Bacterial infection in corals?

[1979fishgeek]

This is going to be a long post so please be patient and I apologise if it goes on...

I’ve been having issues with my tank. I was stubborn and clung to the idea that my carbon dosing was the issue. For easily five years I was using solid carbon dosing and then NoPox I and had great success, then decided to save money and try Vodka , Vinegar dosing... this is where things started to go wrong.

I tried to use the Vodka/Vinegar for over 5 months and my nitrates went really high and would not come down so I switched back to Nopox, same problem continued no3 climbing higher and not coming down and now a thick bacteria flock, sludge started to coat everything it was clogging wavemakers, skimmer and rockwork. I contacted Red Sea who said I was not skimming enough and so added a additional Deltec AP850 to my already running Bubble Magus NAC six and curve 5. Still white slime was everywhere. Red Sea said I was still not skimming enough so I added another two Deltec AP850 and my tank resembled a space age waste processing site. I was skimming enough for a tank 10 times the tank size and still the white bacteria slime sludge spread over every surface high and low flow areas. I got fed up with the no3 not coming down and switched to another brand Quantum HR nitrate remover. Every bit of white slime almost overnight went away and I thought YES! I’ve solved the issue, but still could not get nitrates lower than 20ppm.

The whole time this was going on I started loosing coral, first my Acropora turned grey and died. Then my branching Monti and porites started show white grey patches like the corals were dissolving (not peeling like RTN) it would take months for the colonies to die. Finally my bomb proof plating Monti, Purple Stylo and Pocillopora went the same way, I was still blaming the NoPox and elevated nitrates....

I scrapped the carbon dosing and went With a old school sulphur nitrate reactor and cheato refugium, finally nitrates came down to low numbers but still I was loosing sps and now LPS showed same issue. Very very slow tissue loss in spreading patches. I got desperate when the duncan colony started dieing one head at a time over weeks and then my Pavona started doing the same patches of white tissue spreading, I did not think I could continue to blame no3 or carbon dosing now and started looking online for answers and came across all the diseases that can effect corals in the wild and noticed huge similarities. So I took out the Duncan and Parvona to a spare tank and been treating them with Maracyn Two. The disease has slowed to a stop, particularly on the Duncan and it’s even started extending its polyps again.

So, looking at these pictures do you agree that they were suffering from some kind of bacterial infection this whole time?
Seeing my tanks been very stable and it still never resolved the issue what should I do next? Treat the whole tank with a antibiotic?

Monti with the same patches of spreading dead areas. It takes many months for the sps to perish.

Pavona in QT being treated with antibiotics, the spread of dieing tissue has slowed and polyps starting to extend.

Duncan showing very positive response to antibiotics, no sign of disease, dead areas looking clean and polyps showing more extension than they have in months.

My dead colonies, which were all grown from tiny frags....gutted.

Tank before the issue started.

Tank now, only softies and anemone remain

All my anemone (BTA, carpets, Magnifica, Curley, maxi mini) have never showed symptoms and all my softies are thriving, this disease only seems to effect stoney corals.

 

[1979fishgeek]

Just don’t know what to do next! Can’t risk adding any stoney corals. 2019 has been a Reefing nightmare.

 

[svogun]

Sorry for your issue. What were your parameters before the nitrate spike and what was the phosphate level? Did coraline algae stop growing and what about nuisance algae growth? Any ammonia?

 

[1979fishgeek]

Sorry for your issue. What were your parameters before the nitrate spike and what was the phosphate level? Did coraline algae stop growing and what about nuisance algae growth? Any ammonia?

Ammonia and nitrite always undetectabl.
KH/Alk 8.3
Calc 460
Mag 1230
PH 8.12
All stable with calcium reactor, test kits Hanna or Seachem.

Before carbon dosing was messed with no3 was sometimes undetectable and always under 5ppm. But I tried to keep it at 3ppm. PO4 was always undetectable.

After I messed about switching to vodka vinegar and then could not get any carbon dosing working again, it would reach 50ppm and I would do water changes and could not get it below 30ppm. I had a brief spike when a trigger jumped over the weir and died and no3 hit 100pm but that was about a week max. Quantum HR reduces no3 to 25. PO4 has been around 1ppm sometimes 3ppm during this time. I’ve not run GFO as it mess with the carbon dosing.

Coraline algae also slowly vanished or turned grey and died. It’s coming back in small patches now.

 

[KrisReef]

Grasping for answers, and wondering; Do you have a UV sterilizer on the tank?

 

[svogun]

Getting coraline algae growth is a good sign now. Did you notice an copepod die off before symptoms began in the corals?

 

[1979fishgeek]

Grasping for answers, and wondering; Do you have a UV sterilizer on the tank?

Me too, I did wondered if a species of bacteria was able to dominate and flourish from carbon dosing and somehow decided to attack coral instead of no3. It’s been a nightmare trying to get to the bottom of it and antibiotics so far has been the only thing to have a effect...but treating the whole tank is scary prospect. I’ve literally had to scrape having stoney corals and go softies. Six years this tanks been running and this happens...it’s driving me nuts!

All I know for sure is carbon dosing only causes this white slime bacteria to grow and does not lower nutrients. While this is happening my Stoneys have deteriorated and wiped out. Time frame must be over a year now, so that rules out STN and RTN and can find no signs of pests eating the coral.

I do run uv its a 75watt Koi pond UV.

I put my ozone reactor back on the tank about 10 days ago , ORP is Running about 350s.

 

[1979fishgeek]

Getting coraline algae growth is a good sign now. Did you notice an copepod die off before symptoms began in the corals?

Yeah I was happy to see Coraline returning, copepods been fine, lovely large populations not effected in any way. I have very fat happy Spotted Manderin.

 

[svogun]

Yeah I was happy to see Coraline returning, copepods been fine, lovely large populations not effected in any way. I have very fat happy Spotted Manderin.

could be some type of strange bacterial bloom and the die off just had the nitrates go through the roof. Or was there some toxin in the dosing? I think more than likely its about recovery and not causality at this point. Since parameters have stabilized I'd wait and have the coraline really take off and then test some of your SPS. Do you run GAC? The other thing is did your softies get irritated and release toxins into the water?

 

[1979fishgeek]

could be some type of strange bacterial bloom and the die off just had the nitrates go through the roof. Or was there some toxin in the dosing? I think more than likely its about recovery and not causality at this point. Since parameters have stabilized I'd wait and have the coraline really take off and then test some of your SPS. Do you run GAC? The other thing is did your softies get irritated and release toxins into the water?

Toxins released from bacteria flocks could have caused it, they could of also been causing no3 remaining elevated... I will probably never get to the bottom of its, but that’s a really good thought. I never ran GAC as i thought it would strip out the PO4 and stall or prevent the carbon dosing...Redfield ratio thingy.

Softies always looked very happy and I run GAC to remove any chemical warfare, but again that is also something I considered. I never had many Sinularia or Leathers when the issue first started, but added them as a test and because I found they were immune to the issues and would also thrive in a tank with elevated nutrients. I’ve always had large colonies of zoa and shrooms but again they were unaffected.

These are some of the softies most likely to get annoyed and/or nuke/poison/sting tank makes, but they have looked superb, been model citizens and grown out from 1cm sized frags in just 5 months.

My anemone army... including a Ritteri and they are not easy especially with elevated no3 and PO4.

TheSe are the most likely softies to release toxic chemical warefare and they all happy, and all added after the initial indications of disease.

 

[John3]

I think when things start to go bad and the life in your tank hits a tipping point and starts dying it creates this massive downward spiral. You try to solve the original issue but the dying corals and other life are adding ammonia which eventually turn into nitrates. As these nitrates are being added from death, you now have less life to consume those nitrates. You end up with almost a total tank crash.

Considering that only corals that can withstand high nitrates are left, that’s how I would explain this. The real question is how do you get in front of a situation like this once you have hit that tipping point. It seems like most loose this battle. I’m sorry for your loss of corals, hopefully everyone can try to learn something from the info you are providing.

John

 

[JerseyReefer]

I know this is an old thread, but it sounds similar to my issue. My tank parameters are good but I want to bring my phosphate down. I did carbon dosing and it worked. I then switched to a Refugium with macro algae and stopped carbon nopox. Phosphates went up so I restarted nopox but only very little. 2ml per day on a 130 gallon system.

alk 9.0
Mg 1400
Ca 440
1.026
Nitrate 10
Phosphate 0.16

now I’m starting to lose some corals. Blastos and rhodactis are shrinking and some Cyphastrea are starting to bleach. I noticed some bacterial film not just on the tank walls but On some corals.

Thoughts? I added some GAC and that didn’t help but I could add more.