Need advice after Aqua biomics test

[TheDragonsReef]

So after a few years of uninterrupted success with my sps dominant tank i started losing some colonies one by one. Symptoms are always the same and would occur over the course of a few weeks. They start with turning pale and often still have polyp extension. Then slowly start slow tissue necrosis over a week or so. Only sps are affected, Lps and soft coral are unaffected by the issue. Parameters were fine, icp tests were perfect, no identifiable pests even checking with microscope, no changes etc. Of course this also started in the midst of planning a tank upgrade. Fast forward to the new tank and the problem still persists. I even setup a new uv light properly sized for the system to help fight off pathogens. Many acros look great, lots of pe, but theres always a couple that are turning pale then stn'ing. I tried a tank wide cipro treatment and i dont know if my doseage wasnt high enough but it didnt seem to help either.

So as a last resort i sent out a dna analysis to Aqua biomics. If you havent sent one out, the waiting period for results is quite long at 6-8 weeks and during that period i decided to remove parts of the system that werent 100% necessary one at a time to see if it had any affect. Most recently i took out my biopellet reactor for carbon feeding and this seems to have had a significant affect to the problem and may have been feeding some unwanted bacteria, im not entirely sure. But after one week i have noticed much more PE and much better color from my acropora. I will continue waiting to see if any of the more sickly corals recover before moving onto any further treatments.

That being said here are the results of the dna analysis that was sent in 2 months ago that i just recieved today. I had swabbed a few of the affected colonies in hopes of identifying the issue. It verified i do have a coral pathogen at high concentrations, but im looking for advice on how to move forward if the problem persists. Another round of cipro or maybe try amoxicillin?

And heres the rest of the test, but im not as concerned with anything other than the coral pathogens as this was shortly after the cipro treatment and the tank was only a month old at this point. Although the previous tank was 15 years old and all the live rock and livestock were transferred over. Without a doubt the microbiome took a hit in the process.

 

[TheDragonsReef]

@AquaBiomics if you could please share some of your thoughts on my results and problem it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[sculpin01]

What dosage of ciprofloxacin, how large is your tank, and how many days did you treat? There's a chance you underdosed it or the bacteria is resistant. I had a brown jelly infection (Arcobacter) of GSPs in a pico tank recently. It took 7 days of dosing a total of 250 mg of ciprofloxacin into a 2 gallon tank for it to clear.

Shimia are gram-negative rods, so treatment would center around beta-lactams (amoxicillin) and fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin), so cipro is a reasonable choice.

 

[TheDragonsReef]

What dosage of ciprofloxacin, how large is your tank, and how many days did you treat? There's a chance you underdosed it or the bacteria is resistant. I had a brown jelly infection (Arcobacter) of GSPs in a pico tank recently. It took 7 days of dosing a total of 250 mg of ciprofloxacin into a 2 gallon tank for it to clear.

Shimia are gram-negative rods, so treatment would center around beta-lactams (amoxicillin) and fluoroquinolones (ciprofloxacin), so cipro is a reasonable choice.

I used 0.125mg/liter every second day for 3 doses as it was the only reference i could find that also had success. Tank volume is 600 gallons and it took quite a bit.

 

[brandon429]

here's how I would fix your tank

with a nano tank model. not by sampling only a small portion of substrate and water and trying to upscale that snippet to the whole tank. I see this data above as very, very precise information about a small section of a reef tank.

variables exist in all the other sections.

I would take living samples of your coral, rocks and a little bit of sand, rinsed before moving over, into a ~15 gallon nano reef and I'd run it my way which is feed/water change cpr

and not any hyperfixation for cost

I would use your brand salt, mixed into five gallons of ro water in the blue drinking container bottles as my change water. I'd feed the tank with my preferred mix of coral feeds and be changing 75% water weekly to keep megaclean proteins in constant suspension. lit under my ai prime x2

no measuring anything but salinity and temp.

feeding better than you are currently feeding just as an exercise test regimen, sustained for eight weeks exactly like we do in my chat fixes of bad nano reefs. we could get your coral to grow if we rip cleaned your tank and did only the steps above....but in a big tank, that's impractical. too much work to be changing 75% weekly for eight weeks

so I can understand how testing is beneficial at least as a precision snapshot to large tank owners.


For nano reefers who control all the water column, it doesn't help to know what's stuck to your rocks.

that myriad mix of life is what you get for owning a reef tank, don't think a group of bad dna means something bad about your reef



my nano reef friends, namely maritza the vase reef could take sections of your challenge reef and grow it into purple antlers in a five gallon bucket by this time next year. I'm fascinated how control aspects between large and small tanks can be changed to cause or lose coral growth...procedural steps vs test/dose/response habits.

it's a procedural choice in a large reef to choose not to change 75% of the water weekly while feeding extremely high-quality refrigerated feeds like the reef nutrition stuff. they have a lot of different mixes now. it's a procedural choice in a vase reef to opt to change 100% of the water weekly, feed at an astounding rate that would kill any other volume of water, and still grow literally any coral that fits inside for a decade. the macro technique has been changed, we didn't have to precision sample or react to the water to get coral growth.
the key to nano modeling is it's proof that a change in procedure is one way to win, it isn't about sampling and chemistry always.

we could prove in two home depot buckets using your exact rock, sand, and brand saltwater that nothing is preventing you from growing corals. It would literally be your exact reef, ran a different way, without having to risky change the current steady state barely keeping things alive.


you need to lower your light intensity down 30% from whatever you're at and sustain that until repairs are made that reinstate strong coral growth. not being nit picky but we have a whole thread testing that concept, light dropping during sps challenge periods, and the results are dang strong in pattern. we think it's #1 cpr move for a display losing sps

if the nano model works, the #1 thing you can do to start to align a big tank with the working nano model is to not have a sandbed in it.

since you can't actively exchange this much water, you'd increase throughput vs storage in your large tank filter design. no catchments in the display other than the functioning rock surface area/cleaned by strong currents. sandbeds are a huge protein sink whereas bare bottom the proteins are kept in circulation and available for consumption or direct export. I'd start by making sure you don't have a sinking setup design in the ill behaving reef.


then when you correct the cause, you can put your lights back up.

 

[sculpin01]

I used 0.125mg/liter every second day for 3 doses as it was the only reference i could find that also had success. Tank volume is 600 gallons and it took quite a bit.

That is the dose that was initially used for Arcobacter.

Two things:
1) Send a new Aquabiomics test to check to see if the Shimia are still present.
2) Consider isolating affected coral in a separate smaller tank for antibiotic testing (specifically higher dose ciprofloxacin). When I had a similar problem in two of my tanks, I used 12.5 mg/gallon which was effective in one but mixed response in the other. I eventually resorted to amoxicillin in the persistently infected tank with positive results but would not recommend doing so in a 600 gallon tank.

 

[TheDragonsReef]

I appreciate the advice on setting up a smaller tank to treat the affected corals but this is simply not possible with the largest of the affect colonies being 14in across and most are quite big and grown onto large rocks. I do understand the reasoning behind the process though and it makes sense but just not viable for my situation and this tank. I would say 90% of the coral are thriving currently whereas when the test was taken it was at or less than 50%. So at the moment i dont want to change anything from lighting or feeding habits or do any treatments for a couple weeks as i feel im on the path to fixing the issue.

I guess the most important thing I wanted to know was what doseages of antibiotics i should be trying if this infection does get worse as it would be my next course of action.

I think sending out another aquabiomics test is a good idea though to see if there is a reduction in the shimia since the previous one and will do that.

Thanks for the advice so far

 

[brandon429]

I agree there's a certain size/volume that makes modeling impractical. a zoo for example can't just take apart it's entire exhibit on demand/makes sense.