Coral loosing skin

[lbaskball]

My corals are loosing its skin, anyone know why? What I mean by this is, when my frogspawn was healthy, its skin would be growing all the way down to the branch of the skeleton, and now I don't see that anymore.
Could it be because of water quality? I would think it would be calcium, but my calcium levels are good.

 

[lbaskball]

One of the branches that had my frogpsawn in, came out of the skeleton completely and started floating in the tank. I was able to pin it down to a rock and glue it. For some reason, my corals aren't dying, but they are leaving the skeleton that they are in.

 

[deltablack22]

I've never heard of the head actually coming off and floating around the tank... I would keep an eye on that head - that is not normal.
From your first post it sounded like the coral was just growing but now I'm curious if anyone else has seen this happen...

 

[scoobs]

Check your calcium ph and alk levels.

 

[meleerock]

could it be dying and decomposing? Usually when you start seeing the skeleton of any coral it is not a good thing. Hopefully someone with a little more knowladge with coral will drop by.

 

[travis89]

What are the water parameters?

 

[lbaskball]

My Ammonia is 0
Nitriate is 0
Nitriate is close to 0
Ph is between 8.0 to 8.4
It is my calcium that is really high. It is at over 500 and my alkalinity is seem to maintain low/normal level. (when I say normal, it is according ot my test. )
My frogspawn is doing good, ive had mushrooms fly off as well and they have atttached at different rocks and are doing good. Now I am having problems with my hammer. It has gotten an infection and looks like it is a goner. I did a dip with iodine I believe. Hope it helps.

 

[exlfs]

First, I assume that your Nitrates are where they should be, and that this is not simply a result of long-term exposure to poor water quality. I suspect, however that this is NOT the case, given your description of water quality parameters above.
This is TEXTBOOK Strontium deffeciency!
Without giving a 3 page description of the chemical relationship between alkalinity, pH, calcium, strontium and magnesium, I will just tell you that almost 100% of the time when an LPS coral releases itself from it's skeleton, there will be tell-tale signs that the tank is defficient in strontium or magnesium (most likely strontium). Think of Strontium as the "glue" which allows the coral polyp to keep attached to it's own skeleton. It's more complicated than that, but that's essentially the concept. So when LPS corals begin evacuating their skeletons, it's almost always due to a lack of one of these.....and usually the relationship between pH, calcium and alkalinity is out of balance as a direct result.
This is all assuming again that the coral was not damaged in some way, and that you have not experienced rapid spikes in tank temperature.
Best of luck and God bless....

 

[exlfs]

Oops...sorry. Forgot to mention that your hammer coral may be experiencing a different problem. If what you see instead of the coral slowly receeding from it's skeleton and then eventually releasing, is a brown bubbly mucous sliming up around the coral flesh, then the hammer is experiencing RTN (rapid tissue necrosis). Dips may help with a hammer, but not likely. If this is the case, to save the hammer you will need a more aggressive approach to save it than a coral dip. I won't waste your time with describing that because it's a long post. If, however, RTN is what you have, then let me know and I'll try to send you a description of what you can try to save the rest of the coral.
Best of luck.

 

[meleerock]

any updates on the coral?

 

[lbaskball]

Originally Posted by exlfs
First, I assume that your Nitrates are where they should be, and that this is not simply a result of long-term exposure to poor water quality. I suspect, however that this is NOT the case, given your description of water quality parameters above.
This is TEXTBOOK Strontium deffeciency!
Without giving a 3 page description of the chemical relationship between alkalinity, pH, calcium, strontium and magnesium, I will just tell you that almost 100% of the time when an LPS coral releases itself from it's skeleton, there will be tell-tale signs that the tank is defficient in strontium or magnesium (most likely strontium). Think of Strontium as the "glue" which allows the coral polyp to keep attached to it's own skeleton. It's more complicated than that, but that's essentially the concept. So when LPS corals begin evacuating their skeletons, it's almost always due to a lack of one of these.....and usually the relationship between pH, calcium and alkalinity is out of balance as a direct result.
This is all assuming again that the coral was not damaged in some way, and that you have not experienced rapid spikes in tank temperature.
Best of luck and God bless....

The tank has not had any spikes in tank temperture as I use a chiller to keep my tank temp stable. Your right, it may be a sign of low strotium, but I have not added anythign that I cannt measure. So I decided to do bigger water changes and use real salt water until everything is back on track. And it looks like that is helping as the skin has grew back.

 

[lbaskball]

Originally Posted by exlfs
Oops...sorry. Forgot to mention that your hammer coral may be experiencing a different problem. If what you see instead of the coral slowly receeding from it's skeleton and then eventually releasing, is a brown bubbly mucous sliming up around the coral flesh, then the hammer is experiencing RTN (rapid tissue necrosis). Dips may help with a hammer, but not likely. If this is the case, to save the hammer you will need a more aggressive approach to save it than a coral dip. I won't waste your time with describing that because it's a long post. If, however, RTN is what you have, then let me know and I'll try to send you a description of what you can try to save the rest of the coral.
Best of luck.
As far as my hammer goes, it did start to have RTN and waste away but my LFS gave me this product to try to help it from spreading more and killing the whole coral off, so I used that product by dipping it for 20minutes and amazingly.it WORKED! I lost 80% of the coral but 20% is alive and is healthy and no more brown mucus or recession happening.