Adam Wang
New Member
Hey guys! I'm new to Reef2Reef. This isn't the first time I've been on here; I've been lurking for a few months now. I've been reefing for nearly 5 and a half years now(around a decade of freshwater); and I've recently stumbled across the most peculiar thing today and decided to make an account to make this post!
Recently, my newbie friend started a new reef tank(~20 gallons); and purchased a colony of zoas and a lawnmower blenny a few days ago(his first livestock other than 3 snails). As always, the zoas came with a colony of tunicates(I'm guessing Ascidia sp. from the photos he sent me); but the most curious thing happened was: the next morning the blenny had died mysteriously, and a day later the zoas contracted zoa pox.
Panicked, he contacted me about it and asked what could have caused the death of the blenny. Originally, I suspected that the blenny was captured using cyanide; but after he mentioned that there was a tunicate and the acclimation for the zoas were quite hasty - it triggered a silly idea I had in my head a few months ago.
One of the defining features for sessile tunicates is the fact that they have liquids with extremely high concentrations of vanadium within their body. I suspect that the rather rushed acclimation resulted in stressing the tunicate - which in turn possibly made it expel out it's vanadium rich fluids. This possibly resulted in: killing the blenny; and lowering the zoa's immune system from stress - which lead to it contracting zoa pox(essentially confirmed to be a bacterial infection).
Now the only problem is: we have very limited access to any sort of ICP-OES testing in Hong Kong - though there is one in the lab, which I start working at next week, I doubt I will be able to operate it for personal uses. This means that I will have no way of testing whether this hypothesis works or not; but after pressuring my friend for information and reading some research papers online, I've found that: firstly, his algae growth has increased much in the past few days - and its turning into greener/denser clumps than before; secondly, snails are generally unaffected by high concentrations of vanadium; and finally, he had added the blenny about 30-40 minutes before the zoas - and it had already begun eating the algae on the rocks when it was added in, but still died the next morning. These 3 points reinforce my hypothesis that there is a high concentration of vanadium within his aquarium, but don't necessarily prove it.
My question is: Is this possible? and are there any other possible reasons why this happened to his tank?
And before you guys asked: Yes, he did cycle his tank - Ammonia and nitrites were reading zero over a week before he added the corals and fish.
Recently, my newbie friend started a new reef tank(~20 gallons); and purchased a colony of zoas and a lawnmower blenny a few days ago(his first livestock other than 3 snails). As always, the zoas came with a colony of tunicates(I'm guessing Ascidia sp. from the photos he sent me); but the most curious thing happened was: the next morning the blenny had died mysteriously, and a day later the zoas contracted zoa pox.
Panicked, he contacted me about it and asked what could have caused the death of the blenny. Originally, I suspected that the blenny was captured using cyanide; but after he mentioned that there was a tunicate and the acclimation for the zoas were quite hasty - it triggered a silly idea I had in my head a few months ago.
One of the defining features for sessile tunicates is the fact that they have liquids with extremely high concentrations of vanadium within their body. I suspect that the rather rushed acclimation resulted in stressing the tunicate - which in turn possibly made it expel out it's vanadium rich fluids. This possibly resulted in: killing the blenny; and lowering the zoa's immune system from stress - which lead to it contracting zoa pox(essentially confirmed to be a bacterial infection).
Now the only problem is: we have very limited access to any sort of ICP-OES testing in Hong Kong - though there is one in the lab, which I start working at next week, I doubt I will be able to operate it for personal uses. This means that I will have no way of testing whether this hypothesis works or not; but after pressuring my friend for information and reading some research papers online, I've found that: firstly, his algae growth has increased much in the past few days - and its turning into greener/denser clumps than before; secondly, snails are generally unaffected by high concentrations of vanadium; and finally, he had added the blenny about 30-40 minutes before the zoas - and it had already begun eating the algae on the rocks when it was added in, but still died the next morning. These 3 points reinforce my hypothesis that there is a high concentration of vanadium within his aquarium, but don't necessarily prove it.
My question is: Is this possible? and are there any other possible reasons why this happened to his tank?
And before you guys asked: Yes, he did cycle his tank - Ammonia and nitrites were reading zero over a week before he added the corals and fish.
