Pissed off LPS and I.D help with unknown substance

[millersteve383]

Hello all!
I have two things I am needing help with. First, I was doing a large water change (30%) trying to clean out the tank of some nuisance hair algae. After the water change, my lobos, candy cane and frogspawn coral are all very pissed. The lobos were emitting a ton of mucus and are now beginning to shrivel up. Is there anything I can do at this point to help them? They don't look too bad but I would like to catch them before it gets worse.
Second, I have a rock with some zoas on it that i purchased at pure reef about three years ago. There is some sort of branching substance that is growing all over it. I just have no idea what it is. Any thoughts? Thanks so much!

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[bcavalli]

That looks like a macro algea called grape Caulerpa.

 

[snowmansnow]

I wonder if you had some salt that wasn't dissolved that got on the corals.
Also what is your salinity... w a 30% water change it will be easy to change salinity.
If you have a way to check it I would start there.
If not get your water to a shop for testing asap .
To me is sounds like something was amiss with your water change water since the corals reacted immediately afterwards


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[raz0945]

Did you have the temp the same in your 30g of new salt water?

 

[millersteve383]

My salinity is 1.025 and it did look like it went to 1.026 but I quickly corrected it back down to normal… Is there anything I can do other than just wait


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[bcavalli]

If that's what your issue was and you already corrected it then you should be fine. If you haven't already you may want to calibrate your refractometer.

 

[camellia]

+1 on above


How does coral look today?
What type of salt did you use?
When you buy salt in the big 200 gallon boxes a lot of times it settles oddly. I like to roll the bag on the floor and shake it a bit to even out the substance. I would check all your parameters just to make sure the salt content was OK.
Normally when you do a water change the corals are in heaven and give you their healthy glow. Any chance temp was way off too?

 

[bulkrate]

That same thing used to happen to my large polyp stony corals come water change time... turned out that the paramters on the newly mixed change water were WAY off (salinity was fine, magnesium/alkalinity way off - low 1100ppm/11-12dkh)

As a result I was running the tank with wildly fluctuating alkalinity levels - looked EXACTLY like your sad candycane & lobo pics. Got a better salt mix and started tracking alk with a Hanna checker & it was like night & day. (Aquaforest Reef currently, but continuum's Halcyon product was what I was using for the past year to decent results once I realized how off my IO/RC mix had gotten) - haven't had a sad LPS day in over a year since.

The macroalgae in on the zoa rock is Caulerpa racemosa. Either harvest it for nutrient export after letting it grow out a bit if you like the look, or get an urchin or something that eats it if you don't.

 

[jennm]

Definitely Grape Caulerpa. You can try to remove it but any bits left over will just regrow. I've seen the occasional tang or other grazer eat it but it's kind of hit and miss.

It used to be really popular in refugiums until it demonstrated its ability to crash in a huge way and screw up a tank. I had a big ball of it crash in my seahorse tank refugium some years ago. No harm done but it scared the bejeesus out of me.

Jenn