So to serve as background, I setup a bare bones 10g quarantine tank when i get new corals in order keep an eye on them through the initial purchase until i place them in the tank. I fill the 10g up with tank water from the display, throw on 2 hob and 1 power head and get ready for acclimation. after a 1hr acclimation period I usually dip newly acquired corals upon receipt in coral rx and then place them in the quarantine. If after a couple weeks everything looks golden, then off to the display they go.
So i was looking through my display tank one day, in the very merry month of May, and a monti I got from a local shop had some white spots on the edges. So i flash-lighted it at night and sure as shhhh-Nudis..... I got a dinner sized monti cap that was still good on the opposite side of the tank and knew that eventually they were going to make their way throughout the tank. So I went on an inspection mission of all the DT corals and saw some red bugs on a purple bonsai Ac I had. So with me having an order from WWC coming in I devised my mass dipping/quarantine game-plan to yank the acs and montis out of the display and do some dippin.
The acs and montis were to be dipped together in order to kill 2 birds, nudis and red bugs. Being I'm getting mixed information on redbug life-cycle and breeding habits (egg layers or live birth?) they would be dipped again in a weeks time and then dipped one more time after a 2 week quarantine. If everything is golden, back to the display they would go. The montis on the other hand would go through an alternating dip process, every 3 days for a weeks long period to catch any live nudis' initially, egg hatches 3 days later, and any residual egg hatches the third dip. bayer-coralrx-bayer was the plan for the montis. I would continue visual monitoring of the montis for a 2 month period while the display tanks rat bastards starve to death or get picked off by the wrasses. After a 2 month period, a piece of the red cap would be introduced to serve as a testing site to see if any of the little bastards are still in there. If that monti shows no signs of infestation after constant monitoring for a month, then all montis would be reintroduced.
So with the sps from the initial order I got from WWC still in quarantine, I went on a mission to do a Bayer treatment to them and all others from my DT. So I waited until I got the most recent order on 6-7 to initiate the execution. Upon leaving work I moseyed my way to Home Depot to pickup some Bayer Complete and went to the house to acclimate. I yanked 2 gallons of water out of the quarantine and mixed a 1 gallon batch for dipping (4oz(120ml) of Bayer to 1-gal) and 2 1/2 gallon rinses in the garage. After acclimation of both DT corals and newly arrived corals I consolidated all the coral frags and placed them in the initial dip. Here's where I think I messed up. location, location, location.....I'll come back to this. While in the 15 mins dip bath I took some 1 day old newly made saltwater to replenish the acclimation usage and dip usage out of the quarantine. Took a turkey baster to stir the dip and blow the corals a little and after the 15 min dip I placed them in the initial rinse. After 15 mins and basting in the rinse i did some individual basting in the secondary rinse and placed them all back into quarantine.
So here I am now this morning looking at the same sight attached in the picture, depressed, and needing moral counseling. RTN has hit my acros hard while the monti's are just chillin. Digitatas a little emotional but no tissue loss. So in wracking my brain as to root cause, we come back to location, garage. I believe that in addition to the stress of shipping, the added transition from 78 degree quarantine water to god knows what temp dip/rinse/rinse water in the garage and then back to 78 degree quarantine was too much. I did it in the garage as to keep the bayer away from pets and children, as this was a larger batch of dip than i normally do and didn't want to risk splashing within the home so I was thinking safety and left out other variables.
Other variables would be batch size, 1-gallon too small? Oxygen deprivation or toxicity from bug die off?
What else do you think could be root cause?
So I guess that eventual fixes to this system is the following.
quarantine new corals longer to ensure no pests arrive in DT so I don't do a mass dip like this again.
don't dip shipped corals immediately, let them be introduced to quarantine and recover from shipping stress.
when dipping, control all variables to include temp. (I'll be using the bathroom locked and fan on in the future)
Thus far I'm down a red Dragon, red planet, WWC destiny, Joe, green Slimer, blue lightning stag, & purple birds nest.
Still shedding skin is a WWC frosty, purple Bonsai, tricolor valida, purple garf bonsai, an pc rainbow.
Being coralrx claims to stop rtn I'm a little reluctant to put them through more stress and don't know if I should give it a shot or try and let them recover?
College ain't free and sometimes life's lessons aren't either. So in taking this loss, maybe this would serve to help others in controlling all variables and ensuring best practices in husbandry to this hobby.
Thanks for any feedback
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
So i was looking through my display tank one day, in the very merry month of May, and a monti I got from a local shop had some white spots on the edges. So i flash-lighted it at night and sure as shhhh-Nudis..... I got a dinner sized monti cap that was still good on the opposite side of the tank and knew that eventually they were going to make their way throughout the tank. So I went on an inspection mission of all the DT corals and saw some red bugs on a purple bonsai Ac I had. So with me having an order from WWC coming in I devised my mass dipping/quarantine game-plan to yank the acs and montis out of the display and do some dippin.
The acs and montis were to be dipped together in order to kill 2 birds, nudis and red bugs. Being I'm getting mixed information on redbug life-cycle and breeding habits (egg layers or live birth?) they would be dipped again in a weeks time and then dipped one more time after a 2 week quarantine. If everything is golden, back to the display they would go. The montis on the other hand would go through an alternating dip process, every 3 days for a weeks long period to catch any live nudis' initially, egg hatches 3 days later, and any residual egg hatches the third dip. bayer-coralrx-bayer was the plan for the montis. I would continue visual monitoring of the montis for a 2 month period while the display tanks rat bastards starve to death or get picked off by the wrasses. After a 2 month period, a piece of the red cap would be introduced to serve as a testing site to see if any of the little bastards are still in there. If that monti shows no signs of infestation after constant monitoring for a month, then all montis would be reintroduced.
So with the sps from the initial order I got from WWC still in quarantine, I went on a mission to do a Bayer treatment to them and all others from my DT. So I waited until I got the most recent order on 6-7 to initiate the execution. Upon leaving work I moseyed my way to Home Depot to pickup some Bayer Complete and went to the house to acclimate. I yanked 2 gallons of water out of the quarantine and mixed a 1 gallon batch for dipping (4oz(120ml) of Bayer to 1-gal) and 2 1/2 gallon rinses in the garage. After acclimation of both DT corals and newly arrived corals I consolidated all the coral frags and placed them in the initial dip. Here's where I think I messed up. location, location, location.....I'll come back to this. While in the 15 mins dip bath I took some 1 day old newly made saltwater to replenish the acclimation usage and dip usage out of the quarantine. Took a turkey baster to stir the dip and blow the corals a little and after the 15 min dip I placed them in the initial rinse. After 15 mins and basting in the rinse i did some individual basting in the secondary rinse and placed them all back into quarantine.
So here I am now this morning looking at the same sight attached in the picture, depressed, and needing moral counseling. RTN has hit my acros hard while the monti's are just chillin. Digitatas a little emotional but no tissue loss. So in wracking my brain as to root cause, we come back to location, garage. I believe that in addition to the stress of shipping, the added transition from 78 degree quarantine water to god knows what temp dip/rinse/rinse water in the garage and then back to 78 degree quarantine was too much. I did it in the garage as to keep the bayer away from pets and children, as this was a larger batch of dip than i normally do and didn't want to risk splashing within the home so I was thinking safety and left out other variables.
Other variables would be batch size, 1-gallon too small? Oxygen deprivation or toxicity from bug die off?
What else do you think could be root cause?
So I guess that eventual fixes to this system is the following.
quarantine new corals longer to ensure no pests arrive in DT so I don't do a mass dip like this again.
don't dip shipped corals immediately, let them be introduced to quarantine and recover from shipping stress.
when dipping, control all variables to include temp. (I'll be using the bathroom locked and fan on in the future)
Thus far I'm down a red Dragon, red planet, WWC destiny, Joe, green Slimer, blue lightning stag, & purple birds nest.
Still shedding skin is a WWC frosty, purple Bonsai, tricolor valida, purple garf bonsai, an pc rainbow.
Being coralrx claims to stop rtn I'm a little reluctant to put them through more stress and don't know if I should give it a shot or try and let them recover?
College ain't free and sometimes life's lessons aren't either. So in taking this loss, maybe this would serve to help others in controlling all variables and ensuring best practices in husbandry to this hobby.
Thanks for any feedback
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
