Candy cane coral problem

So I've had these 2 candy cane coral frags for months now. One is a neon green, and one is a broad teal color. I've NEVER had problems with them. Both have grown 4-6 new heads.

So I got home today, and was checking out all the corals, and the teal candycane just looked like crap. It was shrivled up and I could see parts of the white bony part sticking out. It still has a good bit of color, but looks in bad shape.

Parameters are normal.
nitrate-5
nitrite-0
ammonia-0
phosphate-barely detectable
calcium-440
alkalinity-7.8


Thing I've done in the past 2 days that could have caused it: (This happened over night, they looked fine before the lights went out)

1. I've been dosing calcium/alkalinity with the 2 part bottles. It says 1ml per 6.5 gallons. So I have a 70gal, thats like a little over 10ml. And a cap is 5ml. I've been doing half/1cap of each per day, since my alk seems to stay around 7 and I need it higher.

Yesterday I changed it and did what the directions said, and did 2 caps of each. All corals are looking better, but these candy canes look worse. Could i have shocked them?
Original alk was around 7-7.2 before I dosed yesterday.

2. I BARELY and I mean BARELY changed the amount of output on my led fixtures. Like barely a hair changed them. All corals didn't change in a bad way, and are responding fine to it.

3. About 5 days ago I took the glass tops off of my tank, since its been having temperature issues. I am installing an overflow box/sump today/tomorrow with protein skimmer. Maybe something could have gotten in the water? I'm not sure.

Lights have been on for 2 hours as on now. No change on the coral.

Here's a pic of the one that isn't looking good, and the neon greens in the back that are doing great.





This is the same coral about a week or so ago.

Just looks like its having a bad day, give it some time.

It may have shrunk if the snail thats in the picture just walked across it. Also, if the war coral behind it is new or has recently grown, it might have gotten stung by it overnight. Otherwise I'm inclined to agree that its just having a bad day. For what its worth, I also notice all of my corals shrink periodically, but are back to their normal selves by the next morning.

That war coral has been there for over 7 months, they've never bothered eachother. the neon green on is closer to that. And I thought the snail had touched it too, but it still hasn't changed. I'll keep an eye on it

I think Fishy is on to something with the war coral. They can have crazy long sweeper tentacles. Has it been stung?

The candy cane coral is a good 1.5-2 inches from the nearest part of the war coral. Is there a way to tell if it has been stung? If it turns out they've been stung, I'll move both corals to a different part of the tank

I'd move the war coral to another part of the tank (at least 6" away from the candycanes), and then give it a week to see if anything changes. 1.5-2" isn't really enough space for corals that have sweeper tentacles.

FishyReef said:

I'd move the war coral to another part of the tank (at least 6" away from the candycanes), and then give it a week to see if anything changes. 1.5-2" isn't really enough space for corals that have sweeper tentacles.

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I can't really move the war coral anywhere else..And I like it where it is. I'd rather move the candy canes


EDIT// Well it's looking better now. I will most likely move them by tonight. Starting to sort of "puff" back out again and I don't see the sharp boney parts.

So I took some close-ups of my war coral.

It was actually 2 pieces, but 1 of them always grew faster for some reason.

They've been touching like this for a very long time now, easily 4-5 months. Where they meet, I always see the bigger war coral kind of puff up its polyps near the meeting spots. You can see some long tentacles on the smaller war coral, are those the sweepers? They are about 2x as long as the feeding tentacles.

Are they "fighting"? I realize that the bigger coral will win, and I'm fine with that, they'
re the same thing. But is there anything I should be worried about?

Doesn't look like they are fighting to me. They should be okay since they are the same species of coral. If they were fighting, it would look more like your candy cane coral, retracted and pissed off...

What fish do you have in the tank with it? I have a similar problem with my Candy Cane and it turned out that my Coral beauty started nipping at it, took awhile to figure it out the CB is very quick and sneaky around the CC. The CB has never touched the corals before but I knew that might be a possibility. So far it has not touched anything else (knock on wood)

Nothing thats not reef safe

Treezer8 said:

Nothing thats not reef safe

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There are anomalies with every type of fish.

I had a supposedly "reef safe" damsel that would destroy any coral that was put in its territory.

Well I have 2 clowns, small yellow tang, diamond watchmen goby, and a royal gamma. All are still very small. They've been together for over 6+ months, and I've never seen them nip at any coral.

How's your candycane looking today?

It was looking much better last night, but today it looks the same as it did when I made this thread. I couldn't get to move it last night because of some things I had to do. So I'm moving them in like 15 min