Pink Fungia Plate Coral 01/09/09
I have been an avid reader of your site for a couple months now and would like some expert advice. Here is my current problem, my pink Fungia plate coral which has been doing well, started showing signs of white skeleton around the mouth are yesterday.
<Yikes, not good. How long have you had this coral? If you've had it a long time (several months or more) and only just now started target feeding it, it might be starving to death.>
I came home tonight and it was worse. I watched it last night in the dark and it was the first night it had not open it's tentacles at all. I tried target feeding it last night, but never saw it eat. It still has some color, but it has puked up a lot of it onto the sand bed. My parameters all checked out o.k. except two, salinity was at 1.027, I have since lowered it to 1.026. My calcium is high enough that I can't get an accurate reading to tell you, it's at 600 or more,
<Calcium is too high... makes me suspect that your Alk is much too low.>
I have changed out water, but calcium is still high, ph seems to reside where it always does between 8.0-8.1, is there anything I can do? Should I remove it.
<No>
Here are my tank specs. 65 gallon wide 4x96 watts 2 10,000k, two blue actinic, 1 flower anemone, 1 tube anemone, a pair of mated percula clownfish, 1 green chromis, one hippo tang, 1 goby Firefish, 1 mandarin goby, 1 coral banded shrimp, several blue and red legged hermit crabs, 1 emerald crab(maybe 2), 1 anemone crab, 1 sand sifting starfish, a few Cerith snails, a few turbo snails, white star polyps, green star polyps, flower pot coral, Kenya tree frag, xenia colony, yellow button polyps, blue zoos(small colony growing on a half clam shell), green zoos, amour of god zoos(very small colony), colt coral, blue anthelia, purple, red and blue mushroom colonies, and my pink Fungia plate. My tank may be over stocked?
<This is somewhat a matter of opinion, but yes, I think you have too many different types of coral in too small a tank... many of which are notorious for their toxicity to each other and other corals.>
Did my high calcium level start to kill my plate?
<Perhaps not by itself, but really high calcium usually means that other parameters are out of whack (such as alkalinity). Also, I suspend that maybe you haven't had this tank for very long. You may have added too many things to the tank too quickly-- and before giving yourself enough time to learn good aquarium maintenance... and to let your system age.>
Is there any way to save it?
<Time will tell. If you have a friend with an older tank and more reef aquarium experience, you might give it to him/her for awhile. Otherwise, I suggest you leave it where it is and concentrate on getting your water parameters closer to ideal (do this slowly). If/when it starts to recover>
Do I leave it or pull it? I am running a skimmer, and several pumps, as well as a whisper 30 hang on filter with carbon. Everything else seems to be doing well, here is a picture of the tank layout.
<A good sign at least...>
Thanks for any help or advice in advance.
Aaron
<De nada,
Sara M.>

Re: Pink Fungia Plate Coral 01/10/09
One last question, this is about the dumbest mistake I have ever made in this hobby, I read my thermometer wrong, since I have set up this tank, about two-three months since I transferred my tank to this one, I got a new thermometer and have been reading it wrong, my temp is at 85-86 consistently,
<This is too warm. My advice, get 1 or 2 more thermometers... of any type (they don't have to be for aquariums necessarily, just anything reliable and accurate that you can dip in water). Aquarium thermometers are often unreliable. I personally have about 5 and they all read slightly different temperatures. I usually just average them.>
which everything seems to be happy with, should I try and drop my temp a bit and how slow. I know I should attempt to drop it no more than 1 degree a day I would assume.
<Yes, do drop the temperature (slowly, 1 degree a day) to closer to 80 to 82F.
Best,
Sara M.>

Re: Pink Fungia Plate Coral 01/10/09
I am concerned, lowering the temp could cause more problems, especially if it lowers too quickly. It's hard to control this precisely. I have three heaters in the tank, I lowered the 150 watt quite a bit and left the two 100 watts as is, so far in 5 hours the temp has gone from 86 to 85 I won't be able to check it again until morning, everything still looks well.
<good>
I added two extra thermometers to be sure the temp was correct. I suspect the temp combined with high calcium killed the Fungia as well as perhaps irritation from the leather, however I think it's strange that the star polyps, yellow button polyps, anemones, and xenia
<The star polyps, yellow buttons, xenia... these are all extremely hardy corals. In fact, many seasoned reef aquarists consider them "weeds" because they grow so fast in healthy tanks and are actually often difficult to kill/abate. As an experiment, I once threw some Zoanthids (button polyps) in a 10g tank with no light (except for a little ambient sunlight) and didn't top it off or do anything to the tank for over a month. By the time I finally remembered they were in there, about 1/3 of the water had evaporated, the salinity was through the roof. The water was actually cold and I'm sure the parameters were all completely out of whack... even the algae had died... but those Zoanthids hung in there. They weren't happy.
They were skinny and brown, but they were alive. I guess my point is... these are difficult corals to kill. Just because they are doing well in your system, that doesn't necessarily mean you're doing everything right.
Fungia are different. They are more sensitive. That said, they are also known for their seemingly miraculous recoveries. So unless there's no tissue at all left on the coral, I wouldn't consider it dead yet.>
are all doing so well along with everything else.
<Best,
Sara M.>