Sad day...a death of a colony.

[zhenya]

Like the title says, pretty sad day for me. I had to remove a dying Acropora colony that I grew from a small fragment that I recieved in a trade with a fellow hobbyist. Sadly, he lost his large colony shortly after the trade and I were able to provide him with replacement after my fragment became a colony. I just hope I can get a replacement from a few guys that I gave frags to.
I'll post some pictures so you can see why I had to remove it. In my opinion it wasn't a RTN but rather a SDR( shut down reaction). It started sometimes last week and eventhough I did frag the colony to open it up some to provide more flow to it, the reaction continued and today I decided to remove it from the tank. I took some cuttings but I'm not hopefull that they will live for long. I believe this reaction is not reverseable and the entire colony is affected. Something to do with genetics of the cells, IIRC.
Anyways, RIP A.millepora.

PS. I think I should correct what I had said about it being SDR and not RTN. The two deseases are very similar in appearance and at this point I don't know what exactly happened to this coral.
Shutdown reaction is a rapid process, much like RTN, so the fact that this colony was dying clowly negates what I was thinking...

[Reefland]

Gene,

It looked like the front part of the coral was in good shape? Is this where you took the frags from?

[zhenya]

Gene,

It looked like the front part of the coral was in good shape? Is this where you took the frags from?

Yes, I took few frags from that area but it worse looking than it looks in the picture. It was dying from bottom up so it is hard to see in the pictures where discoloration is or tissue loss. I took some tips off and glue couple to a small rock, mybe they'll survive, and I also stuck a couple in the crevices.
I will also take couple to a LFS and see if they will live in their tank. Who knows?

[vtec si]

Gene, keep a eye out for other A.mille in the tank (if you have others) I lost both colony of A. millepora (blue & purple) to the same thing. At least I think it was the same. First the blue then the purple. They were right next to each other in the tank. I also fraged all the tips I could but only two purple made it and one blue. this all happend just befor I took my 180 down. I wish I was more help but I still to this day have no idea what caused this.

Good luck,
Martin

[zhenya]

Gene, keep a eye out for other A.mille in the tank (if you have others) I lost both colony of A. millepora (blue & purple) to the same thing. At least I think it was the same. First the blue then the purple. They were right next to each other in the tank. I also fraged all the tips I could but only two purple made it and one blue. this all happend just befor I took my 180 down. I wish I was more help but I still to this day have no idea what caused this.

Good luck,
Martin

Thanks Martin, I'll keep an eye on my other two A.millepora( it is the the reason i took this colony out of the tank today).

So far they didn't show any stress or anything negative, at least not on the outside. Usually, if it is a contageous desease that was present the symptoms would be apperent pretty quickly.

[Poseidon]

This is a long shot Gene, but did the tank have any temperture swing that you know of? Those pics are what my Milli looked like before it croked, and I know I subjected it to a rather large swing.

Also what has changed lately? Have you tried anything new?

[zhenya]

MIke,

Nothing really changed that I am aware of.My temp. swings only couple of degrees day/night which is quite normal.

[Poseidon]

Well like I said, it was a long shot.

Eric had presented a theory about ciliates causing RTN like symptoms, but he later concluded they were just a clean-up crew so to speak. It looks like those ciliates cleaned you out! Now if only we could figure out what causes the tissue to seperate.

[zhenya]

Now if only we could figure out what causes the tissue to seperate.

Hmmm, I'm thinking in my case it was death that make it separate from the skeleton...

Anyways, I'm getting over this loss slowly. I saw it coming when I first noticed areas of tissue recession in the back of the colony, which, ironically, was recieving most of the flow in the tank.
I'm not sure if there was any ciliates present to clean up as it would be hard to see with unaided eye, but I suppose there were clean up going on.
I have to dig up my records to see who I gave frags to and hopefully theirs grew up into colonies so I can get a frag back. ;)

[charlie]

Sorry to hear about this Gene. Like Mike said tho, watch your other milles, the same thing has happened to me also. Mine was the size of a volleyball when it went.

[zhenya]

Just for a fairwell sake I'll post a progression of pictures I found in my gallery of this coral. From the frag I recieved to the colony it grew into.
You know me, another chance to post pictures...

The day I mounted it...


as it started to grow into a small colony


and forming a table


and finally, last year it reached really large size...


I have two other colonies, different color, but none grows in this form so I'm sad to see this one go, for sure.

[zhenya]

Sorry to hear about this Gene. Like Mike said tho, watch your other milles, the same thing has happened to me also. Mine was the size of a volleyball when it went.

Charlie, this one was tabling form, so it is hard to gauge size but it was at least 16" across before I fragged it in the begining of the year. The pictures I posted in the original post show it when good chunk of it was chopped off on Friday. It didn't look much of a table anymore either... ;;
I am keeping an eye on my other two milles but they always looked different from this one and don't look affected at this point. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it was just a single colony event and will do a water change tomorrow, just to be on a safe side. I do run carbon in a carbon filter continuosly too. I was about to add a phosban reactor this week but will wait untill things come down. I don't think I have much of a PO4 problem but I was going to run a minimum amount of german made iron oxyde to help remove a bit more that I can't detect with the useless hobby grade kit.

[Poseidon]

That sure was a pretty piece. I am sure ANYONE that was given a piece of that will GLADLY give a piece back.

[My2heartboys]

Like the title says, pretty sad day for me. I had to remove a dying Acropora colony that I grew from a small fragment that I recieved in a trade with a fellow hobbyist. Sadly, he lost his large colony shortly after the trade and I were able to provide him with replacement after my fragment became a colony. I just hope I can get a replacement from a few guys that I gave frags to.
I'll post some pictures so you can see why I had to remove it. In my opinion it wasn't a RTN but rather a SDR( shut down reaction). It started sometimes last week and eventhough I did frag the colony to open it up some to provide more flow to it, the reaction continued and today I decided to remove it from the tank. I took some cuttings but I'm not hopefull that they will live for long. I believe this reaction is not reverseable and the entire colony is affected. Something to do with genetics of the cells, IIRC.
Anyways, RIP A.millepora.

PS. I think I should correct what I had said about it being SDR and not RTN. The two deseases are very similar in appearance and at this point I don't know what exactly happened to this coral.
Shutdown reaction is a rapid process, much like RTN, so the fact that this colony was dying clowly negates what I was thinking...

__________________________________________________ ____________

Gene, though I don't know much about this type of coral--I wanted to say sorry for your loss.

Anne

[kevinpo]

Hi Gene,
Sorry to hear about your colony
I have a large green one that has a similar growth pattern. It did the same thing but just in a swath through the middle and then stopped. It was receiving a tremedous amount of flow so I don't think that was an issue. It did not spread to any other of my milleporas. It progressed exactly like yours from the bottom up traveling from the back (older) part of the colony forward. At the time I was keeping my alkalinity much higher than now, about 3.6 - 4.0 meq/L. I run about 2.97 now.
I hope you can find a frag again.

Regards,
Kevin

[zhenya]

Hi Kevin, and Thanks!

You know, the first thing I checked was the chemistry and Alk in particular. Like you, I don't let Alkalinity go higher than 2.9-3.0 meg/L, in fact it is much lower than that and is around 2.75-2.8 becouse I use this Nutri-SeaWater for all my water changes. Last time I checked the water from the box and Alk was right at 2.75 meg/L and calcium around 420ppm, so I don't add anything and just rely on my reactor to keep up( testing about twice a month this days). The only thing that show a bit different in the tests is that Calcium fell to 380ppm but I don't think it would've done this.
Anyways, thank you for letting me know about your colony behavior, it seems that perhaps it;s growth form has something to do with it? In my case it didn't want to stop and just continued to progress towards the ends of the colony( where new growth was formed as recently as couple of month back).

I will track some frags down, I;m sure.

[Papa Doug]

Awww Gene. That was a beautiful colony. Sorry.

Its makes one wonder what is happening to many of these colonies & others. Seems to be an all to common problem, usually like yours, with unknown reason.

One thinks its flow until Kevin mentions his? Perhaps over crowding, as compared with its natural habitat? Many of these tanks, like yours have always been so stable, yet this occurs?

[zhenya]

Hi Doug,

Yeah, it;s sad to see it go for sure... If you remember, I rescaped my tank not that long ago so the corals won't be overcrowded. The funniest thing is is that this colony was never happier than when it was surrounded on all sides by other corals...
One thing positive from all of this is that my tank has a lot of room now and gets good light penetration on that side where this colony used to be...
Everything that was once shaded by it is now exposed fully to the light and I'm sure gets better flow as well. Good chunk of the Seriatopora died becouse it was shaded by that colony and I hope now it will regrow that side and becomes nice and rounded as it once was. ;)

[BubbaWPB]

That was a beautiful colony, Gene. I'm very sorry for your loss.

Bubba

[Papa Doug]

So then it makes one wonder that many of these sps corals, just hate any type of change. Seems it does not take much to upset them and downhill they go.

My own experience,s with alkalinity shifts over the last several years, {since moving here}, because of a stupid calculation of well water, has taken its toll on many sps colonies but not bothered anything else.

A lot of incedents, with the downfall of colonies, or even whole tanks, seem to all end up at a single event, even so small many times the aquarists fail to notice it.

However, mushrooms just dont seem to have the same appeal anymore.