Over the years I have been asked a lot of questions by hobbyists regarding their corals and their tanks. Of these queries, the single most frequently asked question is” Why are my corals dying or why did this coral die?” Obviously my first response is: “what are the parameters in your tank”. Invariably the response is the parameters are perfect, or at least reasonably close.
My next question is: “Is there anything in your tank that could be eating or is predatory to your corals?” Here the response is usually, no there is nothing in there that could be doing this. So then I ask in a joking manner: “So I guess your corals committed suicide?” Life in your tank is so bad that your corals decided to end it all?
有些人说我在取笑，但有些人认为确实如此。我知道这不是一个深刻的陈述，但是，珊瑚并非无缘无故死亡。有时候，原因是显而易见的，但是大量时间才能最终找到原因。不幸的是，多年来，我因“没有理由”而失去了许多珊瑚，但现在意识到这是不合理的，我已经能够找到许多原因，我认为很多原因是我认为不可能的。
The first thing I tell people who are losing corals is to do a complete test of the tank’s parameters repeatedly over a week’s time.Also when they do this I suggest that they look at the expiration dates on their test kits.If things are badly out of whack this is easy to see and fix, but this is rarely the cause.However, there is one simple test that I have now seen happen in at least 10 tanks, all of which were losing corals for seemingly no reason.
In each instance the cheap box hydrometer they were using were significantly off and as a result the salinity in their tanks was significantly higher than what the hydrometer was indicating.由于这个原因，大多数失去珊瑚的水箱的盐度超过1.030或更高。不用说这种盐度通常不利于大多数珊瑚的长期健康。As a result, I now use two refractometers, which I calibrate regularly usingJulian’s AccuraSea reference solution.Since many of us now use refractometers to measure our salinity the problem of hypersalinity is not as much of a problem as it used to be, but it still can happen.
测试完成后，我建议在深夜观看坦克。I further suggest getting a flashlight that emits a red beam of light for observing the tank at this time.大多数海洋生物都不会在红光下看到，但是我们可以，因此使用此灯使我们能够看到储罐中发生的事情，而不会导致动物的行为改变。No pun intended, but it was a real eye opener when I started using this light at night.I saw several animals that I did not even know were in my tank, eating and damaging the corals.
The first animal that I did not know was in my tank as ablack-clawed crab that was approximately the size of the palm of my hand.It had undoubtedly come in as a small stowaway on a piece of rock and over time hand grown into this monster.When I saw it it was munching away on a piece of coral, obviously I removed it.Even after removing it I still continued this practice, especially if I was losing corals or seeing damage I continued this middle of the night reconaissance.
Doing so I also found several fire worms and large bristle worms that at night were actually either eating the tissue on theEuphylliaor going into the mouths of these corals to extract food and damaging them that way.I had origianlly blamed it on my Moorish Idol for causing this damage, but it was these worms.
I also plucked out multiple阿斯特琳娜晚上出来吃的海星Acroporatissue as well asmultiple pairs of blue-eyed crabs that were eating coral polyps.我什至看到一个顽童正在吃掉的生长尖端Acroporaat night, that didn’t bother anything during the day. None of these animals were causing massive damage at any one time, but each was at least partially responsible for damaging or stressing the corals enough to cause their demise for seemingly an unknown reason.
如果我晚上没有定期访问我的坦克，我永远不会相信所有这些动物都在场会造成这种损害。However the most amazing animal that I encountered on one of these nightly vigils was a large cone-shelled mollusc, that I believe was a whelk, but I am not a mollusk expert, that was almost 2 inches tall and where it’s mouth and radula were was the diameter of a quarter.
I had mistakenly always thought that this was just another snail. However when watching the tank one night I quickly realized that this was no ordinary snail in that, as it moved down the branch of anacropora, the only thing left was a bright white skeleton where it had eaten all of the tissue off of the coral .
This animal was the cause for the numerous “bleached” areas of my Acroporas that were seemingly doing so for no reason. Luckily this was the easiest pest to remove as it was large and slow moving. This is just a short list of pests that can wreak havoc in our tanks that can be found at night. I am only listing these as they are ones I have encountered that were not as readily apparent as some other pests and were only seen late at night.
所有这些害虫无疑都以不必要的搭便车者的身份出现，因此为什么need for dippingand quarantine for virtually anything we add to our tanks.However, even when this is done and the tank is observed including at night, corals can still mysteriously die for seemingly no reason.Again there is a reason, we just need to find it.
即使完成了所有这些操作并采取预防措施，以添加到水箱中的任何东西，有时我们还会添加鱼类或其他动物think are harmless or even beneficial.In my case I added six black clown gobies when I was battling flatworms and predatory tiny black brittle stars.These fish did an amazing job of eliminating theseAcroporaparasites.但是，随着时间的流逝，一个有趣的现象发展出来。Every month or two there would be significant damage at the base of anAcropora.And for some reason it would always be on new corals that were placed in the vicinty of corals that had been damaged in the same spots earlier.
Over time I finally realized what was happening.At dusk, these gobies would attempt to spawn.But before they would span they would clear a spot in the Acropora colonieswhere they would lay their eggs.While most of the time these fish were great protectors of theAcropora, when they went into spawning mode they were critically damaging and killing their hosts.一旦去除这些鱼，这种伤害就停止了。珊瑚再次死亡或因似乎是未知的原因而遭到破坏。
While the above listed causes for a coral’s demise for seemingly no cause occur far more often than we would like to admit, coral diseases are undoubtedly another frequent reason that we lose corals.I’m not going to bore you with a listing and description of these as I am clearly not an expert on coral diseases.然而,两种最常见的疾病,几乎everyone who has kept an sps coral has encountered arerapid and slow tissue necrosis, aka RTN and STN.When corals die from these it also is seemingly for an unknown reason.
In我的坦克,in the tanks of people where I have seen this happen the tanks for the most part tested well and had otherwise adequate conditions, so the cause of the outbreak was not readily apparent.Fortunately as Dr. Craig Bingman wrote in 1997 we understand that the cause for these maladies is bacterial.这种细菌可能是颤音的，目前在我们的大多数水箱中都存在低水平，因此不会引起很多问题。
However, if we stress the corals by overheating the tank or overcrowding it or having inadequate water flow these bacteria can overgrow at an alarming rate and quickly lead to the demise of many sps corals. Corals where this bacterial overgrowth is occurring can succumb to these bacteria even if the conditions in the tank are otherwise perfect. So even in this case corals are not dying for an unknown reason.
在收集旅行并看到珊瑚从礁石到坦克之后，我对大多数珊瑚的耐寒和韧性感到惊讶。I am also amazed at the strides we have taken in growing and maintaing them long term.然而，随着这一成功，人们意识到，如果我们不经常保持警惕，现在似乎每天24小时，就会有无数的害虫会损害我们的指控。While in the past I would have agreed with the notion that my corals died for seemingly no reason, I now feel better knowing that in just about every instance there was indeed a cause and if I do my homework I can find a remedy to prevent it from happening again.
