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Running fresh carbon can help remove toxins. Toxins can come from plants, animals, and of course pollutants.

Well for an update it looks like the xenia and zoas fought off whatever it was pretty well and they are back to being close to old form, the toadstool leather's polyps are at full length again, I am still seeing losses of blue snowflake polyps but it seems to be slowing down a little, and I have not seen any changes in my duncan, branching hammer, galaxea, gsp, mushrooms, or candy coral, as well my larger monti caps up higher in the tank seem to be unaffected and I am crossing my fingers that remains the case.

I took out all of my powerheads and cleaned them one of them for some reason was not working after a feeding and the other one had caulerpa toxifica taking root on it (the biggest reason for a removal and cleaning). after a good scrubbing and soaking, then another scrubbing, and a final drying and RO water soak it was ready to go back in. since then i have noticed less issues and deaths so I wonder if it was that caulerpa which is toxic that was causing problems?

Usually when i see Xenia like that in my pico the first things I check are salinity and ALK.
How old is you ALK test kit?
When was the last time you calibrated your refractometer?

Double check your numbers with a LFS to be sure.

@electrobes yes everything got cleaned and after a cyano bloom and a small diatom bloom everything leveled out and has been good for months now and yes I changed them all at the same time but also I turned the lighting period way down and worked it back up. and they were changed a month ago.

@reef addict I will give a read and see if it helps any, thx for the link

Its probably not, but it doesn't hurt

http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/aqu...rayvoltage.htm

That popped in my head during church. Though I don't think this is the issue but did you replace all the bulbs at the same time. When you moved did you clean out the sand bed and rocks?

i would not know on that one, where to start, symptoms?

Stray Voltage?

ammonia, nitrate, nitrite : 0
calcium 480
magnesium 1350
alk 9 dkh
ph 8.2 average
salinity 1.024 (with refractometer)
phosphate 0


tank has been up and running for about a year been moved once about 5 months ago, bulbs were just changed right before thanksgiving. gulf rock is what is in my tank 100lbs of it was live rock anything else that has been put in since has been dried out scrubbed off live rock, the newest coral is the duncan which has yet to be affected, all others have been in there for at least 6 months and I had most of them in my nano before this tank no corals have been moved

all fish seem fine with no losses, no heavy breathing, and no signs of distress

Going through the checklist:
- Your general params are normal... calc, mag, and alk? What are they out of curiosity?
- Have any of the fish been affected.. any seem stressed or died during this time?
- What's the age of the tank, especially the rocks and sand bed? This is important for something like phosphate absorption that may now be leeching back out... what's your phosphate at?
- What's the origin of the rock and sand? Did you get them as fresh (Meaning new and never being in a tank) products or no?
- What are the ages of the bulbs and how new are the corals? Did you move some of the corals for a rockscape change... moving them higher or lower than they originally were to the lights?

me too blenny I wish I could figure out the problem so at the very least we all have the knowledge of the actual cause, possible fixes, and preventative measures. It is a painful process to watch your beloved corals slowly die away.

Hat I really appreciate the thoughts and options you have given me to consider, unfortunately all those have also been considered and dismissed by me I have a child lock on the door to the sump, my wife doesn't spray anything but I have instructed her to stop lighting a scented candle she burns in here, thermostat is good and the temp stays between 79 and 81.

There has been no new additions to the tank and I have not started dosing anything new I am considering dosing ChemiClean as a way to possibly kill any harmful bacteria that may be doing the damage but other than that I am out of ideas, I have noticed though that it seems to do a lot of damage after the lights go off so I am running my lights an hour longer as of today.

I pray that no one has to go through this and that my larger corals are healthy enough to fend off whatever is doing the damage.

Hey Cyano sorry bro! Just a couple of thoughts:
Could have ya baby/child throw something in ya tank/sump youve been overlooking?
Have maybe while cleaning house ya wife's been spraying chemicals near or by ya tank?
Have you checked the temp of the tank? Maybe termostat went out.
Have you start using any new chemical lately in the tank?
Have you put any new livestock in the tank? Maybe they are irritating the corals.

Just a couple thought to get ya thinking out the box. I will say a prayer the it stops and ya tank goes back to normal. I know how ya feel, I lost a lot of corals and wounded a bunch in the move. Not fun!

HAT

Ug. You have some really nice corals. I'm sorry to hear of the troubles.

I am currently making more RO water as another bucket mixes with salt so I will be doing another 10 gallon water change this morning. my rose millapora has a little gasp of life in it I guess whatever attacked it could reach to the tips so I will leave it alone for a bit and frag it once I find a safe place i believe i can put a frag (plus it has enough stress right now i am sure. The toadstool leather laughed off the sttack by shedding it all off this morning and blooming again, that one made me laugh and truly appreciate the pure hardiness of the coral and made me think that all of my zoas will be fine, I have also never had any issues with my montipora as in it has survived it all and I have not had anything in my tank that does any permanent damage to it or come close to killing it so I am not worried about that one.

A new sign of death has sprouted up on the opposite side of the tank once again starting to only affect the snowflake polyps so I wonder if this is really only attacking them and (since they are everywhere) as they die the corals around them are absorbing any death toxin they release causing spotted and spontaneous crashes only in confined spaces, just a theory anyway.

Thanks hat, and DJ (nice to not be responding through my Iphone for a change, lol. I did a 10 gallon water change and plan on doing 10 gallons a day for at least 50% total volume, also I retested parameters and all still looks ok. I did a little more pruning and then went to work a little in the sump when I noticed the water level in the sump had dropped, I then looked at the inlet and the flow was down to a trickle, looked in the overflow box and found that the algae had grown so thick on the sides that it was choking the flow into it, cleaned that out and got it all flowing great again. I don't think that was the primary cause for whats been happening but I know that is going to reduce the amount of oxygen in the water so it could have been a contributing factor. I also vacuumed the top layer of the sand bed during my water change and pulled out some nasty water (I see no black on the underside of the tank in the sand bed) so perhaps that also will help out a little.

All of the fish, crabs, snails, and the cleaner shrimp all are doing great so whatever is happening is affecting only the corals (leads me to think it has nothing to do with water quality but maybe more a disease or bacteria) I will wait a day and see if what I have done at least slows the spread, if it does not seem to make a difference then rocks will start being pulled out in a last ditch effort to save any remaining coral. I do not have a spare tank I can put any of these in (my nano that i used as a quarantine has had the pump gone out and I am unable to find a replacement) so if I have to start pulling rocks they will be dried and cleaned to nuke anything on or in them, good or bad.

Hey Cyano, I've been watching this thread closely. I believe DJ has been Giving you great advise on your situation so I haven't been chiming in. I wish you the best of luck and hope that your tank heals up. I will pray!

I am going kind of thinking the same thing myself and will try to attack some of it this morning before work. I dosed iodide last night since that helps a bit with sick corals. I am going to do some water changes and retest water parameters but seeing as though it is spreading I don't think it is a parameter problem at all as if it was everything would shrivel at once rather than just spreading out like it is.

Everything that's getting killed is getting pulled out by me at the same time but what scares me is if it takes out my larger corals rather than the smaller ones, I don't even want to think about how bad this can be if the rest die at once

or maybe remove anything arounf the area since it seem to have started in one spot and spread out ward (sounds like a chemical attack for lack of better term) kind of like trenching to stop a fire if that make any sense.

I would start doing some major water changes and put some fresh carbon in. As stuff start dieing it going to release toxics into the water and make it worse. Im no coral expert but I would say it will start spreading faster if you dont get the water changed out. Maybe consider moving what you can to a fresh tank if you have a spare at least get out your most liked pieces. Hope someone chimes in that can give you better advise than me on the subject. Wish you the best of luck combating it

now my rose millapora is the newest victime as it sweeps over my tank and looks at though the monti caps and toadstool leather are next on the hit list :'( I don't know what to do at all