The Saltman
New member
Kip, are you going to treat it individually with the doxy?
Possible Pathogen Based Acro Necrosis
- Thread starter Kip
- Start date
montrealreef
Member
so sorry to hear that kip.... hang in there...
You're not alone Kip!!
It looks like the final 2 corals that were totally unaffected are beginning to show signs of STN. Some corals have completely died, others are mostly dead. The strange part is that all of the corals that have shown only some tissue loss have incredible polyp extension. Every single Monti cap in my tank has lost a lot of deep coloration; some still have huge polyp extension nonetheless. I am now in the process of lowering my lights (slowly of course.)
It looks like the final 2 corals that were totally unaffected are beginning to show signs of STN. Some corals have completely died, others are mostly dead. The strange part is that all of the corals that have shown only some tissue loss have incredible polyp extension. Every single Monti cap in my tank has lost a lot of deep coloration; some still have huge polyp extension nonetheless. I am now in the process of lowering my lights (slowly of course.)
wentreefgirl
New member
The ones in my tank that were rtning are almost gone. Im holding hope for my superman porites which is less then an eraser head left to stop. And my unknow that looked like Purple prostrata. Everyone else is stable or gone.
Kip
New member
nope... when i pulled it... i found that a good deal of the tissue had already been lost.
this particular instance is far different from what i'd seen in the fast. this necrosis was much faster. somewhere around 40% of the coral was lost in less than 24hrs. by previous standards, 40% loss would have taken at least a week.
when inspecting the coral, there seemed to be some sorta biomass down in the branches. I dont know if this was the dead coral tissue that fell down into the coral or if a chunk of food or other debris got trapped down in the coral and irritated it.
This coral was grown from a 1" frag. It was under high flow the whole time, so the branches grew in quite tightly. There is the remote possibility that this coral's problems werent pathogen based at all and was victim of trapped debris.
I guess I will know if/when the next acro starts not to be happy.
As far as doxy goes... the preliminary indications were that it stopped the STN of the experimental/rescue acros for which i set up a special rescue tank. As mentioned, I lost some of those acros during treatment. The ones that made it, about 10-14 days ago started showing problems again.
(in all of this, sorry i havent updated. i have recognized some new opportunities at work and am taking the ball and running with it. this has cut way down on my time both at work and at home to drop in here and post updates)
wentreefgirl
New member
Ya, my sarmentosa bit the dust with my necrosis issue. I will get another some day when the tank is more stable.
The Saltman
New member
kip, any updates?
Kip
New member
things seem to be kind of in a holding pattern in both my display system and that 75g acro rescue system. i think the sarmentosa loss was unrelated... when i pulled it, there seemed to be a mass of something down in the coral that was decomposing and irritating the coral.
now that things are kinda stable, i'd like to re'scape (again... to fill in some gaps of lost corals), but i am taking on a new role at work and have very little time for my tank anymore. in fact, i have an eheim feeder on the display system doing a dose of flake food twice a day. In the past i've only fed flake food here and there or when i felt i wanna dirty up the system. Now i am feeding it twice a day... day in-day out... week in-week out
The front glass sure does get dirty much quicker these days. Right before bed, i may take a minute and run the glass magnet across the tank. I had to just turn the skimmer off last week because it was full... i finally got around to emptying it sunday.
In light of the past necrosis problems and the new busy-ness of life these days... i may pack it all up for a while.
now that things are kinda stable, i'd like to re'scape (again... to fill in some gaps of lost corals), but i am taking on a new role at work and have very little time for my tank anymore. in fact, i have an eheim feeder on the display system doing a dose of flake food twice a day. In the past i've only fed flake food here and there or when i felt i wanna dirty up the system. Now i am feeding it twice a day... day in-day out... week in-week out
The front glass sure does get dirty much quicker these days. Right before bed, i may take a minute and run the glass magnet across the tank. I had to just turn the skimmer off last week because it was full... i finally got around to emptying it sunday.In light of the past necrosis problems and the new busy-ness of life these days... i may pack it all up for a while.
The Saltman
New member
One thing that I think is significant that I never realized before going back and rereading this thread. Kip, I read that you started running ozone and running a uv in march and april of this year. You said the problem started in January. Does anyone think maybe, ozone and uv may have been effective, but it was already too late because the corals had already been stressed and subjected to the bacteria which caused a chain reaction?
Los
New member
Kip-
At risk of reminding you of the tough times, now that it's been a year and a half would you mind posting a conclusion. I've seen that your tank has recovered and I'm wondering what happened. How did the STN in your acros end and what is your best guess as to the cause of both the problem and it stopping.
Thanks again for taking the time to post your (painful) experiences. It is through discussions like these that the hobby moves forward.
At risk of reminding you of the tough times, now that it's been a year and a half would you mind posting a conclusion. I've seen that your tank has recovered and I'm wondering what happened. How did the STN in your acros end and what is your best guess as to the cause of both the problem and it stopping.
Thanks again for taking the time to post your (painful) experiences. It is through discussions like these that the hobby moves forward.
Kip
New member
i cant arrive at a firm conclusion as to what caused or ended this issue nor what exactly it was
i know that it started in my frag tank late winter/early spring of 07 after receiving frags from several vendors all around the same time.
i know that it only affected acros with the exception of 1 stylo
(monti's, seria and other scleracs werent affected... nor softies)
i know for sure that is wasnt aefw's... i have plenty of experience seeing them on incoming frags from around the country, vendors, and locals (although one time i thought i saw what could be eggs, but wasnt)
i know that it was a "test-able" parameter because i tested like crazy and even bought "2nd and 3rd" party results (test kits)... this was also during the time of the "salifert dkh kits are bad" era, but mine was in-line with other kits.
i know that it wasnt a flow issue, because i have plenty... that and it started with frags with mini-colonies and full colonies all affected alike
i know that running carbon, poly-filter floss in a canister, and doing ~100g weekly water changes didnt affect it. changing salts didnt do anything to stop it either.
i know that UV nor o3 affected it.
i know that re-loaded my ro/di unit did nothing
i know that there was no equipment failure or corrosion that caused it because i went thru every single piece of equipment
taking frags from ""healthy corals" from the affected system at home and putting it in my tank at work spread the problem to work. during this whole episode i stopped offering frags to others so there were no issues with any other local hobbyists tanks around me
i was also running a seperate softy/lps tank... moved all of that stuff out to a holding system as part of my work system (nice big basement at work) and moved frags from "healthy areas" of the afflicted corals into the softly/lps tank that was made a hospital tank. i know that didnt help because the issues followed.
i then acquired some doxycycline and did some treatments in a QT. i was very hopeful of this at first, but was let down.
i know the recession was just random because some corals it started at bases, some at tips, some in the middle of the colony, and some on the edge of the colony.
some corals went fast (overnite) and some took nearly a week.
the last coral to contract the illness was my softball sized purple monster that i'd grown from 1/4". my last effort at fragging and saving healthy areas did prove successful on this coral and i saved it. (although the frags started receding about half-way up the large frags and just stopped on their own. same thing with a large yongei-slimer colony... it started...took a little area, and then stopped.
the two only acros not ever affected were my OBT and a granulosa.
When it was all said and done I'd lost all acro colonies seen in the TOTM article but a large section of yongei, about 8 PM frags, an OBT mini-colony, and a granulosa. (the OM, OBT, and gran were small during TOTM) I think it was somewhere around 40 different acro mini-colonies and colonies and over 80 frags or so (some of which were some really nice "rare" and "LE" stuff that i'd worked hard acquiring.
that whole story is laid out in this thread, but thats the summary. again, no positive reason for the beginning nor one for the end .... i am just glad it is over.
since my tank was "clear" december 08, i've begun to reacquire a lot of stuff. unfortunately, a handful of things i'd only kept to myself. i've been thru a dino event that i couldnt get to go away... so i pulled sand and rock and started over.... then i went thru a cyano event that took forever to get to go away... then i had a Ca spike (luckily not a dkh spike) up nearly 1000ppm.... and am now trying to get rid of this fuzzy brown stuff that eric at fragfarmer has been thru (and i've had a little episode of it before as well)
i've been reefkeeping since 1996 and the last 2yrs have been the worst. ironically, all after getting TOTM. that's why in the Past TOTM thread i mentioned the TOTM curse. it seems very real. I know of several good reefkeepers that have been thru maladies after TOTM.
i know that it started in my frag tank late winter/early spring of 07 after receiving frags from several vendors all around the same time.
i know that it only affected acros with the exception of 1 stylo
(monti's, seria and other scleracs werent affected... nor softies)
i know for sure that is wasnt aefw's... i have plenty of experience seeing them on incoming frags from around the country, vendors, and locals (although one time i thought i saw what could be eggs, but wasnt)
i know that it was a "test-able" parameter because i tested like crazy and even bought "2nd and 3rd" party results (test kits)... this was also during the time of the "salifert dkh kits are bad" era, but mine was in-line with other kits.
i know that it wasnt a flow issue, because i have plenty... that and it started with frags with mini-colonies and full colonies all affected alike
i know that running carbon, poly-filter floss in a canister, and doing ~100g weekly water changes didnt affect it. changing salts didnt do anything to stop it either.
i know that UV nor o3 affected it.
i know that re-loaded my ro/di unit did nothing
i know that there was no equipment failure or corrosion that caused it because i went thru every single piece of equipment
taking frags from ""healthy corals" from the affected system at home and putting it in my tank at work spread the problem to work. during this whole episode i stopped offering frags to others so there were no issues with any other local hobbyists tanks around me
i was also running a seperate softy/lps tank... moved all of that stuff out to a holding system as part of my work system (nice big basement at work) and moved frags from "healthy areas" of the afflicted corals into the softly/lps tank that was made a hospital tank. i know that didnt help because the issues followed.
i then acquired some doxycycline and did some treatments in a QT. i was very hopeful of this at first, but was let down.
i know the recession was just random because some corals it started at bases, some at tips, some in the middle of the colony, and some on the edge of the colony.
some corals went fast (overnite) and some took nearly a week.
the last coral to contract the illness was my softball sized purple monster that i'd grown from 1/4". my last effort at fragging and saving healthy areas did prove successful on this coral and i saved it. (although the frags started receding about half-way up the large frags and just stopped on their own. same thing with a large yongei-slimer colony... it started...took a little area, and then stopped.
the two only acros not ever affected were my OBT and a granulosa.
When it was all said and done I'd lost all acro colonies seen in the TOTM article but a large section of yongei, about 8 PM frags, an OBT mini-colony, and a granulosa. (the OM, OBT, and gran were small during TOTM) I think it was somewhere around 40 different acro mini-colonies and colonies and over 80 frags or so (some of which were some really nice "rare" and "LE" stuff that i'd worked hard acquiring.
that whole story is laid out in this thread, but thats the summary. again, no positive reason for the beginning nor one for the end .... i am just glad it is over.
since my tank was "clear" december 08, i've begun to reacquire a lot of stuff. unfortunately, a handful of things i'd only kept to myself. i've been thru a dino event that i couldnt get to go away... so i pulled sand and rock and started over.... then i went thru a cyano event that took forever to get to go away... then i had a Ca spike (luckily not a dkh spike) up nearly 1000ppm.... and am now trying to get rid of this fuzzy brown stuff that eric at fragfarmer has been thru (and i've had a little episode of it before as well)
i've been reefkeeping since 1996 and the last 2yrs have been the worst. ironically, all after getting TOTM. that's why in the Past TOTM thread i mentioned the TOTM curse. it seems very real. I know of several good reefkeepers that have been thru maladies after TOTM.
Cadu
New member
i also lost all my acro colonies about 3 months ago for no apparent reason...
did pretty much everything you did (water changes, changed salt, ran carbon, UV, poly-filter floss ...)
all my measured parameters were also good. the "thing" came from nowhere and took all my acros with it.
my montis, LPS and pocis were ok.
i was so frustrated that i didn't even bother to keep frags.
this problem is still in my worst nightmares ...
did pretty much everything you did (water changes, changed salt, ran carbon, UV, poly-filter floss ...)
all my measured parameters were also good. the "thing" came from nowhere and took all my acros with it.
my montis, LPS and pocis were ok.
i was so frustrated that i didn't even bother to keep frags.
this problem is still in my worst nightmares ...
