Inexplicable Coral Deaths

[Timfish]

I thought I'd relate part of Charles Delbeck's presentation from last weeks DFWMAS Next Wave conference with some observation's of my own. My memory isn't perfect so anybody else who were also there please feel free chime in. For those of you who are not familiar with him Charles Delbeck is currently an assistant curator at the Steinhart Aquarium. When the aquarium was set up initially the majority of the corals were sourced from hobbyists with smaller percentages from corals confiscated by California and US agencies and some collected from the wild. What was unexpected was the corals donated by hobbyists suffered significant dieoffs where the confiscated and wild collected corals had relatively minor dieoffs. One possible cause was the aquarium was out fitted with skylights which caused areas with dramatic changes in PAR as the Sun moved through the sky. Charles described these as "paths of death" The thinking was the corals grown by hobbyists, since they were grown under constant lighting, were not able to adapt the the different lighting conditions. What helps support this is some of the colonies had small areas that survived and were now showing growth presumably having adapted to the different lighting conditions. What is more difficult to explain are examples where two colonies of the same species were mounted side by side and one did well while the other died the only known difference being they came from different hobbyists. What I am not clear on is what were differences in the areas that were not exposed to the skylights, my perception is this problem was through out the tank.

In my own experience not only I have been frustrated in not being able to explain why a coral I've fragged and grown in one tank when moved does not do well in in a 2nd tank even though the lighting, filtration and maintenance is the same but also when one daughter colony thrives and another just survives in the same tank as the parent. One annoying experience a couple of years ago was a cultured brown bubble tip that grew, split after several months then the twins bleached out white. The 2 daughters were in the same location as the "parent" so there was no change in lighting or water flow. Over a 3-4 month period they both shrank down to about 1/3 of their post split size. After about 3-4 months one colored back up and has gone on to split so there are now a total of six produced from that one twin, five of which are currently together in the same location. The other twin took another couple of months to color back up has not split and has now crawled away from the others. None of the other animals have had problems, there has been no change in feeding and maintenance has been 10 gal/week (150 gal system) for years. There were fluctuations in pH between 8.1 and 8.3 over the last couple of years however none coincided closely with either the bleaching event or the splits. Tank has 6 54W T5's and no more than two were changed at a time again these were not closely tied, although in the case of splits it seems reasonable to me if it took several weeks or longer for a light change to stimulate a split.

A lesson I learned long ago is it is critical to match in every way possible the the animal and environmental conditions to each other. But for those of you who spend good money on corals only to have them die inexplicably when all the parameters seem to be right you're in good company. (it might be arrogant of me to include myself with Charles Delbeck but my cats think I'm good company .)

[offroadodge]

i thnk this is a lesson we have all learned, well those of us who keep SPS. Your gonna loose a frag inevitably at some time. I just did and have no reason to explain it but u cant win them all. It wasnt a realy pretty color red anyways so no big loss.

[stoneroller]

Good company to have. I think some zoathids are probably the most finicky when it comes to stress due to fragging or just moving around.

Really? I thought that red coral was the prettiest I've seen!

[offroadodge]

just NOT red enough, to orange 4 me.

Good company to have. I think some zoathids are probably the most finicky when it comes to stress due to fragging or just moving around.

Really? I thought that red coral was the prettiest I've seen!

[+Hydro]

Good company to have. I think some zoathids are probably the most finicky when it comes to stress due to fragging or just moving around.

Really? I thought that red coral was the prettiest I've seen!

I have the most trouble with zoas....no doubt. I have some zoas that only about 1/2 of the frags I make will even live, drives me crazy. I also have trouble buying new zoas and getting them to open up in my tank. I'm not sure if the lighting is too bright or maybe there is some sort of bactaria that lives in my tank that causes a problem, My zoas won't open for no reason one day and after about 3-4 days I will take them out and dip with hydrogen peroxide and freshwater and they will usually open back up. This never seems to be a problem with my zoas colonies, usually only if there are 20 heads or less. Some people wonder why zoas polyps are so high but they have to realize that everytime you cut that colony you are risking losing it. My best advice is not to try and frag anything until it is has at least 20 polyps are more. Also it is important to try and take 2-3 head frags instead of just one. Just one never seems to live. From now on when I sell zoas I will have a 3 polyp minimum.

[stoneroller]

I've learned to let nothing in this hobby drive me crazy. Like you say... it's always something. King Midas are the worst, as they seem to come and go and I never know if they'll come back.

I think there must be a people eater syndrome too. Any PE types start off well and then over time go into decline. I never can reach that critical mass of atleast 20. As they approach colony size, something kicks them into reverse. Just odd...

[JasonJones]

I had a weird one like that this weekend too. I have 2 frags of taste the rainbow acan (had them for 3 or 4 months) sitting literally right next to each other in the tank. They receive similar flow and lighting. Both had been doing very well and growing, but when I came home today from a weekend away, one of the frags had literally melted half the flesh off and the other frag was sitting there happy as can be. Simply bizarre.

[+Hydro]

I've seen acans extend over tentacles and sting nearby corals but if they are the same exact acan then that probably isn't what happened to it. I have noticed before that if one of my acans has a tear in the flesh for any reason that my tangs, rabbitfish, and wrasses will start picking on it until that single head is eaten. Once the single head is gone they usually leave it alone. It always seems to start with fragging them and leaving a bit of loose flesh or in my case you have an angel fish or a vlamingi tang tearing holes in them which was encouraging other fish to eat them.

[Timfish]

Well, I'm obviously in very good company!

[+Lamont]

I've seen acans extend over tentacles and sting nearby corals but if they are the same exact acan then that probably isn't what happened to it. I have noticed before that if one of my acans has a tear in the flesh for any reason that my tangs, rabbitfish, and wrasses will start picking on it until that single head is eaten. Once the single head is gone they usually leave it alone. It always seems to start with fragging them and leaving a bit of loose flesh or in my case you have an angel fish or a vlamingi tang tearing holes in them which was encouraging other fish to eat them.

When I did my move I thought I lost all my zoas. They seemed to have melted away. Then about two weeks after setting up the tank again they slowly started to open up. They were half of there original size though! I now have my colonies back except my Armor of Gods. The Ked Reds have had a tremendous amount of growth.(from 30 to 50 new heads) I also bought an Acan Echinata colony that reached up at least 4"-5" to kill a 3" frag of green slimer that i got from hydro. But it didnt touch the Duncan colony right beside it.(Go Figure??)

[+Hydro]

I've lost AOG's several times, they are very hard to keep in MY tank. On the other hadn I have Devils Armor that look just like them but with squigily skirts grow like crazy. The duncans probably aren't bothered by the stinging tentacles of the acan. I've noticed that some softies are immune to the sting of other corals. For example I can keep some zoas, hammers, torches, frogspawn, and yumas in the same area, The stinging tentacles don't seem to bother each other.

I lost most of a tri color sps colony to RTN over a couple of days a few weeks ago. What was intersting is that there were actually 3 different tri colors corals that I bought at different times put on a rock together. Their bases eventually grew together and some of their branches touched and there was no problem at all. One of the colonies started to RTN so I started clipping away the death. This colony was big enough that there were a couple of places that were touching that I didn't notice. Everywhere they were touching the RTN continued until I finally broke the connection between what was dying and what was living. It was really strange b/c of it being different colonies and what was killing them was that it was being touched by a dying coral. Seems like to me it must have been a bacterial or fungus that was doing it. BTW I dipped it in iodine and in coral rx, no bugs at all. Goes to show you that its a safe bet to cut away and receding parts of coral before its too late. I lost probably 75% of the colony.