Chemical Warfare?

[Justin Ranke]

So I would like some input because I fairly certain I experienced chemical warfare from my toadstool leather coral.

A few months ago I had posted that I thought the toadstool was being stung by some rhodactis mushrooms. The leather wasn't opening much more than a few minutes a day, and it seemed like it was bending its body away from the mushrooms, etc.. well the result of that was me removing the toadstool from the rock that it was attached to. At the time I didn't have a bandsaw so my only option was to slice the toadstool near the base and reattach it to another rock. Looking back during that time I was also seeing a decline in the health of some of the LPS corals in the tank.

Well after removing the toadstool from the rock, the toadstool went into a very long shedding period... like typically when it sheds its a 2-3 day process... this shed it went into took a total of 2-3 weeks. During that time I saw a severe decline in almost all of my LPS Corals. Most of the Acans would be closed up and loosing color and some were even starting to loose tissue around the edges. A Favia. colony took a severe beating and lost nearly 75% of all tissue and was certain it was going to die. All my mushrooms were shrinking and releasing some sort of white filaments. 90% of the corals were extremely unhappy/dying. The only ones that seemed not to be bothered were the Duncans and the Bubble tip anemones.

The day the Favia took a massive turn, I decided that clearly something was severely polluting the tank. Nothing was off with my parameters, I even ended up buying a whole bunch of new test kits to make sure I wasn't getting false readings. Everything parameter wise seemed fine, so I decided the best course of action was to do a large water change. I did roughly a 70% water change and dipped all coral in a Iodine solution incase it was some sort of bacteria infection.

The day after everything seemed fine, and the corals were not loosing any more flesh.

Only thing I could possibly think, is that the toadstool was releasing some sort of toxin in the water column.. is there any way I can get my water tested for any of those toxins?

what do you think?

 

[reef_life]

Leather corals release toxins such as terpenoids when they are stressed or dying. I don't think you can get that tested in an ICP test but I could be wrong. Are you running chemi pure or carbon? Many people with leathers run carbon regularly and that may help moving forward.

I've also read that the more generations a leather has had in captivity the less toxic they become which could be why there are varying reports regarding their toxicity.

 

[Justin Ranke]

I run chemipure blue for chemical filtration. If I'm going to be honest I thought chemipure blue did the same thing as carbon. I'm going to do some reading on that.

That is interesting about the toxicity level dropping as they are in captivity longer. When I bought the leather I was told that it was a frag from a leather that was bought in the late 80s.

Thank you for the info!!

 

[enderg60]

Carbon, lots and now.

I always ran carbon 24/7 because softies, especially leathers like to release stress chemicals. All corals do it, and it usually happens when two corals get too close or one gets stressed. In a decent size, mature tank, this is occurring pretty much all the time.

 

[ichthyoid]

The chemical interaction between organisms is referred to as allelopathy. In the sea, these interactions are known to involve many types of organisms in both positive and negative ways. Among these are algae, coral, fungi, sponges, bacteria, possibly viruses, etc. It is a very complex field to study, relatively new to science and full of promise. Both in general and to those of us in this hobby-

Allelopathy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[chemaholic]

Man I moved my huge Kenya tree the other day and it is still pissed off. I hope it does not nuke my tank. I have been keeping an eye on things since I read this post.

 

[reef_life]

I run chemipure blue for chemical filtration. If I'm going to be honest I thought chemipure blue did the same thing as carbon. I'm going to do some reading on that.

That is interesting about the toxicity level dropping as they are in captivity longer. When I bought the leather I was told that it was a frag from a leather that was bought in the late 80s.

Thank you for the info!!

Holy cow that's an old colony. Guess its not an exact science. I believe the main difference in chemipure blue vs carbon is the blue also takes out phosphates.

I've been a chicken on my new tank. Haven't added nems or leathers. I feel like many corals are telling us that they don't like being in a mixed reef and we do things to try and change their mind about it. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Hope everything comes back to it's former glory.

 

[chuck]

Man I moved my huge Kenya tree the other day and it is still pissed off. I hope it does not nuke my tank. I have been keeping an eye on things since I read this post.

Curious is the kenya tree spitting babies all over the tank? Mine used to years ago so i had to get rid of it