Hi All,
My Euphyllia ancora is dying off rather dramatically in my nano marine. The tissue is receeding then starting to rot (i can confirm that as when i removed some of the loose stuff in teh tank it stank!). I have found many such instances of this on the web but have been unable to find any sccessful solutions. Over half of it has gone now, and beings as its in a nanoreef i'm concerned about the amount of ammonia it has the potential to kick out. Despite the reputation of LPS i doubt this one will reappear once its gone as all that remains of teh dead area is hard calcium skelton with no tissue. It doesn't appear to be brown jelly disease.

All levels are fine inc calcium, and alkalinity, in got low flow on it and is 9" directly below 36W of white/actinic light. From teh picture that was a couple of days ago, since then theentire left is pure white skeleton and the topmost area has all died/is dying. Far right is still fine.

I am seriously considering just removing the thing tonight to prevent my reef from crashing.

Cheers
Sam

is there any way you can separate the bit that is 'healthy' still? do you have another tank you could separte it into with some water from main tank? do you have hermit crabs have read that thes kinds of corals (deliucate fleshy ones) can get tissue damage which can get infected from hermits walking over them?? ive got a small frogspawn frag in my nano, which im keeping an eye for that reason!

I have hermits but they have not bothered the coral to this extent, especially as the largest is about half an inch! The only way to seperate it off would be to take a hacksaw to it (frag it), which you can do, but i didn't want to stress it any more. I unfortuantly cannot seperate it as i have a spare tank but not sufficient light for my quanrentine tank, so i think i'd do it more harm than good

what are you going to do? i would put money on it being the hermits, they have sharp toes! i wish i could remember where i saw what i read on these corals not being kept with hermits for that reason. think it was on a forum, and then i went a found some care info that also said they shouldnt be kept in the same tank as hermits.

to be honest at the rate its going i think i'll have to chalk the hammer up to experience Prob will remove it tonight.

i think i'm going to try cutting off the infected areas and leave one last little bit of coral to give it a chance to recover. I'm not optimistic, but as i think i'm loosing it anyway......

Sorry to hear about the coral. I had similar problems with trying to keep a sun coral. I have some small orange bush type corals which no longer come out in full whcih I think is due to the tank inhabitants.We have to put it all down to a learning experience

have taken out the coral and hacked off a small piece with a saw which looks ok actuallly, so never know, it may pull through, just a fraction of the orginal size!

how did it go in the end?

also do you feed it, i think its a suspension feeder so if you buy some of the liquid coral food it will benifit from it (i think it uses both the zooanthlle algea and filter feeding)