Experience with "heads" / polyps of candy cane coral dying one after the other ?

[frenchy in ny]

Hello all !

Would any of you have experience / advice to give me with the "heads" / polyps of my candy cane coral dying one after the other? At some point it had with ~ 20 heads and now has only 8 left (the others being dead with just the skeletal structure left)

To give little bit more info: this has been happening in the last 12 months with one “head” / polyp after the other dying (so not really quick phenomenon and more one per month). The other polyps seem to be very well before starting to die.
My tank is now 2.5 years old so not totally new but not very old either (which would be a good description of myself related to my knowledge linked to this hobby )

All my water parameters are within usual recommended ranges (can list them if would think that one would be relevant to this) and actually I did not have any other loss in my aquarium during the same time.
- with actually also my torch coral which loose one of its “heads” but seem to still be totally OK as it started with only 2 “branches” and now has 5 or 6

I tried to move it in the tank also from the bottom (80Gallons tank, 24’’ deep) to the top 1/3 but do not seem to get better
- My light are 2 T5 (one Giesemann PowerChrome Actinic Plus tube + one Giesemann PowerChrome Midday T5 tube along the 48” length of the tank) + one 250W Metal Halide, 15,000 K ~ in the center of the tank (so covering efficiently only ½ of the length of the tank).

Would any of you would have experience such thing or would have any advice what I should try (more or less flow, more or less light …) to try to prevent to loose it totally ?

Thanks in advance for your help / advice

 

[btldreef]

I wish I could be of more help, but mine have done the same thing on three different pieces. I've given up on my last one, even though my husband is hopeful that he can bring it back. Have you noticed them just withering away or does brown stuff come out?

 

[frenchy in ny]

Still thanks for the answer and no actually there was no brown or white stuff coming out (as I could have seen when I had a coral dying in the past) but just the "flesh" part of the head / poly disappearing gradually from one end of it and leaving behind the white skeleton ...
when you wrote this happened to you on three different pieces, was it on 3 entirely different corals or 3 different heads / polyps of the same coral ? anyhow please let me know if anyhow you will be doing seems to work and will do the same (currently I put it in a place of more light to see if it woud have some benificial impact.) Thanks

 

[btldreef]

It's been three different colonies that I've had this happen to. Mine did the same thing, just slowly shrivel away. Candy canes and Xenia I have trouble with. I have no idea why, yet I can keep "difficult" corals like goniopora

 

[flower]

Does the head disappear overnight or slowy?
If overnight..you have an eater, most likely a Bobbit worm that has grown big enough to eat coral and likes the candy cane or lives in a rock nearby.
If slowly...Check your nitrates and calcium. Calcium is needed for growth and nitrates above 10 are bad for LPS corals like the candy cane.

 

[mr. limpid]

I had the same problem with a brain coral, I found out that my test kit was out of its dated and was giving me false readings on my Nitrates, which kills coral as you are describing.