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View Full Version : mini tank crash....palythoa toxin the cause???


reefwars
07-09-2011, 09:47 AM
well im rotted now for sure last night i added a huge colony of palys and around 400+ heads and this morning when i woke up i had discovered a mini crash in my tank.my coral banded shrimp is dead, all sps completely bleached white and my elegance and open brain are closed up tight as can be and inflated in areas.while putting the palys in my tank last night there was some sliming as they were ****ed to be handled.all fish are fine and water tests show nothing no amonia and ph perfect.snails and crabs didnt seem to mind either nor did my feather dusters and anemones in fact my rbta has never looked so good.......

ive done a large water change and just changed out the carbon and already my elegance is starting to open up so i have it fixed up but now im curious on the potency of the palythoa toxin on inverts and lps?????


rotted i tell ya i loved my coral banded shrimp and ive been having such good luck with this elegance so far :(

reefwars
07-09-2011, 09:57 AM
all zoanthids are also closed up which they are always open and my lawnmower blenny is mia and my gorgs polyps are retracted the only thing in my tank that looks the way it should are the palys which are opened up big and bright and the anemones which dont seem to mind.

i guess ill see how things look by the time i get home from work ......

ALang
07-09-2011, 02:32 PM
Oh Denny.
This is me hoping that your luck will turn around.

skabooya
07-09-2011, 03:19 PM
Yikes, Ive never heard of zoa palytoxin crashing a tank. I hope all turns out well. Leave the SPS in there. A few people have said that it takes a while but they can come back.

daniella3d
07-09-2011, 05:29 PM
I know someone who's blue hippe ate all of his paly and zoanthids...that fish is still alive and kicking so no, I seriously doubt that it could be the case. YOu could have introduced some vibrio bacterias that are anoying your coral. It's usualy what cause the brown jelly and then the protozoares take theire share.

I have lots of paly and zoanthids in my nano and when I toutch them and frag them they produce alot of slime and that's only 20 gallons and all my sps in there are always fine.

Especialy your zoanthids should not be bothered by the palytoxine, that is if they do carry that toxine wich is far from sure, or any slime from the palythoas. I have zoanthids and palythoas growing side by side and they are ok with that.

well im rotted now for sure last night i added a huge colony of palys and around 400+ heads and this morning when i woke up i had discovered a mini crash in my tank.my coral banded shrimp is dead, all sps completely bleached white and my elegance and open brain are closed up tight as can be and inflated in areas.while putting the palys in my tank last night there was some sliming as they were ****ed to be handled.all fish are fine and water tests show nothing no amonia and ph perfect.snails and crabs didnt seem to mind either nor did my feather dusters and anemones in fact my rbta has never looked so good.......

ive done a large water change and just changed out the carbon and already my elegance is starting to open up so i have it fixed up but now im curious on the potency of the palythoa toxin on inverts and lps?????


rotted i tell ya i loved my coral banded shrimp and ive been having such good luck with this elegance so far :(

reefwars
07-09-2011, 06:02 PM
its def weird i just got home and my lawnmower is dead, my zoas are still closed shut,my elegance is shriveled up to nothing and same with my brain one feather duster is now out but the other is still closed.its weird because the only change that happened was the palys i put in last night and its a huge colony prob the size of a small football and there was alot of slime like it was everywhere.im gonna do a small water change here now again and inspect on some things even further i never had a whole lot of time this morning. my sps is bleached completely white.all corals were absolutely fine when i went to bed as it was late when i got the palys and all this happened in like 8hrs sps had awesome colour , my feather dusters and zoas are always open throughout the night and usually my brain has his feeders out when i wake up and once under the light for a bit the brain and elegance get quite big but none of that was the case thios morning plus i lost my shrimp and my lawnmower blenny.my clown and chromis are swimming around just fine and my rbta which has been struggling since its new in my tank is now open and looks awesome with perfect buklbs on its arms.......rotted i am.

im gonna do a full blown water test but i doubt ill see anything there and another small water change and im gonna hold off on adding anything to the tank like food or dosings untill i can figure out what happend.


dont suppose the zombies got to it lol?? :)

reefwars
07-09-2011, 06:37 PM
man something weird is going on so i had thought my feather duster just wasnt coming out but turns out its head has been severed clean off the tube or has disconnected its self when it died???? like how does that even happen at the first sign of trouble it shoots back in was it that bad what ever happened it decided to die and lose its head??? oh my back to the investigation:( add a feather duster to the list of casualties

so far now ive lost :

coral banded shrimp
lawnmower blenny
some snails
all sps
sinularia
feather duster


things that look bad and i dont give another day are:
:

brain
elegance
gorgs(are losing flesh)
zoas




things that look great are my nem's,hardy fish and the colony of palys:(

Money pit
07-09-2011, 06:58 PM
Man thats harsh. I wonder if something could have gotten on the rock with the new palys, somewhere between taking them out of the old tank and putting them in yours. I can't really suggest anything other than w/c and carbon, which you're already doing. May be a large 80% w/c. Might buy you some time until you figure out the problem.

Oh and I had a feather duster vacate on me back when I first started poisoning fish and coral ( I couldn't keep anything alive for the first 6 months or so). I remember reading they will do this sometimes when things aren't going well. The idea is to bail out of the tube and let the current take them to greener pastures.

reefwars
07-09-2011, 07:12 PM
Man thats harsh. I wonder if something could have gotten on the rock with the new palys, somewhere between taking them out of the old tank and putting them in yours. I can't really suggest anything other than w/c and carbon, which you're already doing. May be a large 80% w/c. Might buy you some time until you figure out the problem.



thats the only thing i can figure is some sort of bacteria has found its way to my tank on the paly rock i got, im reading all i can on it now i dont think its brown jelly as its affecting more than lps and theres no signs of any slime besides what i seen last night from the palys, plus its obviously affecting fish and inverts too..... and even now while im looking at my tank im noticing my clown and chromis are hiding and only come out when they see me prob thinking its feeding time but when im hidden they hide too.

ive decided to take a turkey baster and suck off around each coral and see if it helps by removing something i cant see. i really was hoping the water change this morning would have helped but it doesnt look like it.


sooooo......ive been doing this for a long time and ive never seen something so weird like this happen to my own tank as i pay close attention to what happens in there.....so now im thinking dips is there anything i can dip my remaining corals in that would kill off any bacteria i cant see if it is bacteria or something similar but wont do any harm if it isnt???


im doing a bunch of water tests now and ill do another water change again i still find it weird that my nems are looking better than ever and those palys are out full open while the rest of my zoas are closed shut.....

Borderjumper
07-09-2011, 07:48 PM
Can we see a picture of the Palys?
If I remember correctly this is a little tank? Isn't it like 20 gallons? I would guess ANY coral the size of a football sliming in a tank that size is going to cause trouble. That's a lot of slime!

I've had a ton of zoos and Palys and have fragged a few:mrgreen: and I can't say I have ever had any of them slime enough that I could notice.

marcingo
07-09-2011, 08:11 PM
I had the same thing happen to me years ago. My first tank (10 gal). All was great and I put in a rock with a hundred or so of these large brown palys. Next morning everything was dead. Feather duster crawled out dead on the sand, all bristle worms dead, corals, fish, everything except the palys which were wide open enjoying the water.

reefwars
07-09-2011, 09:49 PM
Can we see a picture of the Palys?
If I remember correctly this is a little tank? Isn't it like 20 gallons? I would guess ANY coral the size of a football sliming in a tank that size is going to cause trouble. That's a lot of slime!

I've had a ton of zoos and Palys and have fragged a few:mrgreen: and I can't say I have ever had any of them slime enough that I could notice.



it is a 20g its 30 x 12 x 12 .....the palys are a mix of blue and green together and is about the size of say 10l x 5w x5h and around 400 heads or more and was given to me by another reefer who doesnt have any issues in his tank,and when i called him to say what is happening he is at a blank as well.it was def alot of slime just putting them in there so thats why i thought the problem had to be from the palys i put in there last night. i figure they got mad and slimed all over my tank possibly even more after i went to bed. my shrimp and snails and sps were the worst hit and then my lps is straggling along while my blenny passed away sometime today....


ive done all my tests and nothing shows as i figured it wouldnt and my elklegance looks like shes about to go ive done another water change but its got all ite tentacles pulled in and is slightly inflated and my brain is still shriveled up.


sorry i dont have a camera yet or i would have posted pics in my journal ill see if i can get something together tonight off the misses when she comes over off her phone:)

reefwars
07-09-2011, 10:02 PM
I had the same thing happen to me years ago. My first tank (10 gal). All was great and I put in a rock with a hundred or so of these large brown palys. Next morning everything was dead. Feather duster crawled out dead on the sand, all bristle worms dead, corals, fish, everything except the palys which were wide open enjoying the water.


sounds close to whats happening to mine mine arent brown but they are def a big piece to add to a little tank and it would have to be a result of the sliming all of that slime in a little tank is sure to find its way into everything else. im heading to the store now to grab some more salt as i can see where this is going, im gonna have to blow off each coral and sand and rock and do a massive water change.this has got me so ****ed right now.im gonna add the carbon back to my reactor and change the phosphate media out now as well tonight. other than that theres not much i can do but ride it out any more handling of the palys is just going to make it worse....fml

jorjef
07-10-2011, 12:13 AM
I know you are very experienced but maybe it was something on your hands or arms, maybe bug spray, cleaning fluid or soaps, gas or oil. With the small water volume tank very little of any could have had a big effect. Your feather duster should be okay if it was just the plume floating around..They shed it if they get too stressed. I had it happened once and it grew back and i still have it today.

daniella3d
07-10-2011, 12:30 AM
It does not need much in a small tank to cause RTN and a chain reaction to kill coral, especialy such sensitive coral as sps and elegance. A 20 gallon tank can get unbalanced very fast and that can lead to some major problems.

It can be anything, a PH swing, salinity raise, ammonia peak etc.

When you put that rock in, did you remove water or did you just put it in? if so then I suppose that you water line was much higher and the evaporated water did not get replace thus rising the salinity fast. Just a guess here.

It could be from the coral sliming but I doubt that would have killed the invertabrate. One of my friend had her anemone cought in a pump and that released a lot of toxin in the water as the anemone shread into pieces. All fish died but none of the invertabrates were affected.

marie
07-10-2011, 01:51 AM
Given that everything happened after the palys were added I would suspect chemical warfare of some sort going on.

The first thing I would do is remove the palys from the system and put them in a bucket of tank water or something, then do a huge water change (as big as your comfortable with) and aggressively run carbon. If it is the palys that are the cause of the problems then the tank should start to improve rapidly afterwards

reefwars
07-10-2011, 10:26 AM
hey guys quick update before i go to work well i spent all last night with the tank and after all this i finally have some good news things are on the recover my elegance is showing signs of improvement and is opening up and my brain had his feeders out this morning and after my light was on for a bit they are both starting to open right up. it def was the palys.... like daniella said small tank things go wrong quick and i was forced to do 4 rather large water changes way more than i wanted to and lots of carbon through my reactor.it sucks that so much died in such a little time but time heals all wounds so im just glad i didnt lose my elegance as its my favorite piece. my feather duster is def dead the tube is melting away to nothing i doubt hes gonna return.fish are out this morning and nems still look great. against my better judgement i decided to remove the palys last night i did it very quickly and tried not to disturb them as much as possible so im not sure if it was the water changes which prob added up to be my whole tank maybe even more or the removal of the palys but in either case shes on the mend:) im going to frag the palys out side of my tank and keep a small piece and the rest are going in the garbage they are in my water change bucket right now.

not sure why my fish or inverts died maybe with that much slime there was a deplete in oxygen or somethings but i cant change that now so ill up[date again later and im hoping by the time i get home everything is back where it should be:)

thanks guys:)

nlreefguy
07-10-2011, 12:38 PM
Yikes! That's too bad - I was going to message you to ask you how those frags were doing. Guess I know the answer now! Get 'er back on track and then we can try some more frags - I got plenty more where those came from!

Wayne
07-10-2011, 02:46 PM
WOW umm that sucks! Sorry for the losses :cry:

chris88
07-10-2011, 06:31 PM
There is no way it is from the palys. I have had them in my tank for years. Massive numbers in a 50g tank. I have cut and crushed tons of the pale green / brown palys right inside of the tank because I do not like them, and they never poison the tank. I think you may have caused an ammonia spike from added a large piece of rock. I honestly do not think it is from the palys but if you want to be safe just run a bunch of carbon.

reefwars
07-10-2011, 07:02 PM
There is no way it is from the palys. I have had them in my tank for years. Massive numbers in a 50g tank. I have cut and crushed tons of the pale green / brown palys right inside of the tank because I do not like them, and they never poison the tank. I think you may have caused an ammonia spike from added a large piece of rock. I honestly do not think it is from the palys but if you want to be safe just run a bunch of carbon.


amonia would show on my test wouldnt it???

besides its not like ive never added rock to my tank before im not new were talking about a 0.5 lb rock which wasnt out of the water for more than five seconds give or take a second and never came from a tank that wasnt taken care of it came from a nice reef and knowlegable reefer friend of mine, water from his tank never hit my tank and i acclimated the palys like i do any coral that goes into my tank i dont think this was a matter of die off from live rock, ive owned palys and zoas and have lots of different kinds so its not the first ones ive ever added and ive had them slime plenty as well but not all palys are the same and not all zoas are the same and being such a small tank who knows what effects they had or how ****ed off they made my other corals. ....


well im home now from work and both elegance and my brain are fully open they def will recover if not already have, ill sure say one thing within 12 hrs of taking the palys out and some water changes/carbon they have made a full come around....coinsidence???? could be the water changes or the fact they werent in there or maybe it was enough time for things to even out again who knows... the only things still not showing are the few zoanthids in there but im sure they will it looks like they are trying.


my thoughts are this.....it was late when i added the palys i had to handle them to coach them into their place in my tank which made them slime, since im not using a skimmer or running carbon aggressively the slime found its way into the usual flow of my tank in turn having to land on each coral and in the water column.the slime probably ****ed off my lps enopugh for them to close tight and caused the more sensitive coarls like sps and gorgs to get hit bad they prob tried to fight back but couldnt compete with the mass amounts the palys were dishing out.there was def some chemical warfare happening you could see it in the water and since im not running a skimmer or any other means of oxygenation during the night time when my ph dropped it prob cause my less hardier critterss to suffer, my clown and chromis were able to take the swing a bit better than my lawnmower and coral banded.


i ****ed off the palys and they did what they would do if they felt threatened they slimed in hopes it would deter me from eating them or invading their space .....i believe my other corals felt this and knew to wait it out for the ones that could anyways and once the water was clean again they have showed out for food and to continue to grow like they are supposed to do.


still a pretty shitty deal but i got to keep my most favorite coral sucks bad i lost my lawnmower and shrimp but it could have been worse.im fragging the palys tonight for a small frag and im gonna hope for the best but it should be fine with any luck:):)

nice to see my elegance fully open under the light cause it really looked bad last night when i went to bed i thought for sure it was gonna be nothing but shell this morning so thats awesome:):)