that isn't 100% dead. Thanks

 

[jacob4]

No problem, you shouldn’t have to dose anything in an 8 month old tank. Your salt mixture provides all of that. Just keep up on every two weeks or once a month water changes (10 or 20%) giving your corals time to grow then through testing your water say, a year from now, you’ll notice your Alkalinity and Calcium are depleting faster than normal (after your water changes) And that’s when you should start dosing. Good luck.

Ok, thanks for the info

 

[Jennduhh]

Posting this in the LPS thread because most of the corals are LPS, but there are a few SPS as well.

Hi everyone, a while back I had dinos for the second time in my tank, and during that time There was a slow spike in alkalinity which I slowly lowered from 8.9 to 8.1, and a possible salinity spike. I lost most of my SPS frags and some of my LPS started to struggle. Since then I fixed the issues in my tank, and all corals that were added after the dinos, or weren't affected much are doing great now. I still have a lot of corals that got have been struggling since dinos that range from receding tissue to 99% dead. Obv I don't expect to save every or any coral, but I was wondering what I can do to bring them back. There's a torch, dragon soul favia, goni, deshi, trachy, lobo, green goblin anacropora (no longer green) and some sort of birdsnest. They have been like this for around a month, and haven't gotten much better or worse from what I can see.

Parameters (have been consistent for the past 2 months except kh):
Salinity 35ppt
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 15
Phosphate 0.25
kh 8.15
calcium 420
mag 1380


Let me know if you need any more photos
Thanks

Somewhat unrelated (or mostly rather) what is the third one?

 

[jacob4]

Somewhat unrelated (or mostly rather) what is the third one?

The coral in the 3rd photo? Some sort of torch I picked up. Not sure exactly what type