ANY IDEAS??? DYING PLATE CORAL

[dnorton1978]

Okay, I have a long tentacle plate coral that has been in my tank for a month or so now. Close to his mouth he has some tentacles that are not looking right. They are small and look like they are decaying flesh. I have two ideas as to why and wanted to get some ideas from you.


Feeding...

I have fed him before, normally once a week with a piece of shrimp, but everytime i would feed him(or her) my cleaner shrimp would try to steal dinner. I would monitor the plate coral with my hand in tank until it was in his mouth. Later in the evening i would find a cleaner shrimp with the shrimp I fed the plate coral. I am not sure whether or not he ever got any food. I assume he did.

My previos spike in tank when I added some new live rock..

Everything has been back to normal for about 2 weeks or so now, and all chemicals have been normal for awhile. The spike consisted of NITRITE AND NITRATE.

Is there anything I can do to help the plate coral? I have a QT tank for my fish, but do not know what to do with a sick coral. THanks guys and gals..


I will try and post some pics if I can get a good one. So far no good..

 

[dnorton1978]

No luck with pictures. Hopefully, the description may help somebody..

 

[Anonymous]

Put a meshed dome over him after feeding to prevent the thief from robbing him.

When the tenticle rots, it will turn to brown junk that flows away very quickly. I don't know what, but it can be too much picking by the shrimp, or some other issue the the plate.

 

[dnorton1978]

MESHED DOME??? Like what? not really sure what to use, nothing pops in my head.

 

[Anonymous]

Put that annoying shrimp in the QT tank until your coral recovers.

 

[Anonymous]

You could get some plastic window screen and fashion it into a cover.

You could make a topless acrylic box, drill lots of little holes in it, and put that over him.

jayo

 

[Anonymous]

Cut the bottom off of a 2l soda bottle. You can feed through the neck. You can use a 1l or 0.5l if the coral is smaller.

 

[Dewman]

Plastic basket you buy strawberries or blueberries in at the produce market.

I have 3 of them and I used them to feed the BTA when the clown was young and didn't know what she was doing.
She used to rip the food out of the BTA's mouth and then re-bury it in the arms, This stressed the BTA out terribly.

See if any of your local food markets have some extras in the back of the produce department.

 

[Anonymous]

Good idea. I use the two litre method. I like the strawberry basket idea though.

 

[dnorton1978]

I am going to the produce department today.. thanks guys

 

[dnorton1978]

As of today the plate coral is not looking very good. The base of the tentacles closest to his mouth look like decaying flesh. THe are quite a few. There appears to be white looking pieces at the base of them. The tentacles that look so bad are also shriveld up. His outer tentacles look like normal. I have read that long term success is difficult with this type of coral.

I am concerned with it decaying and causing a problem with my tank, so i have 2 ideas.

See if my LFS will take it back and try and nurse it back
option 2 is up in the air.Ok i lied i dont have a second option, err wait i do, put it out there to REEFS.ORG..

 

[dnorton1978]

oh yeah here is some information on my tank.

55 gallon
55 - 60 lbs of live rock
40 -50 lbs of carib sea sand
Fluval 404(i know i know)
sea clone 100 (stop it)
Lighting is a total of 216wattsin the form of power compact
2 blue T5's, and 2 white T5's it is about 3.9 watts per gallon.
I have 2 maxi jet 900's
plus extra circulation from skimmer and fluval.

Have some other corals:
green star polyp
green hairy mushroom
xenia
galaxia


BIo Load
2 damsels
1 flame
1 coral beauty
1 sailfin
1 watchman goby
3 cleaner shrimp
about 40 assorted hermits
sand sifting snails
sand sifting star fish





All chemicals are testing great..

 

[dnorton1978]

Maybe somebody would like to take him and fix him??? He could be yours... LOL :lol:

 

[dnorton1978]

I decided to take it down to the LFS, and will do so this afternoon. If anyone has any ideas i would still find it helpful. Thanks

 

[Meloco14]

This is just a shot in the dark, but have you taken the time to make sure your angels aren't picking at it? Maybe when youre not looking? Other than that you probably will never know what's wrong. Everything else looks fine to me. I hope the LFS can do something for it.