Dennis Cartier
Valuable Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2016
- Messages
- 1,970
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- 2,409
- Location
- Brampton, Ontario
- What state or country do you live in
- Canada
For the last several months I have had a slowly progressing issue in a frag tank that houses my frags, colonies and livestock from a tank that was shutdown from moving. This tank has been setup for a couple of years while a much larger DT is being built. While waiting, I have been testing various nutrient export methods and reefing methodologies on the frag tank to help me to decide what 'style' of tank I wanted the new DT to be and how I wanted to operate it.
However, over time, around the last several months, I have noticed a change in the behaviour of the frag tank. It was a slow subtle change, but in hindsight, each disconnected event all started to make sense when examined as a whole.
The first change that was observed was that my SPS frags stopped growing. At the time, this did not set off any alarms as having growing healthy SPS frags was the outlier rather than the expectation at this point. Other LPS like chalices, were still doing fine at this point.
However, I did notice a change in my cyphastrea frags. This was noted and was of concern. I had both very large cyphastrea colonies that had been grown from dime size frags in the tank along with some recent more rare varieties. The issue started in a large colony where large sections of the tissue would bleach and become translucent, then die. Because these were older colonies that had been under my care for years, I suspected nutrient limitation. But what nutrient? Then my cyphastrea started expressing a new symptom. The polyps would bleach and turn bright white and die while the surrounding tissue would slowly recede. The bleaching would occur in lines moving from polyp to polyp.
The cyphastrea issue was affecting colonies of common varieties at this point. Then the same issue started with chalices. The polyps would turn white, bleach and die, followed by the surrounding tissue. This change got my attention. Hmm, what could it be?
It was around this point, that one of the three bubble tip anemone's that I was keeping started to struggle. It was a larger flame tip that I had had for several years. It started to shrink in size, with stubby tentacles and the oral disc started to become translucent. Normally this one has a dark blue colouration to the tissue around its mouth. Now it was clear with white streaks. I started direct feeding of this anemone and it seemed to improve a bit, but not completely.
Around this time, I noted that the glass was staying very clean with little scrapping required. In fact, I started looking for surface algae and realized that there was very little if any present, while nutrients were still very high (No3 ~ 15 ppm, PO4 ~.12). After thinking about the BTA problem, along with the lack of algae even with elevated nutrients, I concluded that I was most likely Iron limited, so I does some Kent's Iron and Molybdenum. The change in the BTA was very dramatic. Within 3 days, the colours returned to being very dark, the tentacles started extending normally and tentacle loss was reversed. My conclusion was that I was very iron limited and dosing it really helped. For the anemones, it was obviously the iron, but was that also the explanation for the cyphastrea and chalice issue?
Around this time, I added an external fuge with an H380. I had been resorting to using LaCl to help with PO4 export, but decided that using macro algae to export both nitrate and phosphate at the same time, might be a better way to go. With my challenges with Iron, I was sure to keep on top of iron dosing, adding about 10 drops a day. The iron really helped my fugue with accelerated growth, and in no time the NO3 was slowly deceasing along with PO4.
At this point I started seeing some all too familiar tissue loss in my monti caps. I had seen this pattern before, it could only mean nudis. My worst fears were confirmed when I found a nudibranch on one of my caps. Great, that is just what I needed to add to my challenges. I had battled nudis in the past, with depressing results, so I started reading up to see if any new treatments were developed since I had last had them. I started dosing Flat Worm Stop and Coral Booster daily. I know what you are thinking, why would I dose FWS for nudis? This was a technique that some people where reporting they had had good results with. Besides if I had nudis, who is not say that I did not have AEFW in there as well? The change in the caps was noticeable, they started growing fast enough to keep ahead of the nudis. I also added some peppermint shrimp and wrasses. So for the moment detente was declared and the nudis were neither winning nor losing.
I took a 3 gallon jar that I had been planning to make into a nano tank and added it inline with my daily water change output. This jar had a small powerhead and heater and my intention was to use it as an easy way to dip coral frags for the nudis. It did work really well for blowing the nudis off the montis. After a few weeks of being in place, I noticed that the treatment jar developed a huge bacterial mat that covered every surface and piece of equipment in the jar. It looked like a horror movie, where the star walks into a deserted house and everything is covered in cobwebs. I thought it odd, but was not alarmed by it. I figured it might have something to do with the lack of water movement in the treatment jar as the powerhead was off when not being used for dipping.
Around this time I had purchased a large piece (4" x 2") of an encrusting monti that I placed in the tank. Within 2 days, the new monti developed a large white bacterial mat that billowed in the current. The mat covered about 2/3 of the monti surface. I dipped the monti, but once back in the tank, the mat would return. Under the portions covered by the mat was bleached white skeleton. At this point, I was not connecting the dots about the mat and the similar mat in the treatment jar.
By this point, my nutrients were really, really low. My acro frags were not growing. They looked fine, but were just existing. I decided to start dosing nitrate to see if I could raise nitrate, even though my fuge was pulling it all out. I started KNO3 on a daily basis. By having it running on a dosing pump, I could get No3 up to 2 ppm. Things started to look up (growth picked up), but then I started having RTN issues. Literally overnight healthy growing acros and montis would strip. I thought it might be the potassium in the KNO3, so I switched to calcium nitrate. The RTN issues continued. Hmm maybe my chemicals were not contaminant free, so I switched to Seachem Flourish Nitrogen. The RTN continued. I finally stopped all nitrate additions, and the RTN seemed to abate.
In the tank there was an Aquaman encrusting monti that had been growing quite well. It had encrusted the plug it was on and started encrusting onto the ceramic frag rack holding it. However
I noticed a small patch of white skeleton. Oh, oh. Could the nudis have found the Aquaman? I was quite fond of the colouration of this frag, so I decided to dip it before the damage could become too severe. While removing it from the frag rack, the portion that had encrusted on the frag rack broke off and remained on the rack. I dipped the frag and returned it to the tank in the exact same position it had been removed from. The next morning, I awoke to see the recently dipped frag covered in a white bacterial mat. Around this point, the alarms were going off in my head. The mat growing on the aquaman was the same may that had been growing in the treatment tank and on the encrusting monti. I figured it could not be a coincidence. The aquaman frag was a goner a this point, but the encrusted tissue that had not been exposed to the treatment jar was still healthy. Maybe I could grow back from that? Ya, no. Within a couple of days, the all too familiar white bacterial mat consumed it.
At this point, I knew I had an issue with the tank, and could very well lose all the corals, but I was not sure what the exact cause was/is. My nitrate was hovering around 0.2 ppm, so I definitely wanted to raise that, but adding nitrate directly seemed to exacerbate the RTN. I decide to lower the photo period of the fuge. This allowed NO3 to rise to 0.5 ppm, but also allowed some GHA to start growing on the back glass, and the RTN issues picked up again. Gah!
I noticed that without nitrate addition, acros were either healthy and stable and/or growing slowly, but montis were experiencing an odd STN that looked like water colour patches of tissue recession. While googling for possible bacterial causes of RTN/STN I happened across this article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466290/ and the photos in it had an uncanny resemblance to what I was witnessing on my montis. I state to lean towards my problems being bacterial rather than nutrient level.
I have an ORP probe on this tank. The ORP level was always surprisingly low. It hovered around 250 mv. The measured level did not particularly concern me, but I did note that it was lower than the often observed levels of 350-450 mv reported by others. Just incase the low level was due to the probe being shot, I replaced the probe, but the ORP remained the same.
I started to wonder if all the issues I had been slowly seeing over the past year were caused by a pathogenic bacteria that was attacking the corals. I decided to add a UV sterilizer to see if It would help in this regard. I read up on what other people had experienced when adding a UV. I was hoping that I could monitor the UV's effectiveness through changes in ORP. Other people had reported that their ORP had went up about 10-15% after the addition of a UV.
I ordered a 15W UV sterilizer. This frag tank has a water volume of about 150G when the fuge/cryptic fuge are taken into account, so a 15W UV is quite modest. After installing the UV, I awoke the next day to see that the ORP had increased +100 mv to ~ 350 mv overnight. Wow, way more than I expected. That was 2 weeks ago. Since then the ORP has continued to climb. Hovering around 400-415 mv currently.
With the belief that my issues are largely bacterial in nature, I decided to try to 'reset' my bacterial complement using some of the bacterial additives. I had MB7 on hand, but after researching what was available, I settled on Dr. Tim's Eco-Balance. Mainly because it claims to have probiotics against vibrio. I am not sure my bacterial issues are vibrio, but I know that I do not want vibrio in any case.
I am now dosing Eco-Balance once a week, with the skimmer and UV off for 6 hours after the dose. I have reduced Iron additions to one a week, as I would both like to raise nitrate, so slowing the fuge's growth is desired, and I don't want to have excess iron available for bacterial over growth.
This new regime has only been in practice for a couple of weeks. So far some monti caps have reversed their decline, so that is promising. Not all good news though, other montis have continued unabated. I lost my beach bum yesterday to RTN, so there is still along way to go before I think I have this under control.
Dennis
However, over time, around the last several months, I have noticed a change in the behaviour of the frag tank. It was a slow subtle change, but in hindsight, each disconnected event all started to make sense when examined as a whole.
The first change that was observed was that my SPS frags stopped growing. At the time, this did not set off any alarms as having growing healthy SPS frags was the outlier rather than the expectation at this point. Other LPS like chalices, were still doing fine at this point.
However, I did notice a change in my cyphastrea frags. This was noted and was of concern. I had both very large cyphastrea colonies that had been grown from dime size frags in the tank along with some recent more rare varieties. The issue started in a large colony where large sections of the tissue would bleach and become translucent, then die. Because these were older colonies that had been under my care for years, I suspected nutrient limitation. But what nutrient? Then my cyphastrea started expressing a new symptom. The polyps would bleach and turn bright white and die while the surrounding tissue would slowly recede. The bleaching would occur in lines moving from polyp to polyp.
The cyphastrea issue was affecting colonies of common varieties at this point. Then the same issue started with chalices. The polyps would turn white, bleach and die, followed by the surrounding tissue. This change got my attention. Hmm, what could it be?
It was around this point, that one of the three bubble tip anemone's that I was keeping started to struggle. It was a larger flame tip that I had had for several years. It started to shrink in size, with stubby tentacles and the oral disc started to become translucent. Normally this one has a dark blue colouration to the tissue around its mouth. Now it was clear with white streaks. I started direct feeding of this anemone and it seemed to improve a bit, but not completely.
Around this time, I noted that the glass was staying very clean with little scrapping required. In fact, I started looking for surface algae and realized that there was very little if any present, while nutrients were still very high (No3 ~ 15 ppm, PO4 ~.12). After thinking about the BTA problem, along with the lack of algae even with elevated nutrients, I concluded that I was most likely Iron limited, so I does some Kent's Iron and Molybdenum. The change in the BTA was very dramatic. Within 3 days, the colours returned to being very dark, the tentacles started extending normally and tentacle loss was reversed. My conclusion was that I was very iron limited and dosing it really helped. For the anemones, it was obviously the iron, but was that also the explanation for the cyphastrea and chalice issue?
Around this time, I added an external fuge with an H380. I had been resorting to using LaCl to help with PO4 export, but decided that using macro algae to export both nitrate and phosphate at the same time, might be a better way to go. With my challenges with Iron, I was sure to keep on top of iron dosing, adding about 10 drops a day. The iron really helped my fugue with accelerated growth, and in no time the NO3 was slowly deceasing along with PO4.
At this point I started seeing some all too familiar tissue loss in my monti caps. I had seen this pattern before, it could only mean nudis. My worst fears were confirmed when I found a nudibranch on one of my caps. Great, that is just what I needed to add to my challenges. I had battled nudis in the past, with depressing results, so I started reading up to see if any new treatments were developed since I had last had them. I started dosing Flat Worm Stop and Coral Booster daily. I know what you are thinking, why would I dose FWS for nudis? This was a technique that some people where reporting they had had good results with. Besides if I had nudis, who is not say that I did not have AEFW in there as well? The change in the caps was noticeable, they started growing fast enough to keep ahead of the nudis. I also added some peppermint shrimp and wrasses. So for the moment detente was declared and the nudis were neither winning nor losing.
I took a 3 gallon jar that I had been planning to make into a nano tank and added it inline with my daily water change output. This jar had a small powerhead and heater and my intention was to use it as an easy way to dip coral frags for the nudis. It did work really well for blowing the nudis off the montis. After a few weeks of being in place, I noticed that the treatment jar developed a huge bacterial mat that covered every surface and piece of equipment in the jar. It looked like a horror movie, where the star walks into a deserted house and everything is covered in cobwebs. I thought it odd, but was not alarmed by it. I figured it might have something to do with the lack of water movement in the treatment jar as the powerhead was off when not being used for dipping.
Around this time I had purchased a large piece (4" x 2") of an encrusting monti that I placed in the tank. Within 2 days, the new monti developed a large white bacterial mat that billowed in the current. The mat covered about 2/3 of the monti surface. I dipped the monti, but once back in the tank, the mat would return. Under the portions covered by the mat was bleached white skeleton. At this point, I was not connecting the dots about the mat and the similar mat in the treatment jar.
By this point, my nutrients were really, really low. My acro frags were not growing. They looked fine, but were just existing. I decided to start dosing nitrate to see if I could raise nitrate, even though my fuge was pulling it all out. I started KNO3 on a daily basis. By having it running on a dosing pump, I could get No3 up to 2 ppm. Things started to look up (growth picked up), but then I started having RTN issues. Literally overnight healthy growing acros and montis would strip. I thought it might be the potassium in the KNO3, so I switched to calcium nitrate. The RTN issues continued. Hmm maybe my chemicals were not contaminant free, so I switched to Seachem Flourish Nitrogen. The RTN continued. I finally stopped all nitrate additions, and the RTN seemed to abate.
In the tank there was an Aquaman encrusting monti that had been growing quite well. It had encrusted the plug it was on and started encrusting onto the ceramic frag rack holding it. However
I noticed a small patch of white skeleton. Oh, oh. Could the nudis have found the Aquaman? I was quite fond of the colouration of this frag, so I decided to dip it before the damage could become too severe. While removing it from the frag rack, the portion that had encrusted on the frag rack broke off and remained on the rack. I dipped the frag and returned it to the tank in the exact same position it had been removed from. The next morning, I awoke to see the recently dipped frag covered in a white bacterial mat. Around this point, the alarms were going off in my head. The mat growing on the aquaman was the same may that had been growing in the treatment tank and on the encrusting monti. I figured it could not be a coincidence. The aquaman frag was a goner a this point, but the encrusted tissue that had not been exposed to the treatment jar was still healthy. Maybe I could grow back from that? Ya, no. Within a couple of days, the all too familiar white bacterial mat consumed it.
At this point, I knew I had an issue with the tank, and could very well lose all the corals, but I was not sure what the exact cause was/is. My nitrate was hovering around 0.2 ppm, so I definitely wanted to raise that, but adding nitrate directly seemed to exacerbate the RTN. I decide to lower the photo period of the fuge. This allowed NO3 to rise to 0.5 ppm, but also allowed some GHA to start growing on the back glass, and the RTN issues picked up again. Gah!
I noticed that without nitrate addition, acros were either healthy and stable and/or growing slowly, but montis were experiencing an odd STN that looked like water colour patches of tissue recession. While googling for possible bacterial causes of RTN/STN I happened across this article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3466290/ and the photos in it had an uncanny resemblance to what I was witnessing on my montis. I state to lean towards my problems being bacterial rather than nutrient level.
I have an ORP probe on this tank. The ORP level was always surprisingly low. It hovered around 250 mv. The measured level did not particularly concern me, but I did note that it was lower than the often observed levels of 350-450 mv reported by others. Just incase the low level was due to the probe being shot, I replaced the probe, but the ORP remained the same.
I started to wonder if all the issues I had been slowly seeing over the past year were caused by a pathogenic bacteria that was attacking the corals. I decided to add a UV sterilizer to see if It would help in this regard. I read up on what other people had experienced when adding a UV. I was hoping that I could monitor the UV's effectiveness through changes in ORP. Other people had reported that their ORP had went up about 10-15% after the addition of a UV.
I ordered a 15W UV sterilizer. This frag tank has a water volume of about 150G when the fuge/cryptic fuge are taken into account, so a 15W UV is quite modest. After installing the UV, I awoke the next day to see that the ORP had increased +100 mv to ~ 350 mv overnight. Wow, way more than I expected. That was 2 weeks ago. Since then the ORP has continued to climb. Hovering around 400-415 mv currently.
With the belief that my issues are largely bacterial in nature, I decided to try to 'reset' my bacterial complement using some of the bacterial additives. I had MB7 on hand, but after researching what was available, I settled on Dr. Tim's Eco-Balance. Mainly because it claims to have probiotics against vibrio. I am not sure my bacterial issues are vibrio, but I know that I do not want vibrio in any case.
I am now dosing Eco-Balance once a week, with the skimmer and UV off for 6 hours after the dose. I have reduced Iron additions to one a week, as I would both like to raise nitrate, so slowing the fuge's growth is desired, and I don't want to have excess iron available for bacterial over growth.
This new regime has only been in practice for a couple of weeks. So far some monti caps have reversed their decline, so that is promising. Not all good news though, other montis have continued unabated. I lost my beach bum yesterday to RTN, so there is still along way to go before I think I have this under control.
Dennis
