Watching my reef die.

[Velodog2]

20+ gallon nano with many types of hard and soft coral. Killed a bunch of zoanthids by vinegar injection, a method I've used for years. Most montis and lps have now bleached in 3 hrs and the water is getting cloudy. Did 10 gallons of water changes before running out of ro/di, which helped for a while. Running large amount of carbon. Acros largely unaffected so far.

 

[rako1]

sorry to hear man I just started dosing vodka, hope I dont have any problems GL and hope things recover

 

[Velodog2]

Yeah I don't know if there was a toxin release or if I put too much vinegar in or what. Watching tissue slough off my frogspawn now. Clam and Xenia are my canaries. They close or stop pulsing until another water change or carbon is added. I checked the ph when things started to look funny and it was a little low at 8.0, but not catastrophic territory. Things looked better after the first two water changes, but then deteriorated rapidly again. Makes me think toxin. Plus the selective nature of the effect. My little red planet acro has its polyps waving in the breeze while the monti cap next to it visibly dies as I watch it.

 

[cpsbooks]

What do you mean by "vinegar injection?" How were you dosing and how much? Sorry to hear about your troubles btw

 

[ritter6788]

What do you mean by "vinegar injection?" How were you dosing and how much? Sorry to hear about your troubles btw

+1

What brand of carbon are you using?

 

[Velodog2]

I'm using the petco brand that I could buy on a Sunday afternoon without driving an hour. I don't normally use carbon. I inject the polyps with vinegar using an insulin syringe to kill them. Been doing it for years. I didn't kill that many it doesn't seem. Used maybe 2cc vinegar. Clearly not a good idea I guess.

 

[cpsbooks]

Were you regularly testing your parameters while using the vinegar? Vinegar can throw your tank's chemistry if not used correctly.

 

[kacrocorals581]

That's a lot of vinigar dosing that much dropped your ORP and will drop pH and cause a algae bloom the vinigar cause's anaerobic bacteria to multiply you need to wet skim and change atlest 5 more gallons

 

[kacrocorals581]

O and use pickling lime water to kill anymore it will kill them and its just calcium so you don't have any problems adding it to you system. 1/4 tsp 1/4 cup water warm and inject

 

[kacrocorals581]

And face a power head at the surface of the water to agitate more since all that viniger well drop 02

 

[Velodog2]

Another 5 gal water change done. I don't think I'm smart enuf for this hobby.

 

[kacrocorals581]

You'll get it bud just got to learn from our mistakes and no more vinigar for killing ZOA's just get the pickleling lime from the grocery store and use the recipe above good for killing aptasha to

 

[aquamn1999]

sorry for your loss. as said above use pickling lime or kalkwasser

 

[johnanddawn]

Use a sharp knife and a tweezers to remove zoas
Most times you can just pull them off with the tweezers, the base will separate from the rock pretty clean. If it doesn't use a sharp knife and while pulling with the tweezers cut under with the blade. No need to use chemicals on zoas.
I have several varieties of zoas that would overrun my tank if I didn't regulary reach in there and pull a bunch of them out

 

[Velodog2]

I'm not rich enough for this hobby either.

Water is clearer this morning. Death toll includes all montipora, pavona, leptoseris, porites, and cephastrea. Favites, frogspawn, and hammer still have some tissue left but not much hope. Caulastrea look a little better but pretty sketchy still. Clam, Xenia, clavularia, zoanthids and palys (of course), and amazingly all acros look ok. I don't know what I'm going to do yet, but having the harder to replace acros survive is good news and will keep me from just giving up.

 

[Velodog2]

Edit: porites survived but bird's nest did not.

 

[MBG75]

It's from the vinegar. I bleached and lost a bunch of birdsnest, pocillipora, and monti from adding rock I cooked in vinegar.

 

[Velodog2]

Sigh.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Another 5 gal water change done. I don't think I'm smart enuf for this hobby.

You are smart enough to join R2R!!!
So sorry to hear about the die off. I think it may be a mix of the vinegar and like you said, toxins from the corals dying.

Kalk paste is a better alternative...but if you want something that won't jack up your parameters at all just use superglue gel.

 

[Velodog2]

We had a really nice large orange digitata that looked like a big tarantula we'd grown for over a year. Also a really big and nicely shaped ORA lantana that will be hard to find again. Others were a true undata, Jedi mind trick, purple digitata, JF orange/violet, seasons greetings, blue flower, ORA mint pavona. All RIP. At least they were all aqua cultured pieces. This is one reason I won't buy wild caught colonies or fishes. Oh one more survivor was the Japanese alveopora. I had an amazing amount of stuff stuffed into that little tank. I was looking forward to it becoming a big thicket of corals. Well, still have 9 acros: yellow tort, purple bonsai, rose milli, Cali tort, ORA plum crazy, ORA verde, red planet, pink lemonade, and an unidentified metallic purple/magenta. Lol, I grow bonsai as my main hobby so I guess I was planning on doing a lot of pruning.