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Old 01/09/2008, 09:00 AM
dendro982 dendro982 is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Canada
Posts: 1,877
I'm also around 2 years in the hobby, but had a few cases of that.

What I would do:
1. Keep an eye on the tank. Even seemingly unkillable corals can die - but not in one day. If you catch the process in time - it's likely reparable.
2. You have sand, I - bare bottom tank (after having shallow sand bed). Sand potentially could accumulate a lot of detritus, but you will see this, and reaction of other macro- and microorganisms. Including fish, that reacts faster, good indicator.
3. Be sure, that you do not have red cyano, flatworms, dinoflagellates for a prolonged time. Carbon and micron sock as the temporary help.
4. I had problems with some salts - tests were OK, but one didn't kept alkalinity in tank. Had losses, even with alkalinity supplements. Even had a some loss of coraline - late, but still indicator. Changed for a different salts - much better. Tropic Marin Pro Reef, Red Sea and Instant Ocean were good enough.
5. Be sure, that nobody is knocking down LPS frags repeatedly: the cases of brown jelly (corals gangrene, in my understanding) followed the injury of the weakened corals (that were moved from high light to low light).
6. Filtration - check, if the not much particles are settling on the LR, decomposing there and lowering water quality. My apologies for assumption - trying to list everything, that seemed related.
7. Fragging the healthy parts, instead of dipping. Fragging the branching hammer will be easier, than the solid wall kind.
8. Change the flow, or position of the corals relatively to the flow - they respond pretty fast and you can see, are they like it or not.
9. RTN of the soft corals: I'm not an expert, but what I dealt with:
--xenia - spore-like cover, syphoned away (turkey baster), as soon, as it appeared, repeatedly;
-- purple lemnalia - stem rot, probably due to damage. Fragged.
-- orange swiftia gorgonian - really rapid tissue necrosis. Dips and disinfection didn't helped, Melafix and Pimafix - slightly. Mostly fragging and local disinfection by permanganate (was out of peroxide on statutory holiday). The same, what you would do for a human wound.

Seems, all.
Fresh, daily changed small doses of carbon - for emergencies.
Good luck!