RTN Outbreak Help

[pisanoal]

Hello All,

So I have a relatively 125g tank that I set up in September. My goal is for a minimalist SPS dominant reef with some LPS. Everything was going really well with the exception of pale SPS frags assuming due to low nutrient levels from not having very many fish. Well starting maybe a week or a week and half ago started a downhill slide that now has me scrambling to save a few pieces and hoping I don't lose everything. The first thing to go was a smooth skin/deepwater acro that previously had always had great PE. It was a little faded, but not as bad as others. I noticed lack of PE, then it got blown off the egg crate I'm using to hold everything until I decide I'm ready to place everything. After that, it RTN'd over a day or so, which I attributed to whatever was stressing it and the added stress of falling and probably rubbing on the LR for a few hours before I noticed and replaced it.

I should also note, that I had been experiencing very dense and stable foam from my skimmer. So stable that it would push the tup of my skimmer cup up, overflow before it was full of liquid, and the foam would cling to the outside of my skimmer, literally hanging from it. I could take it in my cupped hands and carry it to the sink. When I washed it down, it had some solids in it like it was carrying stuff out of the water. I was using the reef energy 1+2 products from red sea so I attributed it to this.

Several days ago, I started losing a tricolor acro which had been in my previous tank and I grew from a frag to about a baseball size colony, but I fragged it up and only saved about a 3" piece due to a heavy vermetid snail population which I was/am trying to keep out of my new tank. It however has not looked good ever since I moved it, so I assumed it finally just bit the dust. Other corals I moved over are (LPS first) 50+ head Duncan colony, a 2 head micro-hammer, a 3 head blasto, a 4 head frogspawn, a 10 head torch, a couple different types of acans, an 8 head trumpet coral. The SPS I moved are a branching hydnophora, pink monti cap, monti confusa, orange monti digitata, 5" green slimer, small blue/green torte colony, myagi torte frag. The 3 acros I listed took a hit when I moved them, but the slimer and blue/green torte came back strong and the torte specifically has really good color/PE. Myagi torte completely bleached but it has had some color return. Everything else made the move fine.

I also placed an order with battle coral about 2.5 months ago and received about 10 frags.

Two days ago (Saturday), I got home early afternoon and noticed things didn't look all that happy. Monti digi no pe, hydnophora which is usually rock solid had no pe. I decided since it had been a while on my water change (1 monthish), I'll do one. Yesterday(sunday), I got home from work, and noticed things looked bad. Everything was closed/no PE and I lost one of my top 3 favorite frags from BC. I was out of salt so couldn't do a water change, but threw some extra carbon in. TIalso noticed a viscous film on top of the water on one side of my tank that doesn't get good surface skimming due to temporary flow patterns and overflow design, and in an area in my sump that doesn't have any surface skimming (to be explained in system details). This morning, I bought more salt and did a 30 gallon wet skimmate water change. I also changed the carbon in my reactor again, and added some in the flow path in part of my sump.

On to the system:

The tank sat fallow for 72 days at startup as I moved coral over from my old tank, and never QT'ed but I wanted to start this one off right. I only have a few fish in there as of now.

4" Melanarus Wrasse
3" Splendid Dottyback
4.5" Squaretail Bristletooth Tang
2x 1.5" Lyretail Anthias

System Details:
DT - Standard 125 with a DIY C2C BA style overflow made out of pvc
Total Volume - 170ish gallons
Sump - 2 plastic drums, one vertical with a center overflow that runs to a horizontal. Skimmer is in vertical, fuge with chaeto, siporax + a little LR + return in horizontal barrel. There is no overflow weir in the horizontal. Barrels are HDPE and originally contained concentrated HCL (obviously well rinsed before use).
Skimmer - SCA 302 in about 9" of water
Lighting - DIY 6x80watt T5 LED hybrid 3 x B+ 3 x C+ bulbs, with about 100 watts of LEDs down the center. Only running 4 bulbs right now as had some things bleach out prior to this event and working on getting a par sensor working.
Flow - Gyre 150 @ about 60% + MP40 @ about 25%
Rockwork is Marco Rock held together with black pond foam sealed with Devcon 5 minute epoxy and sand to cover it up.
About a 1.5" aragonite seafloor grade sand bed in the DT
4 stage RO (new sediment filter, carbon block filter about 2 weeks ago, RO membrane about 3 months old, also added a degas chamber before resin because of high CO2)

Parameters:
Salinity - 1.026
Alk - 8.1dkh (Hannah ppm)
Ca - 450 ? (Hannah checker used and get anywhere from 425 to 525 lately, sometimes not more than a day apart, so I don't really trust it to be super accurate, but within "acceptable range"
Mg - 1300 (was 1200 a few days ago. I added a little Mag to the water change I did Saturday to start correcting)
NO3 - <5ppm (salifert)
P04 - 0 (Hannah ulr)

Dosing:
BRS CaCl and Sodium Bicarb
KNO3 ( I was dosing a few mls of this a day when I had 0 nutrients to try to help with paling. Raised to 5 and they have stayed there, slowly dropping)
Seachem Fluorish Phosphate - trying to get some PO4 in the system as it is always 0 ppb on the Hannah.

I hand dose Aminos and coral food. (the red sea reef energy products) I had just started doing this again a few weeks ago as I had a few acros bleach and was hoping it was low nutrients.

I just started KZ Sponge power and Pohl's extra (half dose, done only twice in the few days before event hit)

So there are the "basics". Sorry for the long post, hopefully it doesn't dissuade too many people from reading and throwing their opinion in. I wanted to be thorough to keep from getting the questions that I know I'm going to get, and I'm sure I missed some still. To break it up a bit, ill post some theories and a summary of recent system changes in a follow-up post.

What are your thoughts?

FYI, after this mornings changes, my skimmer has stopped going nuts, acans are inflated again, blue/green torte and green slimer have decent pe. Duncans trying to come out, orange zoas which I forgot to mention earlier are out but not very happy. I also forgot to add a softball size pocillopora that has no pe. a few polyps trying to extend when I left the tank.

 

[pisanoal]

Recent Changes:

Added carbon in a reactor a couple weeks ago. I forgot the brand but its a name brand "high efficiency" pelletized carbon for aquariums. If someone wants, I can look it up. It is well rinsed before adding.

Changed from aquarium filter floss to Poly-fil brand polyester fiber. I read several places that say its the same stuff. Its not, it does not hold together in large "tufts" near as well and feels more plastic-like then the other. I used it because I read of lots of other people using it and it being cheaper.

New Carbon block and particulate filter inline before RO a few weeks ago

Degas Chamber before DI resin (HCL Container I made my sump out of with an air stone) - same time as prefilters

Added a PH blowing through siporax trying to improve flow as its in a pretty slow flow area of sump

Dosing Red Sea Reef Energy (10mls each per instructions) - 2ish weeks ago

Phols Xtra and Sponge Power - two 1/2 doses in 3 days starting Wednesday last week

Theories:

Possible Ca swings? Maybe my testing is right. Never heard of Ca swinging that much when using a dosing pump several times/day.

Bad Ca test - don't think this would cause massive issues especially with all coral

Bad Phosphate test - actually high - don't think zoas or lps would care

Lots of dissolved organics? Water was a little cloudy yesterday

Contamination - I think it is this, just not sure the source. Here are some possibilities

Devcon epoxy leaching - MSDS says same chemical as Zpoxy which I and others have used on foam backgrounds and rock structures. 100% reactive solids also, should be fine.

Barrels leaching - HDPE should be fine

I used Red RTV to make a gasket on a bulkhead to my horizontal sump container. I read it should be fine but maybe not?

PVC glue?

PVC overflow is painted with krylon fusion

Zip ties holding egg crate together

Poly-fil (manufacturing oils or something else?) - this is what I hope it is, i've stopped using it.

I used a little vasoline on some pvc pieces for lubrication that are in contact with water. Been that way since startup. Read it should be fine

I am building a plywood sump. I did the epoxy coating in the same garage as my sump. Sanded the first coat with a palm sander and it got a little bit dusty. Coat was fully cured, contamination should be at a minimum. This stuff is supposed to be reef safe.



Maybe something fell in the sump? (screw? something else?) There are dogs in the garage, no car.

Those are the things floating through my head. In my mind, it has to be tied to the skimmer. I also raised the skimmer so that the pump was barely submerged in the water and lowered the water column adjustment all the way down. Same result on overflow.

Should also add, all fish are fine, all other inverts (snails, crabs) are fine.

Thanks for reading

 

[abhishek@1985]

Way too many changes to keep track on. Generally I keep my changes limited to only one thing at a time and then slowly track progress and change onto the other thing .

Running carbon in a reactor especially if its Rowa , can strip the water very quickly and that might stress out the acros to RTN . I had bad experience with Rowa in a reactor and if I use Rowa, I always use it in a bag in sump in a high flow area.

By any chance do you know what's your potassium level ? I had a wild tortusa RTNing when I started dosing potassium. Got a testkit and found, it was 460-470 which is high and suddenly increased which caused RTN. Not that KNO3 would increase potassium so high but worth a note ..

You can try and take the carbon reactor offline and see if anything changes.

Also not a fan of adding Seachem Fluorish Phosphate to increase phosphates. You can feed frozen food like mysis to increase phosphates . But its very risky to add chemicals to increase phosphates .. I would stop doing that !!!!

If nothing, you might have to resort to fragging the sps above the affected part and glue them on to plugs again ..

So,etimes i would just let things be as it is, do water change no more than 20-25% max and sit back and watch .. sometimes, messing around already stressed frags do them more harm than good.
Also, I keep up with teh feeding of Amino acids and Oyester feast and just pray they come back fine ..

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[pisanoal]

First of all, thanks for your input. I really appreciate it. Before I respond, let me give a quick update. I did another 15 gallon water change today, scooping water off the top for some of it, to get some more film out that had re established itself. My skimmer was barely foaming over, so much improved there. No noticeable sheen in my horizontal sump compartment, and no residual foam at all in it, huge improvement. Corals - have not lost anything else. One milli that had rtn'd the top half has not gotten worse, haven't lost anything else or noticed anything else starting down the path, some PE returning on other acros. LPS look much happier today, montis still really ****ed off.

My theory is that with the aminos I was dosing, heavy feeding, and the way my sump is currently set up, dissolved organics built up in the system. With my second sump compartment not having a weir, the surface doesn't really get turned over and could allow organics/proteins to build up on the surface.
Thoughts on that theory?

I know it seems like I made a lot of changes at once, and I guess I did. In my defense, some of them needed to happen (ran out of aquarium filter floss and had the poly-fil ready to put in its place, RO inlet pressure had dropped and production was starting to suffer, demin resin was being exhausted super quick, so I needed to do something there), and a lot of the changes at face value didn't seem that they would have any effect on the tank itself. I also didn't fully realize how many actual changes I made that could have been affecting the tank until I hashed them out here, which is one reason I wanted to make the post. As for the aminos/carbon, I am definitely solely guilty as charged for making too many changes there.

I added the carbon because of the skimmer going nuts, and my water was greenish. Im afraid to take it off, due to my theory being dissolved organics. As my skimmer calms down, I will reduce the flow through it.

I do not know my potassium levels, but I do have a test, and its on my list to test it. I'm working nights right now and haven't had a chance, but I work off in the morning and will test tomorrow and post results. Also, I should mention I haven't been dosing the KNO3 since my nitrates have been in a decent range. I didn't dose it very long. I will check anyway as it could just as easily be low potassium causing an issue.

I know the jury is out on dosing for nutrients, but some have done it with success. I've been going really slow with it and been doing it for several months without visibly raising phosphates. Once I got a 2 ppb on the Hannah meter. But regardless, as soon as I started having issues, I stopped dosing. So as of now, I have already taken your advice there, and will probably keep it off at least for a while.

I don't want to frag the coral as they are already pretty stressed, plus the way they have been going is true RTN, totally gone in less than a day.

I have stopped dosing aminos and sponge power, but I will come back with the KZ aminos and sponge power only, at less than half dose once everything seems to have settled back in.

I will also continue to do a few more smaller water changes, and I plan on putting the new sump online tomorrow or the next day which will include a water change by default. I know its yet another change, but should be an improvement with surface turnover, and shouldn't change much else, as everything from the old sump including most of the water will be transferred over.

 

[Pife]

Why run carbon if your nutrients are so low. I've seen this sort of thing happen several times right after too much carbon is added. On my 150 gallons of water with around 20 fish I only use a 1/4 cup passively in the sump. I think you stripped all food from the water for corals.

 

[abhishek@1985]

Why run carbon if your nutrients are so low. I've seen this sort of thing happen several times right after too much carbon is added. On my 150 gallons of water with around 20 fish I only use a 1/4 cup passively in the sump. I think you stripped all food from the water for corals.

I agree with Pife . I agree with your plan of getting the new sump online and make small water changes to bring back the system in check.
Also, let us know the brand of carbon you are using. I have found that Aquaforest carbon is pretty mild compared to Rowa and doesn't strip the water so badly.
If you want to run carbon, you can try and run the carbon in filter sock instead of a reactor just to let it not strip the water completely .
All indications point to carbon being the culprit which I have experienced personally in the past .

Hope the changes work out in your favor and things start turning around.

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[pisanoal]

I am running carbon because of the skimmer problems. The super dense foam was leading me to believe I had a contamination issue. I've never seen foam as dense as what I had. Brand I am using is Acurel extreme pellets. Got it off Amazon a while ago. I normally don't run carbon. I have some rox 0.8 arriving today since I'm out of the other. I won't be running it with the bacterial bloom since the reactor just clogs anyways. What do you recommend as far as starting volume? I plan on running a pretty low flow through it


I seem to have stopped my RTN, but when I put my new sump online, it sparked a bad bacterial bloom. Really low oxygen despite lots of surface agitation, and I lost a fish. I moved them all into a holding tank until I get it under control, but my squaretail bristle tooth tang didn't make it. Coral seem to be doing fine and doing an almost constant wet skim water change, as well as uv. Haven't dosed anything but the basics since the initial rtn, and will resume aminos once bacterial bloom subsides. I seem to have it turned, just a matter of keeping on top of it. I have some seachem stability I'll be dosing over the next week or so just to be safe.

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