help our coral!

To make a long story short recently my boyfriend and I took over a 50 gallon salt water tank that my father has owned for the past 9 years or so. We upgraded it to a 75 gallon tank, had and RO unit installed in our home etc etc. When we took the tank there were only 4 fish (a fox face, 2 clown fish, and1 skunk clown fish) and two very random corals. One was a leather mushroom, the other is some sort of polyp coral (possible star polyp?). The tank was in pretty critical condition when we acquired it. My father is old and couldn't keep up with the tank for the past couple of years, so he was thrilled when he learned that would take it off of his hands and give everyone a happy and healthy home. The water went from toxic waste, to crystal clean with perfect water parameters, a brand new sump, and as I said now RO water for water changes and top offs. Everything was great for the first few months, the two existing corals were thriving more than I had ever seen before and the fish were very active. We added a few more corals to the tank and a six line wrasse. We are taking things slow. However now the polyp coral that was originally in the tank seems to be having some major issues! I've lived with this tank under my fathers care for a while, and I've never seen it have this issue! As far as we can tell the fish aren't messing with this coral, and there's no other corals close by that can sting or attack this particular coral. I'm attaching some images with this thread so you can see what the coral is starting to look like. Most of the polyps retracted in and its becomes pretty bald right in the center of it! If anyone knows what's going on, or has any suggestions that would be greatly appreciated! It would be a shame to have this coral live its entire life in terrible conditions and then suddenly die in the new set up!

 

I don't know if star polyps react badly to bristleworms, but I'm pretty sure I see one in the first pic, bottom left of the "bald" spot. Seems like they might have some tunnels going through there that could be bothering the coral. Maybe someone else can chime in and confirm... The rest of the coral looks happy though

Also, Welcome to 3Reef!!

 

I doubt it is dying so you probably do not have to worry about that currently. Briareum, Green Star Polyps or GSP can be weird at times, but really hard to kill.

I would check water chemistry, double check the specific gravity against a refractometer or probe. After that check nitrates and phosphates if you have not.

Sometimes detritus will collect on the surface and you have to manually remove it, you can either increase flow to the coral or blow it off with a turkey baster or power head.

It might be sponge as well, easily removed with a soft tooth brush.

You can always dip the coral and frag healthy parts and remove decaying parts. It's possible the coral maybe dying off in one area just to spread to other areas, self propagation/preservation.

Please include lighting type, available water chemistry if able.

I think the coral will be fine in the long run.

Welcome to 3reef.

It's awesome you took over the tank.

 

welcome to the forum! and everything she said

 

I agree with everything stated above. GSP is usually harder to kill than to keep alive which makes me think it is the propagation theory. Most people have to actively attack this to get rid of it.

Welcome to 3Reef!

 

If the coral was thriving in dirtier water it may be reacting to the tank getting to clean to quickly. Higher light with cleaner water can impact coral as well. My GSP loves food particles in the water column

 

Thank you everyone!
We noticed the bristle worms too but they've been living in that rock pretty much for the 8 years that my dad has owned it and never created an issue before. Even since I posted the original thread the coral has gotten significantly worse. Here in a newer picture taken today. We can't figure it out. We even took the pictures to our local fish guy (who set up the new sump and RO unit for us... "Something Fishy" in Rhode Island) and he was unsure considering all the other corals are healthy.
We have an LED light which replaced a much older T5 light. Our salinity is at 1.024 and our nitrates are at 0. The phosphates are at .20. The old tank had readings off the chart, and we thought it could be the coral going from disgusting water to healthy clean water. But the coral thrived really well for at least the first few months that we had the new tank set up, and has only just recently started showing this issue. It happened so suddenly too. We woke up to it one morning and since then its quickly getting much worse. It's starting to show the rock underneath where there was once healthy coral. It looks as though something is actually eating the coral, but as I said before all of our fish are reef safe and have lived with that coral for at least 3 years. We've also been keeping an extra close eye on the fish to make sure they're not messing with it, and everything is normal like it has been.
We are going to do an iodine dip tomorrow and hope that helps. We fragged a portion of the coral before any of this issue started because it had completely taken over one entire rock, and we wanted to spread it throughout the tank a bit more (the clear rock above the coral is where we fragged off).
Once we do the iodine dip we are going to keep a close eye on it, but if this issue keeps getting worse I think I am going to do what corailline said and just take off the dead area and frag the rest of it. This stuff grows like a weed, so I'm not overly concerned with fragging it. I actually don't even think my father bought this coral! I believe it was a hitch-hiker on something else and then suddenly just took over a rock! Regardless we are definitely attached to it since we've seen it go through so much with the old tank!

 

An iodine dip might help, it looks kinda like a bacterial or fungus type. Keep us posted.

 

How is the frag you took off doing? Any degeneration there?

 

You mentioned that you fragged the coral before any of the trouble started ~ maybe something happened during fragging? Any chance you had a chemical on your hands? I'm just brainstorming here... never seen this happen to GSP. I'm also curious to know if there is any degeneration with the frag, like mdb asked.