Looking to get some input on the situation with my bubble tip. Though it's pretty specific, I thought someone might have some advice or suggestions.
Green with purple tip BTA, about 4 inches was purchased from DD a couple months back, came in rough after shipping and was treated with API erythromycin in QT (only thing I had on hand). Made a fast recovery, was eating within a week, back to full size and looked great, transferred to display about a week later. It moved once after the transfer, only to position it's foot about 6 inches deeper into the rockwork. Grew considerably over the next few weeks, catching mysis and flake food on it's own during feeding time, I never specifically fed it. After about a month it would open to nearly 8-10 inches, looked full, all tentacles inflated, great color, etc. Would deflating nightly right before lights out, which as I read is fairly common for BTA.
Anyways here's where things change...About 3 weeks ago I had a bacterial bloom in the tank that lasted for about 10 days. At first I thought it was calcium/alk precipitate, but I shut down dosing and it did not change. It took me awhile to figure out what was the cause, but I believe it was an overdose of GFO, causing a lack of PO4 in the water column when compared to nitrates and allowed some type of bacteria to flourish. I had just replaced the media in my reactor a day or two before it all started, when I took the GFO offline, the bloom cleared within 2 days.
Whatever the case, during the bloom and ever since, the BTA has been slowly declining. I'm wondering if the bacteria causing the bloom has infected the BTA somehow? Since the BTA was absorbing the water with high levels of whatever bacteria was causing the bloom, could they have disrupted it, even when the bloom has how passed? Is this even possible or make sense?
It started to decline on one side, with tentacles no longer inflating fully. It has since progressed to the whole BTA being only inflated to mabye 25% of what it was doing a month ago. During the day the size is how down to mabye 3 or 4 inches when a month ago it was expanding to nearly 10. It's loosing some of it's vibrant green color but no bleaching that I've noticed. I'm not sure what I can do to help it, other than try and remove to a QT and treat with an antibiotic again.
Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before with a bacterial bloom or other reasons for a BTA to slowly decline when it was doing super well?
I didn't bother to list all of the tank parameters, everything checks out fine, LPS/SPS all growing like normal.
Green with purple tip BTA, about 4 inches was purchased from DD a couple months back, came in rough after shipping and was treated with API erythromycin in QT (only thing I had on hand). Made a fast recovery, was eating within a week, back to full size and looked great, transferred to display about a week later. It moved once after the transfer, only to position it's foot about 6 inches deeper into the rockwork. Grew considerably over the next few weeks, catching mysis and flake food on it's own during feeding time, I never specifically fed it. After about a month it would open to nearly 8-10 inches, looked full, all tentacles inflated, great color, etc. Would deflating nightly right before lights out, which as I read is fairly common for BTA.
Anyways here's where things change...About 3 weeks ago I had a bacterial bloom in the tank that lasted for about 10 days. At first I thought it was calcium/alk precipitate, but I shut down dosing and it did not change. It took me awhile to figure out what was the cause, but I believe it was an overdose of GFO, causing a lack of PO4 in the water column when compared to nitrates and allowed some type of bacteria to flourish. I had just replaced the media in my reactor a day or two before it all started, when I took the GFO offline, the bloom cleared within 2 days.
Whatever the case, during the bloom and ever since, the BTA has been slowly declining. I'm wondering if the bacteria causing the bloom has infected the BTA somehow? Since the BTA was absorbing the water with high levels of whatever bacteria was causing the bloom, could they have disrupted it, even when the bloom has how passed? Is this even possible or make sense?
It started to decline on one side, with tentacles no longer inflating fully. It has since progressed to the whole BTA being only inflated to mabye 25% of what it was doing a month ago. During the day the size is how down to mabye 3 or 4 inches when a month ago it was expanding to nearly 10. It's loosing some of it's vibrant green color but no bleaching that I've noticed. I'm not sure what I can do to help it, other than try and remove to a QT and treat with an antibiotic again.
Has anyone ever experienced anything like this before with a bacterial bloom or other reasons for a BTA to slowly decline when it was doing super well?
I didn't bother to list all of the tank parameters, everything checks out fine, LPS/SPS all growing like normal.
