Chemicle Warfare

[55semireef]

I am about 99 percent sure I have chemicle warfare in my tank caused by my S. Haddoni. Ever since I brought it in my system, all my corals have been slowly fading away and bleaching. My Hammer coral is bleaching and not expanding as much, my yellow polyps are slowly shrinking, my leather is not expanding and ceases to grow, my xenia looks horrible and my H. Crispa seems to not expand as big as it use to. I have been doing my water changes about every week to to two weeks and have been regulary switching out the carbon. What should I do?

[returnofsid]

Carbon will only do so much...and not much at that. YOu could try increasing flow and increased skimming. Keep in mind that even in the ocean, chemical warfare can kill other corals. There's now way we can keep it from killing other corals in our lil' tanks, no matter how large they are. You may have to remove the offending coral.

[55semireef]

Yes carbon has limited powers. I do have pretty good flow and have a very strong skimmer. I have a Octopus 150 on my 55 gallon tank. The skimmer is rated up to 150 gallons.

[seapug]

I've read that Carpet anemones are capable of doing this. I've also seen them kept in tanks housing many other corals where everything seemed fine, but I suppose some are more potent than others. Only way to tell is to take it out and see if things improve.

[55semireef]

Well, everything was going great until I had this carpet come in. I just had to save it from the lfs and is now doing great. Everything else is not though.

[danceswithfish]

chemical

[Frick-n-Frags]

MAYBE

maybe it is coincidence, and something else is going on. gotta think through all possible scenarios.

the true test would be to temporarily remove the carpet and see if everything reverts to happy again. I'm not as sold on chemical warfare being the culprit in these cases as other common things like bad maintenance or lack of good testing which result in bad water. there are too many tanks with happy crews that include monster anemones.

how old is the tank? (maybe substrate issue)
what do you keep your alk at?
been keeping up on waterchanges and dosing? etc

ask yourself all these things too.




ps: re: spelling. danceswithfish, no one spells worth a crap anymore. roll with it. You will go insane if you don't. :D
I personally try not to look uneducated, so I try to keep my spelling in line. But that is just me.

[55semireef]

I have been keeping up with my water changes and dosing. But I have done two water changes since I noticed the bad signs of what seems to be warfare and no improvements. The sand is fine and my alk is at about 3 meq/L. The tank is about a year and three months old. Nothing has ever hit the tank like this before. Since I am an anemone guy, I will give away my corals and just keep my nems. But I still want to know whats going on so I don't run into this again down the road.