ORA Hyacinth dying?

I've been keeping an ORA Hyacinth for several months and over the last few weeks its started losing tissue at an alarming rate. The pictures attached should indicate it, I have two frags and a larger colony and both are affected though they are at different places in the ank. The strange thing is that it's only these corals, I have numerous SPS varieties in my tank right now and none of them are suffering all are growing. Only this coral is having issues.

pH had dipped low about a week ago (7.8 ish) so I did about a 30% waterchange and its back at 8.0 or higher. dKH is 8 Calcium is 420. SG is 1.025.

 

The tissue is receding at the tips and pulling up at the base. Is there anything that affects a coral like that?

 

chicagoreefone

Im a novice on SPS, but from images and your description, sounds like it could be STN

slow tissue necrosis
I have been reading up on this and on RTN (rapid tissue necrosis)

Steve

 

How long has it been happening? How long was it doing well in your tank before that? Where did the frag/colony come from?

I would doublecheck all of your parameters with another test kit or at an LFS, also check salinity with a recently calibrated refractometer and find out what your nitrate and phosphate levels are at as well.

It's possible that something is actually out of whack and this is just the first indicator of it, perhaps this coral is more sensitive to something in the tank. Have you made any changes recently to the system?

Have you checked for pests, acro eating flatworms or red bugs?

 

steve: thanks for the advice, on STN I'll check it out and get back to you. I am familiar with RTN but not the other. . . just the sound of it really sounds like what is happening.

Screwtape: those are some great suggestions I'm going to answer them in a immediately subsequent post so that it is more logical on a quick read.

 

FURTHER CASE HISTORY:

The frags shown accidentally broke off of the larger colony during transit. They were glued down and had recently encrusted. I should also mention that the one on the right was stung by another coral but the damage to the left piece is new.

So additionally there is a colony of the coral I will attach the image of when I got it. It was in bad shape with the tissue receded well up the structure. The polyps that were out were not really growing. So the second picture is what it looks like now, with the tissue loss.

 

anyone want to weigh in with some advice?

 

Did you doublecheck your parameters with another kit or at an LFS? Nitrates/phosphates? Doublecheck your temperature?

Is it getting enough flow where it's at in the tank? Enough light?

You could try doing a dip in an iodine or revive bath in case it's a general bacterial problem or something. Otherwise maybe try running some carbon and or GFO or something to see if maybe that can pull out something. Just kind of grasping at straws because AFAIK a lot of the time diagnosing problems with coral is just a process of elimination, try everything until something works.

 

Hi Chicago reef one

Rapid Tissue Necrosis

I cant vouch for the effectiveness of this product having never used it but have seen a number of positive comments about it around the WWW.

the 1st picture above looks like many of the images I have seen since researching STN in corals - it seems to be bleaching at the base - which if left unchecked can progress slowly up the coral

alternatively my reading has also uncovered that some reef keepers have reported success at overcoming this problem by applying super glue to affected area ( dont take my word or advice on this please, I have no personal experience thus advise you to do more research on STN - read the articles etc)

another option would be to frag the coral in the 1st picture where only the base is affected - if you frag it well above the white skeleton line with some sharp nosed pliers, just break it off, and then super glue that to a rock, and discard the infected base part
dont try and cut to close to the infected area because you may then have the issue on the frag.

now the last one I do have a single instance of experience with and saved a green acro from RTN by doing exactly that.

wish you all the best with it, but as Screw tape indicated above, the key to success is knowing and controlling your parameters.

Steve