Brown film

I've been noticing this brown film on my spongode and my toadstool. I cleaned it off before taking a picture cuz I forgot lol. If it comes back again I will take one. I'm not to worried about the leather but it seems like its slowly killing the spongode any ideas what it could be? When it comes off its stays together like a skin.

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Noticed there was a little left on there...

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oh no. I has something similar. It began to harm my birdsnest so I did three things. Made sure the water was pristine, upped the flow, and used a bit of marine algaefix to help. The coral doesnt look good though

 

I know the apongode was growing like a weed and was bright green. Since switching tanks it seems to not have been growing as good now this...when I first got it I fragged a big chunk of it for a friend but he lost it . I hope I don't now...
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it seems like it was just dying which allowed to film to grow easy. have your params been good? what are they? is the spongodes still alive?

 

Here's one of the biggest problems with mixing soft and stony corals...

Marine Reef Aquarium Handbook - Google Books

Try moving them farther apart. If you're not using carbon (will help remove the metabolites), then I recommend you start. If you already are, then you might try using more and change it more often.

 

The leather and spongode are on opposite sides of the tank and the leather is almost surrounded by other hard corals with no issue. I'll check my params in a little bit I have been adding Sea Chem's reef buffer to raise Alk as it was fairly low like 2.5 meq/l or 7dkh and my pH was like 7.9/8. As of yesterday though my Alk was like 3.5meq/l or 9.8dkh and pH was up to 8.1-8.2. I'll check the other things later though but I am sure nitrate,nitrite and ammonia are all 0 and phosphate is probably 0. Salinity is a little high 1.027 says my coral life hydrometer. Oh and I am running carbon and honestly, that's about about the time when I started seeing the problem with the corals lol. And parts of the spongode are still alive it's bleached out all over but 2/3s still have polyps.

 

You said you started seeing problems when you added carbon. How much did you add? Did you raise the amount slowly? GAC is incredibly efficient at removing organic carbon, which coral mucus associated bacteria is very sensitive to. Much of this bacteria is symbiotic and helps protect the coral, by producing antibiotics and toxins to ward off bad bacteria. However, dropping the organic carbon load suddenly can starve off this bacteria and destabilize the various symbiotic relationships, cause the coral to start expelling symbionts (not just the bacteria) and "bleach".

 

Like 2 or 3 cups in a reactor made out of one of the stages from an ro/di if you know what I mean. I did not know I should of eased the tank into it. What do you think I should do about it now?

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That seems like a lot to start with for a 70g. It could be. I'd also focus on water quality. And really it's likely a combination of factors, flow and lighting are also suspicious as it is the only coral effected. So, you should look for factors that would effect that coral and not others. The sudden change in OC could have been the nail in the coffin though.