Tank problems

[christyf5]

Hey guys,

So over the last few months, I'd say since about March, I've been having issues with my SPS. At first I figured it was a crab, and at that point it probably was. I could see little bits and pieces of tissue missing here and there from various SPS. They never had any problems with it and most of them recovered nicely and even grew a little. After removing the monster crab things seemed to be coming around. But in the past two months I've noticed that two of my millis don't have the best polyp extension. And strangely enough my frogspawn has been rather puckered up as of late. Could be some chemical warfare there? Who knows?

Anyways, in the past few months, I've noticed that more than just a few of my SPS have been actually receeding at the bases. Not just little bits missing anymore. Most of it was happening on one side of the tank. I had lost a piece of my tunze bracket and had to remove it from the tank, replacing it with a hagen 802 for what I thought would be a short time until I received the part. During this time most of the tissue recession/RTN/STN was happening only on one side of the tank, the side that was being fed by the Hagen 802. In an effort to correct this I returned the tunze 6060 to the tank siliconed to its mount. The tissue recession has not slowed.

I did have a few of the skeletons turn green (indicative of phosphate) and I added phosban back into my phosban reactor (I was previously running carbon in it). Since then, the skeletons remain white but they are still receeding. The majority of the SPS have taken weeks to die, and they've all been frags. Looking really hard at the tank now I can see that I'm starting to lose colonies now and its picking up speed.

Last week I tested my water for nitrates (5-10ppm) and phosphate (0ppm/trace). Salinity is 1.025, ph is 8.2, calcium 410, alk 10.8, Mg 1440. Everything seemed fine but I did a 30g water change and have another one scheduled for tomorrow.

Now I'm starting to suspect my refugium, after all it has a sandbed in it. Any thoughts??

TIA
Christy :)

[muck]

Do you have a grounding probe?

[reeferaddict]

You know we've been talking and I am having similar crap going on with my SPS... this sounds silly and is a real basic thing, but maybe recheck your nitrates? I had an old test kit that was giving me 0 - 10 readings so I thought I was fine... I checked with another test kit this week and it read 80! Needless to say water changes have been stepped up and underway, along with removing any sponges etc in the system and a complete sump scrub... ERRRGH! (This F%#@ING hobby sometimes!)

My corals are brown, poor polyps etc etc etc... I've been running Phosban, Ozone... blah frigging blah... at least my clams seem happy...

My problem is definitely bioload, but I like my fish so either I step up my water changes permanently or try a denitrator... *sigh*

Christy I don't know what the problem is in your tank, but what do you think the sandbed would be doing to adversely affect your system?

[christyf5]

Ryan, no I don't have a grounding probe. I would expect larger more steady problems if that were the case. The STN has been rather sporadic, some days I don't see any difference then the next day white, then slow recession for 3-4 days then poof gone the next morning.

Jim,

I have no idea what a sandbed could be doing to my system but when I had a sandbed in the main tank I had all sorts of problems. Ripping it out seemed to pave the way to good times with my tank. I mean, I've looked at pretty much everything I can think of. Now I'm sort of eyeballing the 'fuge as my next target.

I suppose we shall see after I do another large water change today. Things looked a bit better after the last one but weren't spectacular.

I don't know where the nitrates would be coming from if I have more than 5-10??? I haven't added any fish since this started happening. Mind you now that I think of it, that damned crab killed a helluva lot of snails and left little bits behind in them (peeyew they were stinky!). Still I don't see how half a dozen snails could be causing such problems. I do a 15 gallon water change weekly and last week and this I've done/am doing 30 gallons.

Ozone is next on my list too.

[Chin_Lee]

Christy
i've been experiencing the same thing and I saw the same thing last year in the summer time. It may be heat related - not sure. But some of my acros are starting to recede at the bottom. I'm doing more water changes in an effort to increase water quality. Where I have been successful is putting epoxy on the receding areas and into the surrounding healthy tissues to stop the recession. it has worked quite well for a few of the acros but on my big milli is still having some problems. its quite ugly but you do save the piece and in time, the healthy tissue will grow back onto the epoxy.

[christyf5]

Good idea I'll have to try that with the epoxy. Something has to be done to save some of these its just ridiculous how half the colony is gone yet the other half still has its polyps out and is all happy.

BTW I run a chiller so heat shouldn't technically be a problem at this point.

[muck]

Does the tissue just sluff off and hang?

[Delphinus]

It's amazing how many times we see this issue pop up, i.e., problems with SPS. The number of SPS setups out there that have run for years seem to be very few in comparison to the number of SPS tanks that have less than a year or two under their belt - plus the number of SPS tanks that have some sort of problem. Just a quick scan of recent posts here show me that a LOT of people have this sort of "my fuzzy sticks are not well" theme going on. Myself included although my troubles began well over a year ago and didn't take me too long to have lost most every SPS I ever owned, even those that had lived through tank calamities in the past. Just gradual and steady degradation that I couldn't turn around.

Anyhow I have no profound insights at this time, other than to say "yeah, me too, still" and having just come back from a real reef am having a real crisis of conscience with respects to the hobby and am wondering where I am going from here.

Oh, the one thing I did want to mention. Aren't our phosphate kits more or less useless? It's been a while since I tried to understand any reef chemistry (a la Randy Holmes-Farley level) and it's been an even longer while since I tried to understand chemistry of any sort (I took some chem courses in university about a hundred years ago {give or take 85 or so} that I don't remember anymore :eek: ) .. but isn't there something like the test kits can only detect inorganic phosphate but it's the organic phosphate that is really of primary concern to us (or vice versa and so on)?

The bottom line is, I think that, for "true long term success" SPS probably require water quality measures so pristine that it's beyond the scope of the average aquarist with a generic coral garden. Maybe not, I'm not sure. I'm not really certain if I'm just rambling incoherently. Inorganic versus organic phosphates, I'm certain there's something there.

[christyf5]

Does the tissue just sluff off and hang?

Nope, it goes "poof!". It disappears in the night. :razz: Sometimes I see little tiny hangy bits but for the most part its just gone.



Tony, I agree, phosphate tests are pretty useless. I think any phosphates I do have in the tank are immediately tied up by the gross amount of caulerpa I have in the main tank and the refugium (the refugium isn't doing as fantastic a job as I would have hoped). I think Seachem has a test that detects both organic and inorganic phosphate but I could be wrong.

Then again I'm running phosban so there shouldn't be any phosphates in my tank at all if it works :wink:

[Jason McK]

Christy,
Sorry to hear your still having problems.
A couple of things I've been finding, A lot of my SPS are causing there own demise. They out grow the flow in the tank, or another SPS grows and cuts off flow to a part of another coral. This allows detritus to settle and either kill the coral or allow algae to grow and kill the coral.
Not sure if this could be a factor in your case. But That is what I'm dealing with now in my 75G.

Is there any way you could isolate your refugium? If you could I would stir the crap out of the sand and let it run through a mechanical filter for a couple of weeks. This should clean out the sand while still getting the benefits from it after you hook it back to the main tank.

I still feel your base tissue loss is a flow problem. you may want to change your flow around drastically, by moving power heads to very different locations for a while.

Just a few thoughts
J

[christyf5]

Thanks for the input Jason. :biggrin:

Its not like anything really grows super fast in my tank. If anything they are gaining mere millimeters of growth and those that are faster growers are just frags. I agree about changing up the placement of my powerheads just to see if that is the problem but those corals that are experiencing the tissue recession have ample flow IMO, I can see their polyps waving about, so I'm not sure about that. But heck, I don't seem to be sure about much in this hobby so it can't hurt.

I think I'm going to take your advice about the refugium. Its only been set up for a short while (since about November) but that doesn't mean it can't be causing problems all on its own. There isn't much in there and what is in there isn't doing all that fantastically well anyways (its mostly a cyano/gack factory) so I'll have a go at cleaning up the sand and restarting it.

[danny zubot]

A couple of things I've been finding, A lot of my SPS are causing there own demise. They out grow the flow in the tank, or another SPS grows and cuts off flow to a part of another coral

I totally understand this catch 22. I've been trying to find the best way to set up flow in my tank so that my flow loving prostrata gets its share, while trying not to upset my milli and other acros. One suction cup from a ph came loose and directed flow right onto a milli for a day, it now has a dead patch, which doesn't seem to be growing at all thankfully. And where flow hits my caps directly, they grow brown hair algae! Whats up with that!:question:

The bottom line is that I probably have too many large corals for my tank, and I can't accomidate all of them perfectly. As far as flow is concerned.

[Delphinus]

And where flow hits my caps directly, they grow brown hair algae! Whats up with that!:question:

Caps don't deal well with direct flow. The flow is basically a shearing force, and the exposed skeleton gets the algae.


The bottom line is that I probably have too many large corals for my tank, and I can't accomidate all of them perfectly. As far as flow is concerned.

As much as I like caps that's basically the reason I don't have them any longer myself, they just grow too fast for my 75g.

[Samw]

I'm guessing it's bacteria such as vibrio.

[Bill]

Since it's mostly on one side of the tank, I'd bet it's either a crab or water flow problem on that side.

[christyf5]

Since it's mostly on one side of the tank, I'd bet it's either a crab or water flow problem on that side.

Well originally thats what I thought but now its happening on the other side of the tank as well. :neutral:

[Snappy]

Christy,
Welcome to my world. I am having the same issues. Stuff like Digitata and monti caps all seem to do fine but many of my acros are suffering tissue loss at the base and I have lost about 8-10 nice size pieces in the last few months. I am at a loss as what to do, what isn't receeding seems to be loosing much of it's colour.

[Samw]

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-03/eb/index.php

The Amazing Case of Vibrio shiloi

Several years ago, an article appeared that described the bacteria, Vibrio shiloi, as causing bleaching in the Mediterranean coral, Oculina patagonica (Kushmaro 1996). ...

However, one could have heard a pin drop during the elegant and outstanding presentation by Dr. Eugene Rosenberg of Tel Aviv University (Rosenberg 2002). This man single handedly threw the proverbial monkey wrench into the coral world that morning. In the years since the original articles have been published, Rosenberg's team has not only fulfilled Koch's postulates for this pathogen in a textbook-like fashion, but has proceeded to describe the etiology in an extremely impressive manner. I would urge those interested to read the articles listed below that relate to this disease. ...

In short, Vibrio shiloi is a newly described species of bacteria, related to V. mediterranei, with an as-yet undetermined reservoir; that is, it is not known where or if the presence of this bacteria is normal to the environment, or if it is somehow just recently showing up to affect the area. It follows the temperature cycles of the area precisely, and causes bleaching in warm months followed by recovery as the water temperature declines....

A new species of bacteria, Vibrio corallyticus, was consistently found in the tissues of the bleached Pocillopora at a level that already fulfills the first of Koch's postulates. The virulence is even more amazing. At 23° C, there are no visible signs of disease. At 25° C, bleaching occurs. At 27° C, there is rapid tissue lysis. A virulence factor is being produced by this bacteria that correlates extremely well with the temperatures commonly cited as causing coral bleaching....

However, the importance of looking at bleaching in an entirely new light is now at hand. It has often been questioned why corals in the wild would bleach with only a 1-2° C temperature change when other areas (including tanks) routinely experience far greater vacillations without any bleaching incidence. The fact that virulence can be expressed with this small temperature increase makes such accounts explainable. Furthermore, with temperatures in the oceans having warmed over the past fifty years, and with bleaching events being more common in recent years, the existence of bacterial bleaching under such temperature increases may explain not only the increased incidence of bleaching, but also explain why mortality is so common in some bleaching events while recovery happens in others.
As an example, if corals have been growing in water averaging 26° C, more or less, for the past several thousand years, and over the past fifty years the temperatures in the water are now 27° C. Virulence of a microbe is expressed at 28° C to cause bleaching. Now, it only takes a 1° C change to cause virulence genes to be turned on and cause bleaching, and this occurs much more frequently than the 2° C change that it took previously. Furthermore, if the water temperature gets to 29° C, it may not be that the corals have exceeded their upper thermal limit, but that virulence genes that cause tissue lysis have been expressed. ..

As a final note to this incredible tale, and as if the reader has not had enough already, Rosenberg also found that Oculina in shallow water, even in high temperature and exposed to V. shiloi, rarely bleached. They found that UV radiation acted as an effective sterilizer for V. shiloi on the coral surface!

[sumpfinfishe]

Sorry to hear the news Christy :sad:

After talking with you today I thought about heat or flow as the cause of your STN. However after reading this thread I can see you have those bases covered and I had a feeling you would have looked at both of those areas.

I had this same problem about a year ago and the more that I think about it the more I think it may be due to what you first suggested-Chemical Warfare!

Last year I had a green milli that slowly died from STN and due to it's slimming over the course of a week or so I 'm pretty sure it was the cause of almost loosing three other SPS located near bye. Try checking in on the reef via flashlight during the night to see if any corals are slimming up or if there are stingers drifting in the water column, maybe this might be the cause of your STN.

Goodluck and keep us posted, Rich

[Jack]

Possibly acropora flatworms.

[muck]

woah.. who is this Jack fellow..? :razz:
(good to see you are still around)

[reeferaddict]

So I'm making a trip up Island today, and I decide to see for myself. I've never seen Christy's tank, and while her web page and blog are really well done, informative, and creative, the pictures do her tank no justice! Nice wavy polyps fully extended, beautiful patches of various corals growing all over her rocks, but all we have been able to see is a tank shot at a distance, and some of the really neat macros that Christy has taken. I "just happened" to have my camera with me and I remembered I promised Ruth and Rory I would post some wide angle shots from a lens she really wants, and at the same time I thought it might be time to show Christy's tank with a little perspective, if not even a little distortion... this lens is amazing folks... Christy's tank as never seen before...

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b38/lord001/Christy/IMG_7702.jpg

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b38/lord001/Christy/IMG_7699.jpg

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b38/lord001/Christy/IMG_7698.jpg

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b38/lord001/Christy/IMG_7692.jpg

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b38/lord001/Christy/IMG_7690.jpg

http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b38/lord001/Christy/IMG_7688.jpg

Even these pictures don't do it justice... so you've got a couple of sloughing colonies... you're doing it right... get to the bottom of it... but don't panic and do anything rash to screw it up now... you've done a fantastic job!

So we came to the conclusion that Christy has been staring into her tank for too long and that she doesn't need the advice of fellow Canreefers, but rather that of a psychiatrist... :biggrin:

[muck]

Holey Crap!! Tank is looking pretty good, Christy!! Thanks for posting addict.

Your Regal Tang actually is blue.. all this time I thought you had a rare purple morph.. :sad:

[Delphinus]

What magical lens do you speak of, reeferaddict?

You can't make some kind of ringing endorsement like "This lens is amazing, folks" and then not make mention what it is in the same post! :p

Tank doesn't look so bad to me Christy, it has a long way to catch up to mine :p Hang in there - it may be too late for me but I don't think it's too late for you yet. Good luck!

[danny zubot]

Yup, looks fine to me, even if there are a few unhappy corals.

[muck]

Tony check out this thread.. you missed it while you were away snorkling and sun worshiping in Hawaii.. :twised: .

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=25522

[Delphinus]

Ah, I realize that there's another thread, but the point is, if you're going to make mention of something like "Wow does this piece of hardware ever rock! Wow! Wow! It's so awesome! You guys have to try it!" Then take the extra 30 seconds to make mention of what you're talking about instead of assuming that everyone knows already... because six months from now if someone is searching through old threads they won't have to try to cross reference it then (which at that point will be nearly impossible).

[christyf5]

Wow whos tank is that? :razz:

I guess it goes to show you what $10k worth of camera equipment does over a $400 one :wink:


Regardless, my tank still has some serious issues.:neutral:

[OCDP]

Regardless, my tank still has some serious issues.:neutral:

As does everyone elses :razz:

[christyf5]

As does everyone elses :razz:

Well mine are more important right now :razz: :razz:

[OCDP]

Well mine are more important right now :razz: :razz:

haha, ok ok .. you win.

Seriously though, your tank looks awesome.. lots of nice colonies in there :mrgreen:

[muck]

better ship me some corals Christy incase the problem gets worse.. :mrgreen:

[christyf5]

better ship me some corals Christy incase the problem gets worse.. :mrgreen:

I'll seriously consider it if it keeps going the way it has been.

[reeferaddict]

Tony Tony Tony....

What's more important here? My typing skills or your reading skills? lol Anyways. yes... while you were trundling around the world, we had a great camera & lens thread going...

Anyways... they were taken with my 20D and the Canon 10-22 mm Ultra Wide zoom... and a couple of the pics might appear not sharp... uh uh... the fuzz is the corals... :mrgreen:

Oh.... and Christy's morning therapy session hasn't yielded the desired results yet...

[Delphinus]

Jim Jim Jim, surely someone who likes to type as much as you would *appreciate* the opportunity to add a few extra keystrokes to your dissertations. After all, the longer the post, the smrter the postor must be, right? :p

... thank you for closing the gap of missing info within THIS thread.

[muck]

Can we get a pic of the Camera/Lens combo for Tony too? :razz: :lol:

[reeferaddict]

Tony my friend... ask and ye shall receive... haha.

Don't get me going on another dissertation... Canreefers come here to read... not to sleep. Besides... you know how much I have to pay my kids to type & spell check?

[Delphinus]

LOL

Now if he could do that without using a mirror or a second camera, I would truly be impressed. :mrgreen:

[muck]

Hope he has a really really wide angle lens.. :lol:

[reeferaddict]

Can we get a pic of the Camera/Lens combo for Tony too? :razz: :lol:

Aw jeez Ryan... Now your just making life complicated... you'll have to wait until I get a 2nd body... or until the kid gets home & shows me how to run the point & shoot! :lol:

[reeferaddict]

Thread moved to comedian section. :mrgreen:

[albert_dao]

My tank doesn't have any issues... ALBERT FTW!

[christyf5]

Well an update for those of you that are interested (plus I'm really bored today so prepare yourselves for some interesting posts :razz:)


So things I've done to help remedy the problem:

moving the powerheads: I couldn't really move them to different locations in the tank due to the position of my rocks and stuff (dead spots in the back forty). After assessing the tank situation and where I could possibly put them and all, I decided that the location I had already selected would actually benefit the tank best for detritus movement to places where I could access it as well as creating as few "dead spots" as possible. I did figure that moving them down in the water column might help though, theres no point in generating water circulation high up in the water column where there is nobody to enjoy is (except for the fish maybe). This seems to be doing a better job for both water movement (wavy polyps) and detritus movement. Funny how at one point I thought one tunze 6060 would be too much for my tank, now I have 2 and am thinking maybe I need one more? :razz:

30 gallon water change x2: I did my second 30 gallon water change last Thursday ( a big deal for me, thats alot of water to lug from the loo ya know :wink:). I usually do a 15 gallon weekly water change due to the huge amount of detritus that builds up on the bottom of the tank (which I discovered is mostly nori poop). Anyway, the larger water changes seem to have had a huge effect on my tank as previously I had some SPS corals that hadn't had their polyps out in months and one coral had NEVER had its polyps out (during the day anyway) and now seems happy. Either that or its just toying with me and polyps out for this certain coral means imminent death or something lame like that. Anyway, this doesn't make me want to do 30 gallon water changes every week because quite frankly I don't think my back or wallet would appreciate it. However it does make me think there was/is *something* in the water, although I'm still not sure what or how it got in there.

temperature reduction: heck! I've got a chiller, why not use it to its fullest potential?? While i had the chiller set for 78 degrees, it usually stayed around 80. Then looking at my little coralife digital thermometer I noticed the tank was actually 82.5. I mean, I could be happy with that, but reeferaddict pointed out that I might want to lower the temperature. So I buggered around with it until the temperatures mostly match the digital thermometer (I still don't quite understand why they don't even though they're set to match but whatever) anyway, the temp is about 78.5-79.5 for now vs. 82.5 max before.

Anyway, so as usual, my tank has problems and I fix a whole bunch of things at once so I never know what the problem actually was. To tell you the truth I don't really care, as long as its fixed, which I'm not really sure it is, but the tank looks better and there isn't a whole lot more STN going on. Maybe its super slowed now. Like SSTN. :wink:

[muck]

Hopefully you got it beat now Christy. My tank seems to have stabalized now as well. I lost 2 large colonies and a few smaller frags.
Im going with the theory that I somehow had a suicidal coral cult spring up in my tank.

[christyf5]

Maybe they were recruiting members worldwide and managed to get their message out to my tank. I wondered what all those little empty cups of kool-aid in the tank were all about :razz:

[Delphinus]

Anyway, so as usual, my tank has problems and I fix a whole bunch of things at once so I never know what the problem actually was. To tell you the truth I don't really care, as long as its fixed, which I'm not really sure it is, but the tank looks better and there isn't a whole lot more STN going on. Maybe its super slowed now. Like SSTN. :wink:

To tell you the truth, I think that *unless* the corals are growing like crazy, then they are receding, i.e., STN or SSTN is always there anyhow, you just want to make sure you grow more than you lose. Basically, there's no such thing as "stasis" (well, there is, it's just also known as "death"). But yeah, either things are moving this way (imagine me moving my hand to the left) or they are moving this way (imagine me moving my hand to the right). Basically, you want them growing like crazy. If they're not growing, then look out!!