HELP! tank upgrade and acro RTNfest
- Thread starter kevensquint
- Start date
Yup, I agree with fishdoc...surprisingly a lot of folks suggested it. In my experience taking as much of the old water as possible is best, sorry I didn't chime in on that thread 
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Glad to hear things are stable for the moment, no worse is a good thing at this point. Keep us posted.
.Glad to hear things are stable for the moment, no worse is a good thing at this point. Keep us posted.
I donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t think it was your water, I do it all the time when I set up new tanks for people. Did you buy a new acropora recently before or after the swap over? Possibly a pathogen was introduced that wiped out one species of acropora. For instance one that may wipe out every piece of try color in your tank, even ones that you have had for over five years but not affect any other corals or other acroporas like stag horns for example. This can an does happen and the only way to avoid this is to Qt all new acroporas, but this does not mean it wonââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t happen. If you get a carrier that is unaffected or has developed an immunity to the pathogen it will still be introduced. It is a shame to see beautiful acroporas you have grown for years from frags wiped out in weeks when this happens. I feel your pain.
kevensquint
Active member
No, M.Python. I have'nt changed or added anything to the system in over 6 months. All was growing nicely. Gophia, you are right on. I am depressed a little because in Montreal 3"+ frags cost $75 and up, but mostly because I have 2 years of good growth on some of these acros, that I have seen developp from a tiny frag, into a very nice piece...thats what is bothering me the most.
I should also add if you introduce a new acropora later it maybe also affected and will be lost. I donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t know what the pathogenââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s life cycle is or if it can survive without a host, some experimenting maybe whatââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s needed or someone with a good background in marine biology may chime in. I know it is spread buy slime being ingested buy neighboring colonies and in an inclosed system it is a smorgasbord of infectious matter. It seams that the infected colony will produce more slime exasperating the situation. I only know all this because I have unfortunately witnessed this first hand in my own tank. I have found that some acroporas will completely die off and that new polyps may develop an immunity but this has only happened with one of my last fraged colonies from a completely lost mother colony. This colony died from the base up and it stopped at the original fragââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s branches the rest of the colony was spared. This may now be a carrier of the pathogen if that is possible, but Iââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢m not a biologist so itââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢s all speculation from what I have learned on my own over the years.
BreadmanMike
New member
Not to steal this thread, but I have a question on this subject.
3 weeks ago I plumbed a 65 into my SPS tank so I could have some anemone's. I used base rock for this tank. I did not cook the rock or anything, but it was cleaned thoroughly. About 3 days later I had some SPS RTN on me. Everything seemed fine until today. I have massive loss. Everything is checking out fine. I have no explanation for this other then I did a water change on Sunday which would have screwed with bacteria and Tuesday morning the ATO(osmolator) didn't work right and added 2 gallons of kalk water before I caught it. There was a slight ph jump, but it was moderate and dissapated quickly.
Could this relate to my situation or am I grabbing for straws?
BreadmanMike
New member
Agree, but this mess started a few weeks ago... stopped then started again for whatever reason. I just feel it's because I added that other tank into the mix. I have no proof, only my gut feeling.
CeeGee
New member
I think (I don't know crap but I will chime in anyway) that by adding the other tank you added a bunch of new water that probably didn't match the old exactly.
I added a sump which doubled my water volume and when I mixed the two my corals looked terrible for a long time. They are just now trying to make a comeback and that was months ago.
I guess that what I am trying to say is that changing too much water or adding too much new water at once seems to affect corals negatively in my experience. I am not sure what I will do to combat this when moving to a larger tank.
I added a sump which doubled my water volume and when I mixed the two my corals looked terrible for a long time. They are just now trying to make a comeback and that was months ago.
I guess that what I am trying to say is that changing too much water or adding too much new water at once seems to affect corals negatively in my experience. I am not sure what I will do to combat this when moving to a larger tank.
BreadmanMike
New member
Well with you having this experience, G-money and clkwrk saying what they did about the bacteria... I feel pretty comfortable believing it was the addition of that tank and then doing another water change that caused this. Nothing has been the same since that addition. Lesson learned!
I am going to agree with most of the fellaz here and say that the culprit was the big change in chemistry. You say you neglected your tank a little before the move, nutrients must have been a little higher than normal. Although phosphates are genereally bad or Sps, sps still need phosphates to survive. Even though test kits measure 0, there is still a bit except that its being used as it is produced. WIth you using 100% new water, the water might have been too clean. A lot of people have reported necrosis when they use binders such as rowaphos and phosban, mainly because these binders are taking away too much stuff too quickly. Not sure if something like this might have happened, but it might be a possibility.
