SecondCityCorals
Active Member
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- Aug 23, 2018
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Hello all,
I'm sure a lot of you who keep SPS have heard about the study and claims that rapid/sudden tissue necrosis (RTN/STN) is being caused (or at least assisted by) vibrio harveyi. If you haven't I suggest giving it a look as it has some pretty interesting information and could potentially change how we treat our stony friends. You can check out here. Curious by this study as someone who's had to deal with RTN on occasion. I wanted to see if I could find an antibiotic that could be used to help fight this problem. And to see if the study had any merit. I've been in the reefing hobby since 2004, but my keeping of SPS corals only started about 3 years ago. So I'm rather new to SPS compared to some of you.
I keep a Waterbox 100.3 stocked with 30 or so SPS frags, some of which are now mini colonies. I have reached a stage where I feel I can maintain a stable tank for SPS as well as share my results with the rest of you and feel confident in what I'm seeing. Over the last 6 months I've been selectively using three dips to treat corals who have tissue necrosis. My first experiments were with a product called "Fish Moxy" which does not seem to be sold anymore. However it seems to be generic amoxicillin. It even comes in gelcaps like you used to get from the doctor for a sinus infection. Unfortunately I do not recall the dosage amount per pill. But my dip consisted of separating the gel cap of a single capsule and mixing it in a small container of water for 30 seconds or so. Nothing fancy.
It looks like this:
See? Nothing special. I don't get tissue necrosis too terribly often (thankfully). If I do get it, usually it occurs immediately after shipment or within a 2 week period post-purchase from a coral show (remember those?!). All SPS shipments were always done through FedEx overnight priority morning shipping. Usually being packed up and dropped off around 4:30PM local shipper time. And arriving between 9am and 10am local time. So only a few times did I have issues. Ironically, the first coral I had to RTN after getting my hands on some antibiotics to test this theory happened to a coral I bought 6 months prior at a fish show. It had some polyp extension, but for the entire 6 months it did absolutely nothing. It didn't encrust. It didn't throw up any nubs. Nothing. I just chalked it up to being a slow grower.
And then this happened. Out of nowhere. Overnight.
Waking up to this in the morning is NOT how I want to start my day. And I really liked this coral too. dangit. Apologies for the top down photo but this guy is approximately 1 inch tall, 1/8th of an inch thick or less (pretty skinny), and had the entire large frag plug encrusted. Not only was the base encrusted portion rapidly dying. but the tip too. This guy was a goner. I knew from experience that my success with dips sold for this purpose was maybe 33%. And I wanted to try the antibiotic dip anyway. So this was the first guy to try.
I took him out of the tank and gave him a 5 minute dip in a container of tank water and a single amoxicillin pill. I used a medical dropper to slowly move the water around so it stayed mixed. As well as use the dropper to gently blow of any lose/dead/dying skin fragments in order to get to the "good flesh" that might have a chance at living. After 5 minutes I rinsed him off in another vat of tank water and placed him back in the tank. I went to work and hoped for the best. When I got home from work nothing had changed. No more death. That night out of desperation I did a second dip. This time it was 15 minutes long under the same conditions. A single pill, small container, medical dropper to move the water around. Rinsed the coral off and back in the tank. I went to bed kind of bummed I was going to lose this awesome neon orange coral.
The next morning I woke up to check for any results and was pretty shocked to see that whatever flesh remained on the frag plug had full polyp extension like I hadn't seen from this coral before. The polyps were probably 3x as long as what I had seen in the last 6 months. And if a large portion of it hadn't melted away I would've sworn the coral frag was happier and healthier than ever.
4-5ish months later and here is the same coral after receiving two amoxicillin based coral dips (5m/15m).
If you didn't know that back in late January this coral was 24 hours from all of its flesh melting away you never would've known. Within the first week after treatment the coral started encrusting. It took less than 2 months for this coral to re-encrust what was lost. And now has a 1/4th inch growth nub at the tip that you can't really see but is also growing some at the edge of the frag plug. Its amazing to have RTN stopped dead in its tracks and watch a coral recover in less than a week. I've never seen anything like that before.
Over the last 6 months I have acquired quite a few more frags, and had a couple more issues with tissue necrosis. All of which I have experimented on with antibiotic dips. Unfortunately I ran out of amoxicillin. But doxycycline was available and is a similar broad spectrum antibiotic. So I've been using it as well. I found a source of frags on ebay which are fairly cheap. Allowing me to buy frag plugs from the same colony in duplicate. I wanted more evidence of antibiotics being able to solve RTN. And here are a couple other results:
This is a Vivid frag I had purchased. In the shipment I received 5 corals, 3 of the corals had zero RTN issues. 1 coral RTN'd by the end of the day. The Vivid started RTN about 24 hours in. On this frag plug, I placed 3 tips I was able to salvage. Two of the tips I gave a doxycycline bath for 5 minutes. Its hard to see the 3rd tip. But it did NOT receive a doxycycline bath. Can you guess which one?
Another interesting case. I purchased 2 blue acro frags last summer from a seller on eBay. I placed both frags at opposite ends of the tank. They received the same feeding/light/etc. Suddenly one day, both frags at the same time displayed receding tissue from the tips of their polyps. I gave one of the frags a dip in doxycycline. And I left the other frag on its own.
Here is the frag that did NOT receive an antibiotic dip:
Here is a frag from the same colony that DID receive a doxycycline dip:
The results I have had using an antibiotic dip are amazing. In the 5 or 6 months since I've stopped using dips like melafix, revive, etc for tissue necrosis. Every single coral displaying RTN that received antibiotics so far has not only stopped RTN almost immediately. But also went on for a full recovery. If you don't have a bottle on hand to treat your corals in a dip, I recommend picking one up. Obviously YMMV, I am not a marine biologist or doctor. But the results I have been able to achieve and see with my own eyes has me convinced that there is a bacterial component to tissue necrosis in SPS corals.
Just a disclaimer that for some reason I feel like saying. Don't put antibiotics directly in your tank. And second, and I can't believe I have to say this. But don't use fish antibiotics in lieu of human medical care.
I hope this helps at least someone save their corals.
I'm sure a lot of you who keep SPS have heard about the study and claims that rapid/sudden tissue necrosis (RTN/STN) is being caused (or at least assisted by) vibrio harveyi. If you haven't I suggest giving it a look as it has some pretty interesting information and could potentially change how we treat our stony friends. You can check out here. Curious by this study as someone who's had to deal with RTN on occasion. I wanted to see if I could find an antibiotic that could be used to help fight this problem. And to see if the study had any merit. I've been in the reefing hobby since 2004, but my keeping of SPS corals only started about 3 years ago. So I'm rather new to SPS compared to some of you.
I keep a Waterbox 100.3 stocked with 30 or so SPS frags, some of which are now mini colonies. I have reached a stage where I feel I can maintain a stable tank for SPS as well as share my results with the rest of you and feel confident in what I'm seeing. Over the last 6 months I've been selectively using three dips to treat corals who have tissue necrosis. My first experiments were with a product called "Fish Moxy" which does not seem to be sold anymore. However it seems to be generic amoxicillin. It even comes in gelcaps like you used to get from the doctor for a sinus infection. Unfortunately I do not recall the dosage amount per pill. But my dip consisted of separating the gel cap of a single capsule and mixing it in a small container of water for 30 seconds or so. Nothing fancy.
It looks like this:
See? Nothing special. I don't get tissue necrosis too terribly often (thankfully). If I do get it, usually it occurs immediately after shipment or within a 2 week period post-purchase from a coral show (remember those?!). All SPS shipments were always done through FedEx overnight priority morning shipping. Usually being packed up and dropped off around 4:30PM local shipper time. And arriving between 9am and 10am local time. So only a few times did I have issues. Ironically, the first coral I had to RTN after getting my hands on some antibiotics to test this theory happened to a coral I bought 6 months prior at a fish show. It had some polyp extension, but for the entire 6 months it did absolutely nothing. It didn't encrust. It didn't throw up any nubs. Nothing. I just chalked it up to being a slow grower.
And then this happened. Out of nowhere. Overnight.
Waking up to this in the morning is NOT how I want to start my day. And I really liked this coral too. dangit. Apologies for the top down photo but this guy is approximately 1 inch tall, 1/8th of an inch thick or less (pretty skinny), and had the entire large frag plug encrusted. Not only was the base encrusted portion rapidly dying. but the tip too. This guy was a goner. I knew from experience that my success with dips sold for this purpose was maybe 33%. And I wanted to try the antibiotic dip anyway. So this was the first guy to try.
I took him out of the tank and gave him a 5 minute dip in a container of tank water and a single amoxicillin pill. I used a medical dropper to slowly move the water around so it stayed mixed. As well as use the dropper to gently blow of any lose/dead/dying skin fragments in order to get to the "good flesh" that might have a chance at living. After 5 minutes I rinsed him off in another vat of tank water and placed him back in the tank. I went to work and hoped for the best. When I got home from work nothing had changed. No more death. That night out of desperation I did a second dip. This time it was 15 minutes long under the same conditions. A single pill, small container, medical dropper to move the water around. Rinsed the coral off and back in the tank. I went to bed kind of bummed I was going to lose this awesome neon orange coral.
The next morning I woke up to check for any results and was pretty shocked to see that whatever flesh remained on the frag plug had full polyp extension like I hadn't seen from this coral before. The polyps were probably 3x as long as what I had seen in the last 6 months. And if a large portion of it hadn't melted away I would've sworn the coral frag was happier and healthier than ever.
4-5ish months later and here is the same coral after receiving two amoxicillin based coral dips (5m/15m).
If you didn't know that back in late January this coral was 24 hours from all of its flesh melting away you never would've known. Within the first week after treatment the coral started encrusting. It took less than 2 months for this coral to re-encrust what was lost. And now has a 1/4th inch growth nub at the tip that you can't really see but is also growing some at the edge of the frag plug. Its amazing to have RTN stopped dead in its tracks and watch a coral recover in less than a week. I've never seen anything like that before.
Over the last 6 months I have acquired quite a few more frags, and had a couple more issues with tissue necrosis. All of which I have experimented on with antibiotic dips. Unfortunately I ran out of amoxicillin. But doxycycline was available and is a similar broad spectrum antibiotic. So I've been using it as well. I found a source of frags on ebay which are fairly cheap. Allowing me to buy frag plugs from the same colony in duplicate. I wanted more evidence of antibiotics being able to solve RTN. And here are a couple other results:
This is a Vivid frag I had purchased. In the shipment I received 5 corals, 3 of the corals had zero RTN issues. 1 coral RTN'd by the end of the day. The Vivid started RTN about 24 hours in. On this frag plug, I placed 3 tips I was able to salvage. Two of the tips I gave a doxycycline bath for 5 minutes. Its hard to see the 3rd tip. But it did NOT receive a doxycycline bath. Can you guess which one?
Another interesting case. I purchased 2 blue acro frags last summer from a seller on eBay. I placed both frags at opposite ends of the tank. They received the same feeding/light/etc. Suddenly one day, both frags at the same time displayed receding tissue from the tips of their polyps. I gave one of the frags a dip in doxycycline. And I left the other frag on its own.
Here is the frag that did NOT receive an antibiotic dip:
Here is a frag from the same colony that DID receive a doxycycline dip:
The results I have had using an antibiotic dip are amazing. In the 5 or 6 months since I've stopped using dips like melafix, revive, etc for tissue necrosis. Every single coral displaying RTN that received antibiotics so far has not only stopped RTN almost immediately. But also went on for a full recovery. If you don't have a bottle on hand to treat your corals in a dip, I recommend picking one up. Obviously YMMV, I am not a marine biologist or doctor. But the results I have been able to achieve and see with my own eyes has me convinced that there is a bacterial component to tissue necrosis in SPS corals.
Just a disclaimer that for some reason I feel like saying. Don't put antibiotics directly in your tank. And second, and I can't believe I have to say this. But don't use fish antibiotics in lieu of human medical care.
I hope this helps at least someone save their corals.
