My ORA Frogskin Acropora keeps sliming, any suggestions?

My water parameters are as follows:

Salinity - 1.025
Temperature - 80
pH - 8.0
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 20
Phosphate - 0
Calcium - 480
dKH - 9.6
Magnesium - 1290

I will try and get it up ASAP. The mark is so small though I am sure it will not show up on a picture.

This sounds very possible. I hope this is true because I am starting to get discouraged with SPS. Have you ever had any SPS die on you?

I run Seachem Renew and Seachem Phosguard. It is at 9.8.

So being frustrated, as you know I can get, I took the mother colony out and fragged off all the branches that looked like RTN. I then took a few healthy looking branches and glued them to a rock and put the mother colony on my sandbed for further observation.

 

Nitrate is too high.

Dingo, that may very well be the cause. It would be odd for an acro to die because of it IMO, but I did have a bali slimer that STNd when I first started acros, but no other problems beyond someone shipping frags with cold packs when it was < 60 degrees out.

 

I lost my very first acro ever put in... It was some type of stag. Then i waited maybe a month or two and havent lost one since... knock on wood

By fragging you have stressed it more, however if you leave them alone where you put them then the tips might be okay. just try not to bother or touch or move them anymore to keep the stress low.

Also worth adding is that your Ca seems to be slightly high. should be somewhere around 416ppm with that level of Mg. This isnt a problem and wont cause death in any way. it will actually cause faster growth but since the water is saturated with Ca it will eventually just dissipate out.

 

At 20ppm your nitrates are definately to high. As your nitrates increase you will also start losing colors. Starting with blue or purple. Green seems to be the last color to go. When i say lose color they just turn brown.

 

I know, I am doing a water change today. Starting up the fuge as soon as possible.

 

20ppm nitrate is probably not going to kill an acro. My tank has never been below 20ppm and I grow acros just fine among other SPS. I don't think this is his issue. I think if you would have left the coral alone it probably would've bounced back. It didn't look bad at all in your pics. To me, the tips look like they had growth. I'd like to see a pic of the peeling tips. What did you do with the frags you cut from the mother that had the peeling tips? I hope you didn't throw them out. A lot of SPS can appear to die off completely and start regrowing months later from a single polyp that made it. I think fragging it and doing excessive water changes is going to be much more detrimental than letting it chill.

Some SPS takes awhile to acclimate to your water conditions, lighting and flow. One thing that always makes my acro slime is vermitid snails webbing. On a couple of my frags there are vermitids on the base that irritate the corals. The snails tube just snaps right off of the plug though, doesn't explain why your having issues with both your acros though. Still something to check for....

 

Yeah, I am right there with you on this one Mattheuw1. I think that your issues are from the 0 phosphates in your tank. Phospates, as well as nitrates are food for your tank. Take the seachem products off of your system for a week or even two and you will see a difference.

I am just guessing here but it sounds like you are running the phophate reducer (Seachem) without an adequate method for nitrate removal either via skimming well and / or carbon (GAC).

So, run some carbon and take the gfo offline.

 

+ 1, you are just full of excellent advice.;D

 

I can attest to this lol... a gorgeous purple with bright green polyp tricolor that i have died off to about a square centimeter of tissue with only one polyp remaining. I thought it was a goner so i chucked it into a corner only to realize months later that it was actually alive and growing haha