SPS just not doing good. Please help.

clinto

I have a large birdsnest sps that has been doing fine for 3 months now and it is now dying off from the bottom up. This has happened with 2 others sps in the last month and i am at a loss as to what can be done. I have a 150mh pendent sitting 8" above the water and the coral is equally as far below the surface but directly under the light. I have a koralia 4 pointed at it so i don't feel it's light or current. Alk and PH are perfect due to my refugium. I add seachem products weekly and monitor levels before i do add. I use the 8.4 buffer, fuel, ions and calcium from their product line. Calcium does fluctuate between 380 and 500 because i have not quite figured out the proper dosing schedule on my 75 yet. one thing to consider is there are a few mushrooms with in a couple inches of it, but are only close to one tip of the stony. could they continue to kill off more branches on the birdsnest even if they are not in range. or in other words if the tip of one of the branches gets stung can it have a domino effect and end up killing the whole piece. I hate to lose any more stonies but i'm starting to think i need to stick with lps and softies. Should i frag off the dead area? or move it? Please let me know if anyone has had similar probs or has any ideas. Thanks

unclejed

Sounds like bristle worms. Here is an excerpt from a q&a;
(Marine): Bristle Worms (again)

by fssmith/venus.lerc.nasa.gov (Greg Smith)
Date: 5 May 1992
Newsgroup: rec.aquaria

In article <u4o9rINNrrq-at-stanley.cis.Brown.EDU>, jle-at-dam.brown.edu (Jon Elion) writes...>A fews weeks back there was a thread about bristle worms showing up in>reef tanks. I only skimmed the items, amused that anyone would be so>careless as to allow such a thing into their tank.> >Yep, you guessed it, I found one in my reef tank last night! Nice specimen,>actually, about 3/8" long, brightly colored. Definitely bristle worm.> >Sorry to have to ask for a repeat of this on the net, but the answers>never really "registered" since I didn't think I had the problem.> >QUESTION: What does a bristle worm bother? Does it eat coral polyps?> >QUESTION: What eats bristle worms (i.e., how to get rid of it/them)?usually scavenges on leftover meaty foods. If none are available muncheson corals. Is eaten by arrow crabs and coral banded shrimp. However bothof these will eat leftover fish food and brine shrimp preferentially overbristle worms. The coral banded will also eat the arrow crab sooner or laterif you have both in the same tank. My suggestion -- Get a pair of coral bandedif possible. Ifv not get a single coral banded shrimp. Feed the fish sparinglyif at all and manually remove bristle worms whenever you see them. They make traps for them.

Judge

Hi Clinto, maybe pic's would help.

Dr.Fragenstein

Out of the thousands of worms that enter our tanks and the maybe hundreds of "bristleworms" there is only one maybe two species of "coral eating" worms and those typically eat large polyped stonys. I wouldn't rule out the mushrooms, SPS and mushies don't mix. I had something like that happen on one of my German Blue polyped Digis and I broke the piece I little above the recession, and then epoxyed it to a rock. The epoxy covered where the recession was and since then it has completely stopped and is doing fantastic. I would move the SPS or the mushroom if possible