Treating RTN with Furan II

[MikeandNicole]

Back about a year ago one of my SPS colonies started to RTN up the bottom and I had no idea what to do. I decided to give in a Furan II bath (enough tank water to cover the colony, a packet of Furan II for 5 mins) and see if that worked. Over the next few weeks the colony lost no more tissue. Unfortunately I lost the colony in a tank crash so I can't tell you the long term results.

Fast foward to a few weeks ago and a friend had a big colony start to RTN on him. He did the same treatments and halted the RTN in place. He gave it two treatments over two days and has seen no furthur tissue loss. When he got the colonies from a third friend who was breaking down a tank he did furan dips then and had no problems at all. The third friend lost all his remaining colonies to RTN the next day.

Is this a cure? I don't know so that is why i am posting it here to see if anyone else has any experience or wants to give it a try. I don't have any RTNing pieces right now (knock on wood) so I have not been able to replicate the process. Thoughts?

 

[zef004]

I like to know what's furan II.
I also like to know if this works too.

 

[29reef]

There's no cure for rtn and no real know cause other than toxic levels and different stressors in a tank. It may have worked once but IMO there's no curing rtn. Not yet anyways. More often than not your best bet is to frag the healthiest tissue and hope that the coral rebounds from there.

 

[saltygeek]

I could see it working if the RTN was caused by a bacterial infection. People use it on zoas with good success. Interesting to see if more people would give it a try. I guess even if bad water quality etc. was the original trigger to the RTN, if this was corrected and the coral dipped in the furan maybe it would still work.

 

[jackiechandc]

Just curious, how long did you dip it in for? Always thought the Furan II was not reef safe and suppose to be used only for fish treatments to treat bacterial infections?
Wei

 

[reefinder]

be careful with Furan 11 it has had lab studies done on the chemicals used to make this product that are linked to many cancers on lab rates. do let the powder touch your skin. be real careful, you don't want to have any medical complications due to your fish tank.

 

[Mossrope]

it contains formalin thats used to preserve corpse.
they had revised the ingredients a few times to reduce the amount of formalin i think.
please use gloves or you might really be preserving yourself!
back to the question.

FuranII might had helped your friend because this sps had stressors on it and they were removed using it.
But for you.. it could be water issues and no stressors on the sps.. there are quite a few possibilities to this.
its hard to gauge unless its exact same setups

 

[mesocosm]

Greetings All !

... Is this a cure? I don't know so that is why i am posting it here to see if anyone else has any experience or wants to give it a try. ... Thoughts?

What is commonly referred to as "RTN" does not have a single cause. "RTN" is a term that describes a symptom that can result from a variety of causes including chemical parameter imbalances in the water column, metabolic imbalances with zooxanthellae and their coral host, physical trauma (from a variety of sources), bacterial infestation, protozoan infestation, infestation of a variety of microorganisms, transient exccessive nutrient concentrations within the system, allelopathic chemicals, excessive photo-radiation, disruption of the coral holobiont, and high temperature. So ... no ... Furan 2 is going to be no help for many of these causes ...

... with the notable exceptions of either bacterial or protozoan infestations. Furan 2 may very well turn out to be quite useful in addressing either of these two causes. We (and many, many others) use Furan 2 to either prevent, or eradicate, bacterial infestations on the rocks of soft corals with great success. However, the application of Furan 2 with regards to Acropora species and their allies currently remains very much an experiment, and folks might be well advised to remember this as they ponder the application of powerful anti-bacterial & anti-fungal chemicals. They might also wish to take note that the primary active ingredients of Furan 2 are known carcinogens, and that sensitivity to these active ingredients in Humans is well documented. The two main ingredients are not approved for the treatment of food fish in the US for a reason.


As Reefinder has pointed out, folks should be wearing gloves and keeping safety in mind when handling this stuff ...

I like to know what's furan II. ...

The active ingredients in Furan 2 (Aquarium Pharmacueticals) are nitrofurazone (a synthetic anti-microbial), furazolidone (a synthetic anti-microbial), and methylene bue trihydrate (an anti-microbial, anti-protozoan & anti-fungal).

it contains formalin ...

You may be referring to another product, but the current formulation of Furan 2 ('in the packet' cited by in the original post) manufactured by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals does not contain formalin.

... Always thought the Furan II was not reef safe ...

Indeed ... Furan 2 is not 'reef safe', and if applied to a reef system it would significantly damage the tank's bacterial guilds, and probably generate a cascade of nasty consequences.





JMO ... HTH ... your mileage will vary.
:thumbsup:

 

[Mossrope]

Greetings All !
You may be referring to another product, but the current formulation of Furan 2 ('in the packet' cited by in the original post) manufactured by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals does not contain formalin.

yupe mistaken.
Each capsule of Furan-2 contains 60mg nitrofurazone, 25mg furazolidone and 2mg methylene blue trihydrate.
thats api's
cant remember was which.. think there was a furan before furan 2 came out, or was another brand.

 

[29reef]

Gary, nice to see you posting in the forum!

 

[mesocosm]

Greetings All !


Many thanks Brian ... :thumbsup:

BTW, I'm much more optimistic about the potential for anti-microbials to address a narow range of some of the causes of RTN than others may be. I mean ... heck ... if we're willing to dabble blindly with de-wormers for dogs, why not mainstream aquaculture industry pharmaceuticals with a massive historical grounding?

:lol:

Even so, your comment, "More often than not your best bet is to frag the healthiest tissue and hope that the coral rebounds from there" does seem to reflect the most statistically productive route available to us at the moment.


JMO ... HTH

 

[MikeandNicole]

I am at least happy to get a discussion started. I started to go down the road with Furan after a talk I attended discussing coral reefs in the wild. The main speaker was talking about white band disease (RTN) that happens on the wild corals that is then spread when butterfly fish touch the white bands and pass it along to the other corals. He also discussed how inverts can do the same thing and that is how it jumps coral colonies. His belief was that it was bacterial and that is what got me thinking about the Furan dips.

I am very carefull when dosing with it and have known about the bad things (cancer) associated with it for a while. Furan will kill any inverts on the corals but I have dipped dozens of zoas and SPS with it and have never seen any adverse effects on the corals. I always dip outside of the tank and would not add it directly to the water. I have a seperate container that I dip in (5 mins or so) and use plastic utensils to mix it which get thrown away.

I was just hoping maybe someone else was having a problem with RTN and wanted to give it a shot so we can see if this works in multiple systems with multiple corals. I would not want to make a claim that something is a cure without a bit of testing.

 

[Reefer577]

It might be ok as a dip, but be very careful using it in a full reef tank for several days. We used some recently to treat a zoo pox out break and to treat a freak, heavy outbreak of ich in our sps tank.

We had used it in the past on zoos doing several hour dips with no problems. So this time we lowered our water levels, dosed the tanks, treated them for nearly 6-8 hours, and then did full water changes on all the tanks.
Everything was fine until we did it the third day. This appears to be too hard on the zoanthellae. Most all of my zoos bleached badly and most of my montis and half of my acros bleached.
The problem is that most of the corals did not bleach immediately, but actually took a few weeks to fully bleach. Some corals that looked perfectly healthy after being dipped, ended up dieing later on.

So I would say that Furan 2 should only be used as a strict "dip" and to space out treatment over several days, instead of a few days in a row.


In a side not, it was effective in getting rid of the ich on my reef fish without having to catch all of them.


I prefer Coral Revive or just fragging the entire coral out when there is an rtn problem. I have found this to be the most effective way.

 

[wfournier]

It might be ok as a dip, but be very careful using it in a full reef tank for several days. We used some recently to treat a zoo pox out break and to treat a freak, heavy outbreak of ich in our sps tank.

We had used it in the past on zoos doing several hour dips with no problems. So this time we lowered our water levels, dosed the tanks, treated them for nearly 6-8 hours, and then did full water changes on all the tanks.
Everything was fine until we did it the third day. This appears to be too hard on the zoanthellae. Most all of my zoos bleached badly and most of my montis and half of my acros bleached.
The problem is that most of the corals did not bleach immediately, but actually took a few weeks to fully bleach. Some corals that looked perfectly healthy after being dipped, ended up dieing later on.

So I would say that Furan 2 should only be used as a strict "dip" and to space out treatment over several days, instead of a few days in a row.


In a side not, it was effective in getting rid of the ich on my reef fish without having to catch all of them.


I prefer Coral Revive or just fragging the entire coral out when there is an rtn problem. I have found this to be the most effective way.

As Furan II is intended to kill bacteria and other similar things I would think that it was possible that this treatment wiped out all of your biological filtration. Did you test for Ammonia Nitrate and Nitrite? It seems to me that your tank would have experienced a severe cycle as a result of the treatment.

 

[Reefer577]

No, we have not had any re-cycle problems. With the lighting we have, algae would have sprung up like crazy if that had happened. Only some of my corals bleached, not all of them. It was pretty random which corals bleached and which didn't.

We have done heavy dips in the past with no problems. So I think it was just doing it consecutively that damaged the corals.