SPS Rapid Tissue Loss/Death In Under 12 Hours

[Vinoy Thomas]

Hi Everyone,

I've had my tank running for about 2 months and have been keeping about 15 different SPS frags and a few small colonies successfully. All with great polyp extension and colour.

However, a few nights ago I happened to aquire a botel of polyp lab polypbooster. I dosed a full pipette that was included in the 100ml bottle. The morning after I noticed my tank was cloudy and all SPS had zero polyp extension.

I had to leave for the day but returned in the night about 12 hours later to find the majority of my SPS with severe tissue loss as well as the death of 4 of my Anthias fish.

Its too late to do anything now but I am curious to know what exactly caused this rapid crash of my tank. My guess would be a bacteria bloom that depleted the oxygen in my tank which caused the death of the fish. However, I am not entirely sure why my SPS declined so rapidly.

I'd be interested to know what your thoughts are.

Tank Details:
- 80 Gallon w/ 24 gallon sump

Thanks!,
Vinoy

 

[Geebs19]

Did you test your parameters?

 

[Vinoy Thomas]

Did you test your parameters?

In the morning I tested only my Alk.

It was stable 7.7 which was the same as I recorded the day before. My Ammonia Alert badge was reading 0ppm. However, I did not test anything else.

 

[TaylorJames]

Do you have recordings of what your N03 and P04 readings were?

 

[Vinoy Thomas]

Do you have recordings of what your N03 and P04 readings were?

No I do not unfortunately. Would you suggest that the polyp booster overdose resulted in a spike of nutrients which caused the decline?

If this is the case I would not have expected such a rapid loss of tissue and death though. Just a hypothesis though.

 

[TaylorJames]

I have read that it does increase the nutrient levels significantly hence people are only adding half the recommended dose. This was just from some quick google searches so I could be totally off. If that is right, and your system is only a couple months old, it could have caused a chain reaction in your system after one coral/fish started to decay and compounded the situation.

 

[TaylorJames]

The product website ( https://www.polyplab.com/products/polyp-booster ) says to add 1ml per 60g. Dont know what a full pipette is measured at.

 

[Dkeller_nc]

A dissolved oxygen loss of that magnitude (sufficient to kill fish) would definitely have the potential to kill corals. According to what's in polyp-booster, though, it's a bit head-scratching why this would provoke a full-on tank crash. An average amount of frozen fish food would probably have roughly the same amount of nutrients, for example.

 

[ckalupa]

It takes very little PolypBooster to get the desired impact. A couple drops in a 100 gallon tank gets them out fast.