The majority of halacarid mites appear to be detrivores. I suspect the fact that I only find a couple on my dying corals is related to them performing that role.@sculpin01 I’m sorry to hear about your troubles, that’s awful.
I’ve given up on getting rid of the mites. I simply don’t have the energy to keep trying the get rid of them, it’s virtually impossible. Another reefer reached out to me several weeks ago to share his experience with these bugs. He shared a picture of the bugs from his tank along with a fts of a beautiful reef full of healthy acros. He has these bugs but doesn’t seem to have a problem with them eating his acros. This gave me hope that maybe I’ve been going about this under false pretense.
I started a conversation with Dong Zhou, an acropora vendor and chemist (a favorite guest on Reef Bum), I shared pictures and he immediately said it looked like a water quality issue. He said that the tissue recession included skeleton recession that a pest would not cause. The most likely cause of the skeleton recession was an issue with salt, most likely related to quality control. I have no reason to question him as he is an expert in growing and cultivating acropora.
So, I changed salts and performed several 25% water changes and things seem to be rebounding. I have no idea if the progress will continue, but I’m crossing my fingers.
If for some reason things turn for the worse then I’m going to restart.
Maybe you should request an aquabiomics test to eliminate the possibility of pathogenic bacteria as the cause?
I still have no idea what causes the corals to die but it does not respond to any therapy. Here's the death of a spath I had had for a year that was finally starting to take off until disease struck. This took 24 hours from healthy to skeleton. No response to any treatment.