Could leathers be the culprit?

[Nav]

I have 2 leather toadstools (one is green polyp and other white polyp) both 3" heads - 4" long, that are mounted on 2 sides of a big rock (maybe 8" apart). In between these 2 leathers, I had a branching hammer colony (like 6 heads). The white polyp toadstool's head in the back was pretty close to one of the hammer heads so I could see part of the toadstool's polyps sometimes shrink/close so I assumed the hammer expanded and stung that area.

Some of you might know that I've had acans melt away and recently had some acros and chalices slowly STN too. Last 2 weeks my hammer (close to leather), frogspawn & duncan (other side of tank) heads never opened & I was trying to relate that to either change in my light or salt.

Now I'm reflecting on the past events and wondering if the hammer-leather sting could've released toxins into the water column causing these LPS to not open up? or melt?

Could leathers release enough toxin to melt coral? I've come across many posts about leathers killing SPS in proximity.

Only this Wednesday I saw my duncan & frogspawn open like 10% but not fully. I was talking to @boun11 & he suggested removing the leathers & do a PWC to see if it improves. I did a mid-week PWC and removed that entire rock with leathers and now duncan & frogspawn are like 20% open. But they started opening up slowly even before I removed the leather, so its hard for me to say if it was because I removed the leathers..

Here's a very old pic of the placement, white leather is in the opposite side in the back only seen from side of tank, but it was that leather in the back that was close to the hammer.

Here's a more recent pic where you see the hammer closed and the green leather closed too (but green opened back in a few days), white never closed, very healthy.... This rock is what I removed 2 days ago.

Btw, I always run carbon.

 

[neuro]

nav, my tank is OK now if you need a temp space to care for your coral again.

I don't think your leather is causing issues, but then again some things are still surprising me till this day.

 

[Coral reefer]

I would suspect one of the many things you seem to be changing on a weekly basis before the leathers...I doubt that's the sole cause of your many problems, but why not see if it helps having taken them out. But how will you know that's what it was when you've changed other things recently as well?

 

[Nav]

But how will you know that's what it was when you've changed other things recently as well?

Thats exactly my confusion, I know I've changed many things but trying to understand from others experience here if leathers could be a possible cause for corals closing up or melting...

 

[Nav]

nav, my tank is OK now if you need a temp space to care for your coral again.

Thanks for offering Alfred, will let you know

 

[wpeterson]

I don't think the leather is an issue unless it totally died and released more toxins than your carbon/skimmer could handle. I kept two different leathers in a small 29 gallon for over a year with a lot of SPS without negative impacts to the SPS.

Are you sure something in your tank isn't nipping at them? When I lost acans and favia it turned out rogue pepper mints were chewing down on them in the small hours of the morning. Something slowly eating/picking at soft corals can look like melting - since they close up when traumatized.

If not something picking at them, I'd agree with Mike that a lack of stability is the most important thing. Fundamental water params: salinity, Alk, Calc. If you're also adding a new skimmer or other nutrient export you may be dramatically lowering the nutrient load which can also be a shock.