colt coral

[jsteel]

i bought a colt about 2 months ago and it was an excellent specimen. it was about 12'' in height and fully extended. it remained very healthy and was growing onto the surrounding rocks until 5 days ago it suddenly seemed irritated and retracted. 2 days ago it started oozing goo, yesterday the polyps started to fall away and this morning the entire structure was falling apart. i was forced to pull it out of the tank for fear that it would cause a serious spike.
Has anyone had this happen to them? Any advice? I did notice that the temp. had increased about three degrees over the last week since i added a halide to my refugium. i put an additional fan over the sump with some success.

 

[Anonymous]

Perhaps some more info might help. Can you list some tank parameters? Alk, calcium, pH, nitrate, salinity (don't overlook measuring salinity, I've seen some nice examples of people who don't measure it being surprised after a few monthes time...) Do you dose iron? Do you dose Essential Elements, or any other product? Iodine? Is another coral stinging it at night?
You mention metal halides over the fuge, what is the lighting over the coral itself, and have you changed anything recently?

Edit: regarding temp, I had colt corals in a tank where the temperature would change from 86F to 80F in the space of a few hours (early morning until around noon). Direct summer morning sunlight would really heat that sucker up That tank flourished for over two years that way, until I changed locations.

 

[Len]

I've never had a colt melt away like this, but I've had a few other soft corals do this for no apparent reason. So the only recent change was the metal halide over the refugium?

 

[stubbsz]

It's interesting to hear there is a way to harm Colts. I had to pull my sump out the cabinet for emergency repairs at the weekend and found a piece that I'd lost into the overflowwhile fragging some 2 weeks earlier. Still alive even though part of it was sucked into the Protein Skimmers pump.

-Adrian

 

[Anonymous]

This happened to my newly acquired colt when I was trying to get it attach, it just seemed to melt away for no reason.

 

[jsteel]

sorry i took so long to reply but i just tested for nitrates(0), phosphates(0), alkalinity,(8.5 dkh),ph(8.2).
lighting is (2)250 10k mh's and 4 55w actinic pc's
euroreef skimmer, refugium.
anyway, thanks for the input from everyone, i appreciate it. i just put carbon into the system because alot of the other corals seem irritated since the meltdown, i guess with the nitrates testing clean it must be toxins from the colt.

 

[jsteel]

oh, and salinty tested at 1.024 and i ran out of calcium tests.