Treating SCTLD

[BaghdadBean]

A freshly published piece is hypothesizing that SCTLD might actually be viral, not bacterial, because even with antibiotics, tissue recession and lesions can still appear. Not super helpful to your current charlie foxtrot of a situation, but worst case, this might be a situation where a long fallow period and rebuild could be a option short of going nuclear with bleach and rebuild. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.750658/full

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

A freshly published piece is hypothesizing that SCTLD might actually be viral, not bacterial, because even with antibiotics, tissue recession and lesions can still appear. Not super helpful to your current charlie foxtrot of a situation, but worst case, this might be a situation where a long fallow period and rebuild could be a option short of going nuclear with bleach and rebuild. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.750658/full

Wow,
Well that might explain why my antibacterials aren't working against it, and it also might explain why the frirst treatment worked much better than the second: The triton RTN-X might be an inhibitor for a virus? but that's a big guess.

It also says that the virus could potentially be feeding on the coral bacteria, which might make sense why my second much stronger antibacterial treatment seemed to knock out the corals much faster, possibly my treatment killed the good bacteria on the coral and exposed the virus to take advantage at a much faster pace.

So many variables that could be happening, a lot of guess work.

I found this interesting article:

Possible cure for viruses like Lympho

We have come a long ways in the science of medicine but we have yet to find a cure for viruses in ornamental fish. Most common but not deadly by itself Lymphocystis or Lympho in short. I will talk about Lympho in this article mostly but i am...

www.reef2reef.com

Might be worth trying these as a whole tank treatment. Everything is starting to go so I might as well try an experiment and get lucky. Would love if @Dr. Reef could chime in here?

I just bought the Olive extract and Lysine as it was at my health food store, so I am able to try these two treatments. Gonna talk to a few more people first and read more before I try, will post updates as they come.

I keep re-reading the article, this is a very interesting part:

"Finally, shifts in viromes associated with bleaching in corals also implicate a potential role of viruses in coral health. For instance, a bleaching event in Acropora from the Pacific revealed molecular and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) evidence of a herpesvirus association (Correa et al., 2016)."

Basically saying its Coral Herpes. Which is crazy. But also all the treatments mentioned in the article above treat a form of Herpes Simplex as a suppressant, maybe worth a shot? This part is also interesting: "There is no known cure for this virus, though a privately owned fish research and breeding facility near Gainesville, Florida has reportedly been able to suppress the virus into remission using the human anti-DNA virus drug acyclovir at the rate of 200 mg per 10 US gallons for 2 days." The medication mentioned is the prescribed Herpes Medication for virus suppression.

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

Pretty Interesting article on SCTLD:

Lethal Stony Coral Disease Can Be Transmitted by Sediments - CORAL Magazine

The researchers found that disease-inoculated sediments were able to transmit SCTLD pathogens, resulting in visible signs of the disease in as little as 24 hours.

www.reef2rainforest.com

 

[zeronum]

This was very interesting. For the last week I have been going Thur rtn stn but mainly rtn. Always start at the base and work it's way around the coral. Perfectly healthy coral at 8 am and half way dead at 6 pm. While I am at work. I started doing witch haze to battle it and it worked for a few weeks. Well now 5 weeks in and it has started back. I am interested in keep this going.

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

This was very interesting. For the last week I have been going Thur rtn stn but mainly rtn. Always start at the base and work it's way around the coral. Perfectly healthy coral at 8 am and half way dead at 6 pm. While I am at work. I started doing witch haze to battle it and it worked for a few weeks. Well now 5 weeks in and it has started back. I am interested in keep this going.

Have you done an Aquabiomics test to make are you have SCTLD? I have completely stopped all treatments, it just comes and goes honestly at this point. A little STN for a few weeks but then the tissue comes back for a month, then back too two weeks STN. Im still trying to to find a solution but in the meantime Ive just been keeping things stable as possible until a solution presents itself.

This is an interesting article:

Lethal Stony Coral Disease Can Be Transmitted by Sediments - CORAL Magazine

The researchers found that disease-inoculated sediments were able to transmit SCTLD pathogens, resulting in visible signs of the disease in as little as 24 hours.

www.reef2rainforest.com

Saying it can be transmitted through sand. Which is interesting for me as the worst SCTLD STN always occurs to my Corals that are closest to the sand, but it might just be coincidence. Ive been thinking of getting rid of my sand to see if it helps but I have leopard wrasses and am nervous to try.

 

[zeronum]

Have you done an Aquabiomics test to make are you have SCTLD? I have completely stopped all treatments, it just comes and goes honestly at this point. A little STN for a few weeks but then the tissue comes back for a month, then back too two weeks STN. Im still trying to to find a solution but in the meantime Ive just been keeping things stable as possible until a solution presents itself.

This is an interesting article:

Lethal Stony Coral Disease Can Be Transmitted by Sediments - CORAL Magazine

The researchers found that disease-inoculated sediments were able to transmit SCTLD pathogens, resulting in visible signs of the disease in as little as 24 hours.

www.reef2rainforest.com

Saying it can be transmitted through sand. Which is interesting for me as the worst SCTLD STN always occurs to my Corals that are closest to the sand, but it might just be coincidence. Ive been thinking of getting rid of my sand to see if it helps but I have leopard wrasses and am nervous to try.

I plan on doing a aquabiomict test. But haven't done so yet. Mine isn't stn it is rtn. Starting at the base. I cut off the frags I can save and all those are doing great

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Lysine, that’s an interesting thought, good immune booster for cats and has many other uses. Would love to see if anyone has luck using it. Wonder if a strong dip of tank water and lysine would help or just dosing it daily in small amounts maybe.
I wish I had more time to spend reading on this subject. It really is in the back of my mind all the time and we need more people working on this research. There is so much we don’t understand.

 

[Morpheosz]

I have something similar going on. I lost a number of frags over the past ~3 weeks. I had a digitata and several birds nest frags basically lose all their tissue over a week or so an die. I also had 2 frogspawn that were only in the tank a couple of weeks and looking pretty good suddenly start receding on a daily basis until they were gone over the course of a week each. I have an acro frag now where the base lost some tissue and it looked grey but maybe not so much now and that seems to have stopped progressing over the last week. Most notable now are 2 stylos (on opposite sides of the tank) and a birds nest that are losing tissue. They have been progressing over the past 2 weeks or so so not nearly as rapid as some of the accounts here.

Here are some pics of the 4 corals I have left that are having issues. I will say that there are 30-40 other frags in the tank that are doing very well, but most of my SPS was wiped out or suffering. I have 2 more acro frags that still look fine, but so far I've lost 4 of 9 SPS, with 3 more on the way (see pics).

Like one of the earlier accounts, my alk consumption dropped by 25% ~2 weeks ago over the course of a couple days. It has stabilized there. All other tank params are very solid and stable. I have a UV and carbon. I ordered some Cipro but not sure if it's going to help based on the mixed feedback here. Welcome any thoughts or advice!

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

I have something similar going on. I lost a number of frags over the past ~3 weeks. I had a digitata and several birds nest frags basically lose all their tissue over a week or so an die. I also had 2 frogspawn that were only in the tank a couple of weeks and looking pretty good suddenly start receding on a daily basis until they were gone over the course of a week each. I have an acro frag now where the base lost some tissue and it looked grey but maybe not so much now and that seems to have stopped progressing over the last week. Most notable now are 2 stylos (on opposite sides of the tank) and a birds nest that are losing tissue. They have been progressing over the past 2 weeks or so so not nearly as rapid as some of the accounts here.

Here are some pics of the 4 corals I have left that are having issues. I will say that there are 30-40 other frags in the tank that are doing very well, but most of my SPS was wiped out or suffering. I have 2 more acro frags that still look fine, but so far I've lost 4 of 9 SPS, with 3 more on the way (see pics).

Like one of the earlier accounts, my alk consumption dropped by 25% ~2 weeks ago over the course of a couple days. It has stabilized there. All other tank params are very solid and stable. I have a UV and carbon. I ordered some Cipro but not sure if it's going to help based on the mixed feedback here. Welcome any thoughts or advice!

I honestly wouldn't do any anti bacterial treatments until you absolutely know that it is a bacterial disease. Id recommend getting the aquabiomics test to make sure that's what your dealing with.

I did recently come across an in-tank treatment method from Kung Fu Corals of an intense bacterial treatment. I am going to try it as my last shot to kill off the SCTLD. Im about at the end of the rope here, been dealing with the disease for over a year now and have tried many experiments that have all failed. If this treatment doesn't work I will be doing a total system reboot.

 

[Dennis Cartier]

I had something similar in my frag tank over the past year. I always suspected a pathogen, but the Aquabiomics tests were not available here until recently. I plan to test the tank just to see if there is a bacterial cause.

In the meantime, I have been using Dr. Tim's, Color Up Your Corals recipe, to dose Eco-Balance on a daily basis. I follow the suggested schedule, so it doses 5 days a week. This recipe is intended to help weak, pale, struggling corals, but since it is based on Eco-Balance, and Eco-Balance is claimed to have some protection against Vibrio, I thought I would try it.

In the past, the tissue necrosis seemed to be tied to or driven by nitrate levels. The tank is running super low nitrate (0.2), but in the past whenever I would dose to raise it, the RTN disease would manifest and wipe out random corals. It also seemed to be passed to neighbouring corals. Eventually I just stopped trying to raise nitrate, just due to the amount of losses that it would lead to.

After running the Dr. Tim's recipe for a few months, I have started doing a daily nitrate dose. A very minor 0.25 ppm per day, and recently bumped to 0.50 ppm per day. So far, so good, no return of the RTN yet. I will still get the test to see what if any is present in the tank.

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

I had something similar in my frag tank over the past year. I always suspected a pathogen, but the Aquabiomics tests were not available here until recently. I plan to test the tank just to see if there is a bacterial cause.

In the meantime, I have been using Dr. Tim's, Color Up Your Corals recipe, to dose Eco-Balance on a daily basis. I follow the suggested schedule, so it doses 5 days a week. This recipe is intended to help weak, pale, struggling corals, but since it is based on Eco-Balance, and Eco-Balance is claimed to have some protection against Vibrio, I thought I would try it.

In the past, the tissue necrosis seemed to be tied to or driven by nitrate levels. The tank is running super low nitrate (0.2), but in the past whenever I would dose to raise it, the RTN disease would manifest and wipe out random corals. It also seemed to be passed to neighbouring corals. Eventually I just stopped trying to raise nitrate, just due to the amount of losses that it would lead to.

After running the Dr. Tim's recipe for a few months, I have started doing a daily nitrate dose. A very minor 0.25 ppm per day, and recently bumped to 0.50 ppm per day. So far, so good, no return of the RTN yet. I will still get the test to see what if any is present in the tank.

Interesting! would love to hear the aquabiomics report if you get one!

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

Update:

Well unfortunately the disease has won the battle. After a solid year of battling and trying to figure out a way to beat it I finally gave in and tore down the tank. It was just so exhausting seeing piece by piece SPS corals finally succumbing to SCTLD.

It was even worse when you saw certain pieces rebounding for a month and you get this glimmer of hope only to see it wiped out a month later. I never changed any equipment or dosing, lighting, etc as I wanted to keep things ultra stable as I tried different methods to try and beat it but nothing worked.

At some point you just got to give in and say the tank is contaminated and call it what it is. I will be restarting my system again in about a month with all new rock from Australia that has been tested for diseases and is disease free.

Hope someone figures out a way to eliminate it eventually, because I don't wish it on any aquarist.

 

[DHill6]

I’m sorry the tank won. I just finished reading this thread. Who tests Australia live rock against disease? Interesting.

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

I’m sorry the tank won. I just finished reading this thread. Who tests Australia live rock against disease? Interesting.

I used the aquabiomics test on my Australian Live rock Bin that's currently curing in a separate system. It has been in there for 3 months and just got the results back, all clear!

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Update:

Well unfortunately the disease has won the battle. After a solid year of battling and trying to figure out a way to beat it I finally gave in and tore down the tank. It was just so exhausting seeing piece by piece SPS corals finally succumbing to SCTLD.

It was even worse when you saw certain pieces rebounding for a month and you get this glimmer of hope only to see it wiped out a month later. I never changed any equipment or dosing, lighting, etc as I wanted to keep things ultra stable as I tried different methods to try and beat it but nothing worked.

At some point you just got to give in and say the tank is contaminated and call it what it is. I will be restarting my system again in about a month with all new rock from Australia that has been tested for diseases and is disease free.

Hope someone figures out a way to eliminate it eventually, because I don't wish it on any aquarist.

Did this ever affect LPS or soft coral? (I do realize it's named "Stony coral" tissue loss disease, so unlikely to bother softies, but just curious).

 

[DHill6]

I used the aquabiomics test on my Australian Live rock Bin that's currently curing in a separate system. It has been in there for 3 months and just got the results back, all clear!

Nice!

 

[Andrews_aquarium]

Did this ever affect LPS or soft coral? (I do realize it's named "Stony coral" tissue loss disease, so unlikely to bother softies, but just curious).

I only had blastos and they were unaffected

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

I only had blastos and they were unaffected

Good to know, thanks.

 

[Montagne]

@AquaBiomics are you aware of any customers which have tested positive for a SCTLD pathogen and then subsequently negative for later tests of the same system?