Caulastrea going down hill
 

I've had this thing for about a year, it grew from 3 heads to about 10, always nice and puffy. Never moved it. In the last several weeks, however, it's started to look like the skin of a saggy old lady. Now I am seeing parts of the skeleton exposed in a few of the heads. What could be the problem?

Before and after pics. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...4eb893a082.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...ba4297812c.jpg

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Has anything changed recently? (lighting in particular) IME that clam and that candy cane have very different lighting requirements. It's not that it can't work though. Maybe a move someplace else?

Lighting is the same, haven't changed any light settings in maybe a year. The derasa just was out there there a few days ago when I had to make room for some frags on the sandbed. I've always had the caulastrea in that same spot, but do you think it's too low if it's at the same level as the clam?

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I did have a doing incident about two weeks ago where the doser dumpes about 35oz of soda ash. Caused a calc precip, water took a day or so to clear up. Didn't seem to affect much, I just did a 1/3 water change and dosed the calc levels back up to where they needed to be. Don't know if that was before or after the caula started to go bad. All of my levels are great, API and Hanna tests.

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Also had an outbreak of hair algae about a month or so ago when my skimmer overflowed lots of poo poo back into the tank. Got it under control in a week or two with hard skimming, and heavier than normal carbon and gfo in the reactor.

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What are your exact parameters and salinity?

Here are my latest parameters. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...d02c00227e.jpg

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Took these a few days ago, btw. I usually have 0 ammonia but i had a rock anemone crawl under a rock and die. It's now back to 0.

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I think the ammonia may have been your problem. How’s the coral doing now? As long as it’s still alive it should recover now that you have ammonia under control. Other than that, the salinity is a tad low, but I doubt that was the cause

This

No, for sure that isn't it. Problem started well before ammonia spike. Spike only lasted a few days, and had been back to normal now for a while, but the coral issue remains.

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My guess is the nitrates are too low. I don't think 0 is a good number to have there. How many fish do you have?

Nitrate 5ppm, salinity 1.026, mg 1350...
All three a bit low...

Beware of GFO, it can quickly strip the phosphate and virtually kill coals.

Stability, consistency, and on-point parameters.