Treated Ruby Rally, Now Corals Beginning to Bleach

[Jonify]

Wondering if there is anything more that I can do, than I've currently done. (~4 mth-old mixed 20G nano reef, SPS dominant, ~20 coral, 3 small fish)

Three weeks ago, noticed my clown came down with Brooklynella, so I treated the whole reef with the Ruby Rally+Kick Ice regimen (which is marketed as completely reef safe, and that you should do both at the same time), and about 2 days into it, all my coral started closing, 5 days into it, coral started bleaching. It was pretty dramatic (and yes, I followed the instructions to the milliliter). I was treating the whole tank because I also have a wrasse and an orchid dottyback , which are hard to catch, and a lot of rock work.

Anyways, I got a little scared when the bleaching started, so I removed the clown to a hospital tank after the first week to treat him individually (he's now recovered, but I'm keeping him in the QT until a few more weeks for observation). The coral, however, have not (other fish aren't showing any sign of disease, but then they never were anyways, just the clown). When I removed the clown, I did a 50% water change on my main tank, put charcoal back in, turned back on skimmer/UV, and then did a 20% water change a week later, and replaced the charcoal again.

We're at week 3, reef isn't showing signs of recovering, but it isn't getting worse, either. 1) Should I do a few more water changes/few more charcoal changes, or should I just cool my jets and hope things begin returning to normal? 2) What if corals start to get worse?

Params:
Temp: 78.2
pH: 8.23
Salinity: 34.8ppm
Cal: 400
Mg: 1400
Alk: 9.8dKH
Nitrate: .25

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Full disclosure - I've never used this product. I do know about the ingredients though. My argument is this: the acriflavine and formalin are known NOT to be reef safe at normal treatment levels. Therefore, the manufacturer must have backed off on the concentration. That begs the question then, how can the product kill a tough protozoan (Brook) without harming other parts of the aquarium's "biome" (including corals)?

Normally, I hear of two results after using this: nothing happened or the fish got better. The fish getting better could have happened without the med (that is common for mild bacterial infections, from say, a torn fin).

So in your case - are you sure you had the actual volume of your tank correct? Did you lower the dose to reflect the water displaced by the rock, etc.? If so, you may have had a coincidental reaction perhaps?

You might want to ask the question with a focus on the bleaching corals, over in the reef section (I'm mainly a fish guy).

Jay

 

[chipmunkofdoom2]

20 SPS frags/corals in a 20g tank at the 4 month mark is a lot. Your tank might not be mature enough to support these corals yet. Your nutrients are also pretty low, at least on the nitrate side. What are your phosphates? The corals could be starving.

As for why this happened after the medication, that's hard to say. Maybe the corals were starving but just barely surviving, and dosing the medication pushed them from "barely surviving" into "slow decline."