UPDATED: Any Help is appreciated

[globaldesigns]

Well as many know, I have had coral issues this summer. I thought things were going well and corals are revitalizing, but I guess not.

Last night, I had an SPS with a bit of RTN from the base upwards. Today it is totally dead. This was approximately 3 inches in width and 7 inches in length. The whole thing is gone.

I don't want to get into parameters stuff, as I have gone through this over and over again, and even had my LFS check things and again perfect.

Today, I also took that coral in just to make sure there were no critters, red bugs or something else. Well it was clean, no critters, no claw marks, chew marks nothing. So now I can rule out bugs and fish/crab/whatever coral eating critters.

So now I back at the starting point, why did this coral die so quickly. It was in my tank for almost 2 years without issue. And what happened, is what has been happening over the summer.

I am becoming quite frustrated here. Any ideas? Again, please don't ask me to check my parameters. As this is not the issue, I am now needing to look for that needle in the haystack.

Remember though, other corals that had issues in the summer, are still showing great signs of growth and improvements. Water is clean, fish are healthy and overall tank looks pretty good.

Thanks.

[Coleus]

I think that is just the way with SPS, they just die for unknown reason. I think maybe we they need some thing in the water beside just Mg,Calc,Alk, PH.

Sorry to hear your loss but like many ppl here, we all lost sps for unknown reason :-(

[globaldesigns]

I think that is just the way with SPS, they just die for unknown reason. I think maybe we they need some thing in the water beside just Mg,Calc,Alk, PH.

Sorry to hear your loss but like many ppl here, we all lost sps for unknown reason :-(

I know, Snappy and others had the same issues this summer. Makes you think there is something in the water.

I just got my JL shipment. Something I am going to do now, that I have never done. I bought some Seachem PRIME. This is a water conditioner to remove any ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, bromine, chlorine, etc. etc. etc.

I do make my own RO water, and again just replaced all filters YESTERDAY. Now I am going to condition all water for water changes and for top up.

Lets see if this helps.

[MitchM]

Sorry to hear about your coral death. My first guess (and that's all it is) is that your coral starved to death. It may have been in an area where a water current vortex may have prevented it from capturing any food. Or your tank conditions may have been such that the coral was sometimes feeding, sometimes not, going on reserve energy and finally couldn't recover.

I actually think we have quite a ways to go before we fully understand keeping healthy, thriving corals long term.

There are a number of things that we can't quantify yet:
-we really don't know when carbon needs changing, so we could have chemical warfare happening without our realizing it
-we can't tell if a coral is getting the proper flow so it can effectively capture food
-it's hard to tell if we are supplying the coral with the correct and sufficient food
-are the little things like leached toxic chemicals really affecting our coral's health?(why wouldn't it? I know some disagree with me)

What was it, 15 years ago that it seemed almost impossible to keep SPS?
Now we're playing around with coral colours and bacteria driven nutrient management.

I'm probably not being much help here, but I do think that these things matter. We have no real way yet of determining whether we are taking care of every coral in our tank requirements.

If your water parameters and lighting are good, I would suggest to do some more research on the subject of coral feeding.

Mitch

[lorenz0]

I vote you pull the plug on those bio-pellets

Seriously dude

[ScubaSteve]

Could you post your paramter?

I'm kidding! People do it to me all the time (Me:"Params are on spot, don't ask"... people: "can you post your params?"... Me: "*&$%")

Are you running a low nutrient system? While I run close to that I personally believe that they make coral health very unstable as you are essentially starving them. This makes them pretty susceptable to pretty much anything and without the energy to fight it they collapse pretty quickly. RTN seems to be pretty common amoung ULN systems.

If you aren't running ULNS I'm going to guess chemical warfare maybe? What else do you have in the tank?

I had the same issue this summer, particularly my birdsnest. The birdsnest got the ol' dreaded white band at the base and I tried for months to fight it off but it was just teetering. Around this time I had frags and other colonies start to do the same thing. I finally caved in and fragged up the birdsnest and got rid of the dying areas. The instant I did that EVERYTHING perked up and all STN stopped and went away. Could there be one colony in your tank that is triggering it in all the others?

[don.ald]

what about electrical shock or something in the tank?

[Bloodasp]

I hope it's not the mother colony of the frag I bought from you last summer cause that's the fastest growing one SPS I have right now.

[daniella3d]

Interesting. I find sps to be the toughest things I have ever had. I can lose xenia or zoanthids for no reason but those sps I have never seem to be affected by anything and they grow fast. I don't have a lot of flow and I feed a lot of coral food each day. hmmm... Nitrates and phosphates are at 0 though because of lots of micro-algae.

I had no idea sps could starve to death because they are photosynthetic.

Mine even grow new tissue as new when some part die from toutching another sps.

Mine seem to like the lower temperature I keep in my tank, at 76F.



Could you post your paramter?
Are you running a low nutrient system? While I run close to that I personally believe that they make coral health very unstable as you are essentially starving them. This makes them pretty susceptable to pretty much anything and without the energy to fight it they collapse pretty quickly. RTN seems to be pretty common amoung ULN systems.

[BlueTang<3]

I feel your pain dude I am having the same thing happening to me. Parameters bang on corals i have had for a year survived a crash and boom gone in a day. Its weird something i would also like to figure out makes this so frustrating.

[MitchM]

...

I had no idea sps could starve to death because they are photosynthetic.

...

Photosynthesis only produces sugar. Corals still require protein.
(Think of non-photosynthetic corals)

Mitch

[reefcanada]

You may be running to many bio-pellets, I have found that they work well on tanks with a nutrient problem. I run them on my softie tank with great results, but took them off my sps tank as they were causing stn and rtn of my sps. This all stoped with days of removing the pellets from that system.

I also think less is more when dealing with the bio-pellets. I run half of what they recomend on my tank, The cheato is still growing(with a little die off when adding new pellets), this just means that I add more on a more frequent basis.

You could try feeding the pellets as you would with zeolites. I have found that the pellets need lots of food to work well. Just my two cents, hope this helps.

[Ya Dude]

circulation and water changes.count the number of Tunzes on successful acro tanks

ya heard!

[kien]

Been there, done that, waiting for Brett on the T-Shirt!

Ya, sorry, I won't be much help here either, but I too feel your pain and frustration (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=548996&postcount=540).

To this day I have no clue what caused my die off. After a few hefty water changes it seemed to sort itself out whatever it was. It certainly was not anything I could test for. Was not the parameters, light, flow, or pellets, all of which are completely unchanged to this day and all my corals are more or less back to their former glory (growth and colour). Go figure.

Sure I would like to know what happened, but I am not going to lose sleep over it. It is what it is and trying to chase it is just an exercise in complete and utter frustration. Do your due diligence and test what you can, water, equipment, etc. and rule those out. If all of that checks out, then there is a variable that you just can't account for.

If I had to guess, my money is on sickness. Animals get sick. Animals that are clones of one another living in a colony are at a higher risk because if one gets sick, they will all get sick very very quickly. Some animals can fight off the illness, some can't. Even in this scenario there are so many variables. As suggested already, an ULNS is a virtual state of starvation for many SPS as we try to keep them alive precariously on the edge. On one hand we strip them of as much nutrient as possible while on the other hand dosing just enough of the nutrients that WE want them to take up so that they look pretty. This in my personal opinion is not their natural state of existence. Out of all the books and programs that I have read on SPS, the conclusion that I have drawn for myself is that some (or many) SPS corals are a lot darker in their natural habitat. They have the exact amount of zoozanthellae that they need to flourish. Some will take up more some less. The most common colour of zoozanthellae is brown! If a particular SPS needs or wants more zoozanthellae to survive, great, it will store more and thus get browner and is perfectly healthy and happy now. However, we as hobbyists don't want that. Instead, we try to get them to expell as much brown zoozanthellae as possible in order to bring out their colours, even if this puts them into a state of starvation.

The bottom line is it is a delicate balance that can tip either way.

Oops! Sorry for the essay/verbal diarrhea. :redface:

[Zoaelite]

Kien you save me the hassle of posting every freaking time! Ya pretty much what he said and it's for those reason's I cut back my SPS completely, just got tired of loosing things and not knowing the reason.

Good luck either way Rick, I understand your pain and frustration.

[globaldesigns]

what about electrical shock or something in the tank?

I do run Titanium grounding probes in both the DT and sump. I personally don't think that is an issue as in the DT the only electrical would be the 2 Koralia #4's on the wavemaker. Otherwise the other powerheads are Vortechs, so the power is outside the tank.

[globaldesigns]

I vote you pull the plug on those bio-pellets

Seriously dude

Sorry man, I personally feel that isn't the problem. so not going to do that.

[globaldesigns]

You may be running to many bio-pellets, I have found that they work well on tanks with a nutrient problem. I run them on my softie tank with great results, but took them off my sps tank as they were causing stn and rtn of my sps. This all stoped with days of removing the pellets from that system.

I also think less is more when dealing with the bio-pellets. I run half of what they recomend on my tank, The cheato is still growing(with a little die off when adding new pellets), this just means that I add more on a more frequent basis.

You could try feeding the pellets as you would with zeolites. I have found that the pellets need lots of food to work well. Just my two cents, hope this helps.

OK, something to think about... Can anybody else give this same type of proof. I just don't remove things cause, but if others can pipe in, then HMMMMMM

[globaldesigns]

K, also want to post that I added some Seachem Prime to my tank yesterday.

I have some Softies that were all hidden, today, they are coming out some. Not perfect, but they are reacting differently.

I added some more prime today and will see what happens.

Also I bought some ZeoStart2, between the PRIME and the ZeoSTART2, both I started yesterday, my skimmer is going crazy, very yucky foam, more than normal. Again, HMMMMMMMM.

Before removing the BioPellets, I am going to see what the ZeoSTART2 and Prime does. I need some quality control, don't want to change to much at once, cause then I don't know the change/effect of what I do. What do you think?

[globaldesigns]

Been there, done that, waiting for Brett on the T-Shirt!

Ya, sorry, I won't be much help here either, but I too feel your pain and frustration (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=548996&postcount=540).

To this day I have no clue what caused my die off. After a few hefty water changes it seemed to sort itself out whatever it was. It certainly was not anything I could test for. Was not the parameters, light, flow, or pellets, all of which are completely unchanged to this day and all my corals are more or less back to their former glory (growth and colour). Go figure.

Sure I would like to know what happened, but I am not going to lose sleep over it. It is what it is and trying to chase it is just an exercise in complete and utter frustration. Do your due diligence and test what you can, water, equipment, etc. and rule those out. If all of that checks out, then there is a variable that you just can't account for.

If I had to guess, my money is on sickness. Animals get sick. Animals that are clones of one another living in a colony are at a higher risk because if one gets sick, they will all get sick very very quickly. Some animals can fight off the illness, some can't. Even in this scenario there are so many variables. As suggested already, an ULNS is a virtual state of starvation for many SPS as we try to keep them alive precariously on the edge. On one hand we strip them of as much nutrient as possible while on the other hand dosing just enough of the nutrients that WE want them to take up so that they look pretty. This in my personal opinion is not their natural state of existence. Out of all the books and programs that I have read on SPS, the conclusion that I have drawn for myself is that some (or many) SPS corals are a lot darker in their natural habitat. They have the exact amount of zoozanthellae that they need to flourish. Some will take up more some less. The most common colour of zoozanthellae is brown! If a particular SPS needs or wants more zoozanthellae to survive, great, it will store more and thus get browner and is perfectly healthy and happy now. However, we as hobbyists don't want that. Instead, we try to get them to expell as much brown zoozanthellae as possible in order to bring out their colours, even if this puts them into a state of starvation.

The bottom line is it is a delicate balance that can tip either way.

Oops! Sorry for the essay/verbal diarrhea. :redface:

Very well put, I will have to see what happens with the couple new additions I made in treatment. If things don't change then maybe I will have to decide on just letting them be happy, Brown (YUCK), but healthy. Or just remove them and do softies and Zoa's.

Very frustrating.

But I will say, from yesterday to today, there is a huge difference in water clarity. Even cleaner, cleaner than clean, and as stated before a couple softies are reacting better. Maybe I had too much chlorine, cholarmine or whatever Seachem PRIME takes out.

[lorenz0]

I still think all you bio-pellet guys are being thick skulled. All looking for answers elsewhere when its right in front of you.

In this thread we have 3 examples of people who ARE running biopellets who are claiming of this unknown variable that is unidentifiable. Most of you guys starting running these back in the spring when they became avaliable to the market and before that had no issues. Think about it. What has changed since than?

These are not a fixed variable that you can control. Were talking about a product that results in depriving the system of nutrients and how do you know how much is being let into your system? Because some jerk off says so? Your better off grabbing the bottle, pouring yourself a glass and dumping an unmeasured dose into your system.

Once again I will say it, you guys are making your systems to complex. And I have seen more people crashing tanks over these pellets than I have seen success stories. People look at sps way to complex of a coral to keep, thinking you need this and that.

[Ya Dude]

how come the people that loose corals have to keep adding chemicals to they r tank...and they dont even know whats wrong

[globaldesigns]

I still think all you bio-pellet guys are being thick skulled. All looking for answers elsewhere when its right in front of you.

In this thread we have 3 examples of people who ARE running biopellets who are claiming of this unknown variable that is unidentifiable. Most of you guys starting running these back in the spring when they became avaliable to the market and before that had no issues. Think about it. What has changed since than?

These are not a fixed variable that you can control. Were talking about a product that results in depriving the system of nutrients and how do you know how much is being let into your system? Because some jerk off says so? Your better off grabbing the bottle, pouring yourself a glass and dumping an unmeasured dose into your system.

Once again I will say it, you guys are making your systems to complex. And I have seen more people crashing tanks over these pellets than I have seen success stories. People look at sps way to complex of a coral to keep, thinking you need this and that.

We are not thick skulled, I have found many articles supporting them, and I follow the usage of how these articles state, plus what the manufacturer now gives in the bag. With people that state they don't work, there are also people that will state they do work. In regards to crashing, I have not read one thread stating a tank crash, Issues maybe related or not to the pellets, but I haven't seen a single statement of tank crash due to pellets.

One thing I noticed is my clams where not extended, so I took the advice previous stated that it may be flow. I have alot of it. With 2 Vortech MP40W's and 2 Koralia #4's with wavemaker, there is alot of movement.

What I did is back off the Koralias 25%, and changed my Vortechs that were running on short pulse mode at full tilt, creating a wave to running at 66% on Reef Crest Mode. Now the clams are extending, its only been about 15 minutes, but they are looking normal.

Maybe I am blasting things way too much, Hmmmm, again i will now leave this and see what happens.

[lorenz0]

We are not thick skulled, I have found many articles supporting them, and I follow the usage of how these articles state, plus what the manufacturer now gives in the bag. With people that state they don't work, there are also people that will state they do work. In regards to crashing, I have not read one thread stating a tank crash, Issues maybe related or not to the pellets, but I haven't seen a single statement of tank crash due to pellets.


Funny how you said this. Just got off the phone with my friend and he said use a different metaphor that could be understood a bit better:

Do you take a unwrapped chocloate bar off the shelve, eat it, get diagria and eat more because you believe that this isn't the cause? Or do you look back and realize that you were fine before you ate it and it is the actual issue.

I would start with flow. That is alot of flow and if I remember your tank is like a 4-5' tank

I'm not going to rip apart your post but if you actually believe they they had nothing to do with it, i rest my case

[kien]

I still think all you bio-pellet guys are being thick skulled. All looking for answers elsewhere when its right in front of you.
.

You know honestly, I would LOVE it if I could point the finger at the bio pellets because then I would have my smoking gun. I would agree that they may be the cause for some peoples issues, however, they were not the cause of mine. We all know that this hobby isn't an exact science and we all draw our own conclusions based on our own experiences and what we see in front of us. I have been running bio pellets since late December of last year (http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=476609&postcount=226) which is probably longer than most people here. In my opinion that's quite a lot of bio pellet usage prior to my SPS event. I did briefly consider taking them off line during my event but decided not to because of the fact that they had been running for so long without issue. Granted that was a bit of a gamble. Sure enough, the remaining SPS and new SPS recovered and thrived without me even touching the bio pellets. Through the whole event they helped to keep my Nitrates and Phosphates low. I know because the pellets are the only NP reducing agents currently at work on my tank. I don't run a 'fuge or dose any zeo or VSV. Now that things have made a recovery I have doubled my bio pellet usage to 3 liters in fact, whereas previously I was only running 1.5L.

Personally, I find the use of bio pellets far from complicated. I realize that a lot of people are having troubles with them and to be honest, I have no idea why. Again, all those damn variables I suppose. Me, I have them churning in two reactors daisy chained with a 300gph pump that allows them to tumble gently. That's about it. I don't fidgit with it, i don't stress about how many or how few pellets are in there. To me it is simpler than running carbon! Carbon I just randomly change every month or so without even knowing if it is used up or not. At least with the pellets I can see it being used up.

[globaldesigns]

Update on SPS:

Well I can honestly say that things look better on the SPS homefront. Some of the SPS I think is far too gone, so they may not recover. But that is only a few, the rest of my SPS is showing signs of growth. Nice white tips and decent polyp extension. So I think things are looking up there.

Other things like my candycanes, brains and other softies are reinflating and looking very happy.

I do think that maybe I have the coral and SPS issues under control now. I changed by removing all dosing and doing a larger weekly water change. Seems to be doing well for me, and I am not dosing anything extra now for supplements. Also cut back on the ZEO additives.

Only issue now, as stated in another thread, is my zoa eating Hippo Tang! But if I need to lose the zoas but can keep the rest alive, then I can live with that.

thanks for all the past advice everyone, it was appreciated.

[kien]

Good to hear! Darn those Hungry Hungry Hippos!!

[globaldesigns]

Good to hear! Darn those Hungry Hungry Hippos!!

I did chuckle at that quote! It is discouraging about the zoas, as with all the other things going on, they flourished, now that it seems things are showing signs of improvement, then now them. My hippo Tang is beautiful, and I doubt she will eat the SPS, so I guess I will live without zoas. I would sell them, but they are on my LR and I can't get them out. Oh well!

I think the big things was water changes, since doubling up the water change every week, I now see good signs. And my parameters are spot on, without adding anything extra. So a lesson here is water changes are important, the more the better. I should also say, maybe the second skimmer is helping also, as that is the only other thing different.

[daniella3d]

If this all hapened in the summer, then temperature is maybe what is causing the problem.

or temperature swing.

BTW, Prime does not remove ammonia, nitrates, nitrites etc from the water, it juste neutralize it and it only work for 24 hours. It is said to neutralize heavy metal but I would really like to see someone try it with copper and a copper test.

I doubt it's going to help your sps though, if you say that your water is perfect.

I know, Snappy and others had the same issues this summer. Makes you think there is something in the water.

I just got my JL shipment. Something I am going to do now, that I have never done. I bought some Seachem PRIME. This is a water conditioner to remove any ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, bromine, chlorine, etc. etc. etc.

I do make my own RO water, and again just replaced all filters YESTERDAY. Now I am going to condition all water for water changes and for top up.

Lets see if this helps.

[Lampshade]

There's an interesting article about RTN i found awhile ago. RTN is pretty much like looking at a dead guy and saying "he died fast". How did he die? that's totally different. Corals get sicks much the same as people, lots of different diseases caused by many different things. We all have slightly different parameters in water, dosing with different chemicals etc, so saying one thing causes it doesn't seem to be effective. There's very few things known about RTN, but we do know that stressed corals are more likely to get affected. Corals can regrow, even RTN'd corals, so according to this the best thing for RTN corals is high flow, stable parameters and fragging if possible.

Ineteresting article though, i'm sure some of you have found it:
http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog/eb_jl_111598.html

[globaldesigns]

Update:

It has been over a month since my last update. Well I am much happier, things are not perfect, but doing very well.

In regards to the zoas: The hippo Tang is not eating anymore, so I have lots of them left and they are happy. I am contributing the fact that maybe the other zoa colonies are toxic, and Dori doesn't like that. The colonies she destroyed, well maybe they were NOT toxic and a tasty meal. So on that note, zoa issues are done with for now.

SPS: I can say the sps are doing much better. Most of them are showing great signs of growth. Lots of it... and the RTN has basically stopped or is so slow I am not really noticing it. Some corals may be far too gone, but overall I am seeing great results now.

In regards to the coral, I have taken the approach given to me by others. The fact of going more basic!!! So I had changed the following:

- Removed Zeovit reactor with zeolites
- Removed ZeoBac dosing
- Dosing coral snow once a week, it was daily
- Dosing coral vitalizer twice a week, it was daily
- Dosing zeo amino acids daily but at much smaller amount
- Removed dosing of CoralFood7 for now, with fish poop, etc. coral seems to be responding well
- Added dosing of ZeoStart2 daily at lower than recommended daily dosage
- Added the second skimmer
- Doubled weekly water change to 16G per week, using Reefers Best Salt
- With the increased water changes, I have NOT done any dosing of Ca, Mg, St or trace elements. I only do a small dose a day for ALK, but otherwise no more dosing elements.

I am still using the NP BioPellets with carbon.

Things I am noticing besides the improvements in coral are:

- All hoses that Pellets ran through had a film on the inside of them, this is now completely gone and all plumbing and hoses are very clean. Same goes for the NP BioPellets reactors, very clean inside.
- Sump even is very clean, noticable difference in water clarity, walls, etc. I never clean the sump... It looks like I cleaned it, but I haven't
- water clarity is staying consistent, not having issues of losing this quality and then it comes back. It is now always clean.
- don't need to clean glass as often, everything looks very prestine.

So I have to say, going much more basic seems to be working. Plus it is saving me money. Thanks for the input from the others, you know who you are. I hope things keep going well, and I keep seeing the coral revitalize. As I said some may be far too gone, but oh well, time will tell.

I hope others reading this can gain from my mistakes... I hope this can help others.

[globaldesigns]

Just another update.

Well I can say the tank is on the road to recovery, and corals keep getting better.

Since the last update I made a couple other changes:

- Firstly I removed the deep sand bed (DSB), and just have live rock in the refuge area. It was quite nasty when I removed it, so most likely a big nitrate maker and poison to the tank.

- Also last week I tried something... I use a Mag18 return pump running full blast, so water drains, goes through the refuge/sump and back into the display rather quickly. I reduced flow to about 20-30% of what the return pump does, using the return plumbing valves, thus really slowing down flow into the overflows and then to the sump to a much slower flow, not a gush anymore. Well it seems that the 2 skimmers, LR, Pellets in the sump have more contact time on that water, and therefore the returning water in the display tank is much cleaner. things I notice are other corals that were not showing good results/healing are now, any foam in the bubbletraps that was forming isn't now, and overall tank quality/water quality is even better.

Yippeeeee!!!! keep the good stuff coming. Hopefully soon, I will be hitting everyone up for new corals to replace my losses.

[Delphinus]

Good to hear man good luck I hope the trend continues. :cool: