If it is not one problem it is another!

[Dilan Patel]

Salty,

I run 3 sb reef lights(I know you run them as well ) They are at the minimum intensity level as well as I run two t5 blue plus for shadowing.

 

[Tahoe61]

How are you maintaining the big 3? How often are you doing water changes? Have you checked pH at night or early in the morning before the lights come on?

 

[Sea MunnKey]

Frankly RTN/STN is one of the most unexplained occurrence in sps environment and I've personally seen it happen to even the most hard core all sps system. Weird thing is that it may occur on one single colony with the rest not being affected at all while in the same tank/system!

 

[DSC reef]

I'll add something to check for and thanks to boom corals for helping me. I had an overnight RTN on a large colony of bansai and lost frags overnight. Turned out to be a steel band rusting in my sump. Outta sight and outta mind thing. Removed the band, large water change with matching alk and we saved the colony of bansai. Just something to look for. The tank and acros are doing great now. Also, the only acros to show signs of RTN at the time was the bansai and millepora frags. Green slimer, mirabalis, madmen acros showed no signs of stress at all. Maybe keep an eye for RTN on other frags or colonies.

 

[McMullen]

We seem to continuously jump to the things we're familiar with, alk, calcium, lighting. Sometimes, that is the cause. The OP has a successful sps tank though. This is not the problem.

Something else has stressed the "coral." We can only speculate and until we're able to test for pathogenic organisms we'll likely never know. Could it also be a metal? Sure, that seems plausible as well. Don't underestimate the role of stress in biological systems.

 

[Flippers4pups]

I'll post this again for you guys to read;

http://www.artificialreefs.org/Corals/diseasesfiles/Common Identified Coral Diseases.htm

 

[CoralWealth]

you would know if they were suffering from shipping, they would smell soooo bad wether you sniffed the bag or not youd smelled it when you opened it. believe me i have had bad experience receiving shipments for whatever reason, it sucks. Frags come in suffering a ton or dead, it really sucks and takes months to color back up. I would check to heavy metals or salinity, a lot of people forget that and it usually is off.

Also, Happy Thanksgiving yall

 

[Sea MunnKey]

I've read online sometime ago (I think so ...?) that by applying super glue to the affected area and thereby halting the spread of the necrosis. I have tried it a couple of times and it does work ... for me. Necrosis usually starts from the base upwards (in my case) and I would apply the glue all around (ring a round motion) the affected area. Basically glueing the "in between" area where the necrosis spread and the unaffected part of the acro meets.

But then it may not work on others .. it's not a foolproof method

 

[CoralWealth]

I've read online sometime ago (I think so ...?) that by applying super glue to the affected area and thereby halting the spread of the necrosis. I have tried it a couple of times and it does work ... for me. Necrosis usually starts from the base upwards (in my case) and I would apply the glue all around (ring a round motion) the affected area. Basically glueing the "in between" area where the necrosis spread and the unaffected part of the acro meets.

But then it may not work on others .. it's not a foolproof method

this definitely works, I have done it too.

You just unfortunately still need to find why they are suffering. It honestly could just be from shipping. I have a bad experience that any SPS frag or colony that is not showing PE in the bag, it is going to STN or RTN. Like why would they not show PE when they have been in the pitch black for however many hours, which is when SPS show the most PE.

 

[Dilan Patel]

I don't do waterchanges. i know this is a very controversial topic. I havent done waterchanges for over 15 years. I maintain the big 3 with a 2part mix BRS with dosers running throughout the day. I just added a good amount of corals so alk and calc have probably started to drop. So I will test that and see if I need to up the dosages.

 

[Sea MunnKey]

I don't do waterchanges. i know this is a very controversial topic. I havent done waterchanges for over 15 years. I maintain the big 3 with a 2part mix BRS with dosers running throughout the day. I just added a good amount of corals so alk and calc have probably started to drop. So I will test that and see if I need to up the dosages.

Wow ... how do yo do that? Is yours a dedicated sps system? That's quite an achievement ... really!

 

[Dilan Patel]

I mean ive only been keeping corals of 2 years but Ive kept marine tanks for over 15 years without waterchanges. I run a denitrator. Which does an amazing job of keeping Nitrates at 0...That allows me to feed real heavy and give nutrients to the corals and keep my fish fat and happy.

 

[CoralWealth]

I mean ive only been keeping corals of 2 years but Ive kept marine tanks for over 15 years without waterchanges. I run a denitrator. Which does an amazing job of keeping Nitrates at 0...That allows me to feed real heavy and give nutrients to the corals and keep my fish fat and happy.

can you post some pictures of the suffering SPS and your good ones?

If somehow heavy metals got into your system and youre not doing water changes, it is going to kill everything. How do you replenish the trace elements? CARX?

 

[madweazl]

I'd have a hard time recommending any changes if the rest of the corals are healthy; that's just asking for more problems. I'd expect transit or acclimation to be the root cause if everything else was consistent (and healthy).

 

[drawman]

can you post some pictures of the suffering SPS and your good ones?

If somehow heavy metals got into your system and youre not doing water changes, it is going to kill everything. How do you replenish the trace elements? CARX?

+1. If you're just using BRS supplements there are quite a few things that can get out of balance. You may want to switch to another program that can maintain these things long term. That said I'm not sure that's why these particular acros went south on you. At a certain point acros want to be divas so if many are surviving in your tank a few select ones may just not like it there.

 

[Dilan Patel]

So I just stested chemicals a few things got out of change...

Nitrate:15-20(Partly due to me not feeding my denitrator for 2weeks and the bacteria had no food to feed on)
Phosphate:.5(High due to the fact I am not running GFO since my reactor broke as well as my overfeeding habits)
Alk: 8.79(dropped due to the lots of acros that I have put in fromthe breakdown of my other tank)
Calc:437(good range)
Mag:1500 exactly

Also I forgot to mention I dose 1ml of Red Sea color program every other day for my trace elements due to the fact that BRS mix has no Trace elements

I actually only had two suffeing sps the 3rd died in transit the others Rtn/STN in my tank. But all existing corals are all thriving.(but can post pics)

 

[Dilan Patel]

Yall asked for photos of the corals. Sorry for the quality from an iphone. But as you can see I do have some decent sized colonies. I also haven't really shown a picture from this tank before so yall i guess are lucky to see what I have been working on lol. Don't be afraid to ask questions! This is what we need to do in order to learn. Also diregard the sand my Gold head goby thought it was the time of year santa was coming to town haha.

 

[justingraham]

Agreed. Young tanks take awhile to grow Acropora.

I disagree with this plenty of tanks that are “young” Work our just fine
It comes down to the aquarist knowledge that’s it

 

[justingraham]

Yall asked for photos of the corals. Sorry for the quality from an iphone. But as you can see I do have some decent sized colonies. I also haven't really shown a picture from this tank before so yall i guess are lucky to see what I have been working on lol. Don't be afraid to ask questions! This is what we need to do in order to learn. Also diregard the sand my Gold head goby thought it was the time of year santa was coming to town haha.

I would chalk the losses up to transit problems

Ur original Corals are doing fine the new ones aren’t to me I would not go chasing the problem I wouldn’t go tearing apart ur tank for metal that isn’t there or dosing trace elements to replenish the ones u have no idea that are missing and so on and so forth I will say tho it’s never a bad idea to change your rodi filters early that’s what got me last time chlorine top off water is the devil. Now if the original Corals start showing signs of rtn/stn I would start looking harder but if that doesn’t happen then consider this a fluke and move on

It stinks loosing brand new Corals but if they are from Adam I’m sure he and u will make it right and ur new batch will be even better also if it was Adam that said it was a transit problem I would say with 99% certainty it was a shipping problem

 

[Bps619]

Your TDS might not catch the chloramines. Mine read zero as well.