Possible Pathogen Based Acro Necrosis

The following is what I posted on my local club's forum page. Mine seems to differ in that I've lost a lot of inverts. The Acro deaths looke a lot like the pics posted here, except when mine went, 24-36 hours max.

Lost ALL the coral in my 200, and about half the inverts. Here's the scenario, I bought 10 or so frags at the swap, came home, acclimated them to the display tank (I know, quarantine, quarantine, quarantine!). Within a week, most everything is dead or dying, including my established colonies. I eventuall lost all the coral in my tank, Acros, Millies, Acans, Xenia, Staghorns, my Leng Sy cap, all the rest of my Caps, Blue polyps, Anthelia, Red Mushrooms, 8 or so Rics, everything.
Strange bit, the water parameters test fine. I own every Salifert test kit, everything tests good. No copper, ammonia, nitrates, nitrites. Temp is 79.2, no spikes, no electrical current, ph 8.2. Schuran reactor is running, calcium is up to 400-420, Mg around 1200.
2 RBTA's, all Astrea, all hermits (blue and scarlet), all porcelain crabs, all shrimp, all large feather dusters (small ones ok), all nassarus, LS urchin, sally lightfoot crab...dead. Weirder still, cereth snails are ok, small feather dusters, fighting conch, spaghetti worms, some peanut worms...all ok. All the fish in the tank...fine.
I use RO (4 stages, all changed before the problems), Tropic Marin salt, water sits approximatly 24 hours or longer before use in the tank, circulated with a Maxi Jet 1200 and aeration, have no detectable levels of anything on the tests that would be considered bad (copper, ammonia...etc.), no temperature spikes, no stray electricity on a conductivity probe. No gross dead animals (mice, chipmunks, whatever).

What do you think?

Steve
 
Steve,

Serpentman, also from C-Sea, was the other reefer I spoke with that has lost several sps since the swap and had the snail deaths as well.
 
It's official in my case. So i use NSW and i've been using tap water for topoff. My tap water is very clean and has no Chloramines(spelling). I started using RO/DI to lessen silicate introductions but i started getting RTN problems from the base up. I switched back to tap water and the problem went away. I figured maybe it was old filters in my RO/DI unit that caused the problem so i bought new filters (micron cartidge, Carbon cartride, and DI cartridge all new). Then i used the RO/DI water and BAM! RTN the next day. So i'm going back to tap water. I don't know what the reason for this is but i'm guessing either the quality of the replacement cartridges are tainted or they've switch brands of materials that aren't as high quality as they say. The carbon block was .5 micron and the DI was the standard block. The companies that make these could have switched over to cheaper materials. I see done everyday. Kind of like how Mcdonalds quality of food is now. Used to be quality ingredients decades ago and now it's bad for you. The other possibility is that my tank was so used to tap water RO/DI just didn't cut and my acros couldn't adjust. Doesn't seem to make sense though huh...
 
There is a connection I didn't make before. IIRC, my TN issues coincide with my DI cart changeout. I did change them again less than a month ago and things seem to have stabilized somewhat, but haven't completely gone away.

All Spectrapure, membrane replaced November 06, still produces product water of 3 ppm TDS. All prefilters less than 5000 gallons old.

Prior to TN
MaxCap then DI-SF-10 and DI-AR-10 (x2)

MaxCap exhausted, removed and added DI-AR-10 (x2) because I had them and wanted to use them up.
I may be wrong, but this is about the time the TN started.

Currently
Fresh MaxCap
DI-SB-10
DI-AR-10 (still online from previous)
I have to double check, but I think I have the part numbers right.
TN has slowed dramatically at this point, but still occasional, small events.

Having it laid out like that leads me to believe that if the DI resins have anything to do with it, that it would be coming from the DI-AR-10 as it is the only one remaining from the previous array.

As I see it, it boils down to this- The protective slime coat of the SPS is being affected/broken down exposing the corals to parasites, critters and all other stressors in my/our tank and TN events result. Could the resins be releasing some chemical or toxin that is breaking down the slime coat?

To add to that thought, I removed 2 acros to frag away the dead skeletons and while they were out, I gave them a 10 minute TMPCC dip to triple check against AEFWs and RBs. After being put back into the tank, they seem to have regained full vigor and are healing nicely. Does the betadine help to restore the slime coat somehow? I'm going to pull one from the tank tommorrow to check and see if it dries out quickly or if it slimes as it should. This may give some clue.

CAReefer
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10027405#post10027405 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MJAnderson
Just curious after speaking with another reefer locally who is having the same problem --- has anyone else had a ton of snail deaths? I've been finding mine on the sand on their back still in the shell but not moving. When this first started I lost about 1/4 of my snails in two weeks. When the corals first started going bad I thought the mass snail die off had caused a spike but I tested for everything I could find and nothing. I didn't really think about it until I was talking to someone else today and they mentioned their coral and snail loss.

Just curious.

No snail deaths here.

CAReefer
 
No snail deaths here. Just got a tds. My ro/di is .3 so will change out before the next 40 gal fill up. No snail deaths that have happened from other then my 3 brittle stars I should say. No new tns here but havent done much. Switched out my phosban for phosar. Got chemi pure but havent used it yet. Didnt want too much too soon. And thats it. Still watchin. Actually my superman porites still looks back but still has some left. Hoping it stops soon.
 
my little update.... i havent seen any progression of my problems since last week. as mentioned... saturday i fragged away affected areas of the tort and yongei. I also did a TMProCC bath on both.

What is left of the yongei looks fine with the cut points healing nicely. What is left of the tort is browned out from the bath and the cut points healing much, much slower (maybe a function of its natural slow growth rate). As seen in the pics herein, the tort looked like all of the tissue could blow off at any moment. It no longer looks that way... just more brown that blue. But brown tissue is better than no tissue anyday.

No signs of this "illness" starting on anything else in the tank. Maybe getting rid of all affected corals and lowering the temp nipped it.

I will probably hold off on the doxycycline treatments until i notice further problems. If in a few weeks all remains well, i will try a new acro frag in the frag tank and see how it does. (new/fresh frags always seemed the quickest to be affected)

If that frag does well, i will go back to normal lighting routine and start inching up my temp. I will then also add another acro frag to the frag tank. If it continues to do well while no other corals are affected, I will consider this problem gone.

At that point, I may not have reached any definitive conclusions... except maybe to immediately throw out any new acro frags that begin to necrose.
 
I've only been keeping SPS for a year, but I wonder if it could have something to do with too FEW phosphates? I run a fuge with chaeto and run GFO/carbon in a reactor. I switched to Phosar HC from the regular Phosar just before this happened. My phosphates have always been 0. I clean my front glass maybe once every 2 weeks --- no algae growth. Is it possible to starve a coral of phosphates?

Someone else mentioned switching from tap water had an adverse effect.

I too notice the lack of a slime coating. I had a big frag of sps that someone had given me that broke off a colong while moving. It was a thin finger maybe 6" long. I layed horitontally on a rock while trying to figure out what to do with it. This weekend when I picked it up and it was moved in front of a powerhead I watched the entire bottom of the coral's tissue blow away. No way to save it since it's RTN across the entire length.
 
The RO/DI water theory sounds interesting, I remember seeing a thread where AZrats, the water treatment guru mentioned something about the canisters of the RO/DI unit harbor bacteria and virus which needs to be disinfected at the time when filtered are replaced. Just do some search at RC and you find a post where he gave out instruction on how to disinfect , if memory services me correctly, I think it was 1:10 or less of household bleach then rinse thoroughly.
 
Abx in the mail today.... gonna sit tight until i see new signs of the TN problem to use the meds on.
 
After reading through this thread I have to agree with some posts that I read earlier. Since aggressive water changes are the solution to pollution, and since this is not working for some people, you have to look at the source of the new water makeup. As someone mentioned earlier, there are some things that test kits will not reveal, however, water changes should almost always cure anything unless your new water is the cause. There are some many things in this hobby yet to be discovered, but one thing I think everyone can agree on is that water changes should halt anything negative going on in your tank, maybe not right away, but you should at least see some results. If it continues without a halt, I believe you have to look at your water makeup.
 
water changes should cure bacterial infections in coral tissue?


for others wondering about salifert test kits, etc.....

i got in my lamotte dkh test kit
... reading was 10.5

salifert reading from the same water sample... 10.6

this is my salifert dkh kit batch info
ind-0506-B
tit-0306-B
 
I find it hard to believe that its a bacterial infection if you are running a uv and ozone. I would water change 20% a day for a week and then follow what happens.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10038685#post10038685 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by The Saltman
I find it hard to believe that its a bacterial infection if you are running a uv and ozone. I would water change 20% a day for a week and then follow what happens.

i guess i assumed that there was the chance that some pathogen could spread through the water column without directly passing thru the uv or into the skimmer (o3 reaction chamber).... not contradicting... just clarifying.
 
Well my bicolor angel does nip at the tissue. I think its the smell that the dying tissue gives off that they want to eat and thats why they nip. I gave up shooing it away as im taking it as a sign of how bad the coral is. I often have nipping right out of dip. Thats also a bad sign.
 
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