STN Disease in SPS

[Pod_01]

I don’t mean to be harsh but this isn’t true at all.

I don’t take it harsh, I had to deal with Dino’s (that is harsh) and as a result did quite a lot of reading and followed many opinions, tried many proposed solutions. Honestly they are all opinions unless what is stated actually works in my tank. The problem is there is no scholarly article on Dino’s in a reef tank, at least I found none.

I had major issue 5 years back and this is what worked for me.

This is good 5 years old information and so far I did not have to deal with another major outbreaks, just minor flare up that once I made some adjustments all was well.
I do not claim nor do I plan to be expert on Dino’s outbreak. Don’t want them and so far they are behaving.

I suspect this is enough derailment of OP original thread.

 

[jda]

Dinos that are ejected from the coral cannot survive without the host for long. When zoox are expelled, they leave through the polyps and do not manifest as brown jelly. The dinos that grow in the rest of your tank are not zooxanthellae.

 

[NanPoriferan]

Managing nitrates and phosphates long term in my current tank has been a challenge. In the past, some of my tanks stayed in acceptable (to me) range without much intervention. In the past, I have used deep sand beds (with and without plenums), siporax, gfo, vinegar dosing, and lighted refugiums to control nutrients.

In my current tank (started 2018 ish) I use a good skimmer and a small amount of gfo. I do 1% AWC. I also currently run with my nitrates in the 40’s and phosphates about 0.4 ppm. I value simplicity highly. So if I feel I need to lower nitrates, I might add another skimmer or possibly use siporax again.

However, as you probably have figured out, you can poke holes in almost any “recommended” values for nitrates and phosphates.

Here’s my latest FTS with high nitrates and phosphates. Just yesterday, I removed about a gallon of acropora trimmings.

Very nice tank! Thanks for sharing your nutrient reduction methods

 

[NanPoriferan]

Here are some pics of the tank:

 

[NanPoriferan]

Some more:

 

[NanPoriferan]

Things seem to have stabilized after I stopped dosing the ESV transition elements. As I said before, based on your helpful replies, the most likely culprit seems to be overdosing this. Nonetheless I have dialed back all dosing for the time being except for the basics in a reef tank. I came to the conclusion I will continue to do the vodka method as it has been working for me for many years, and I cannot run GFO, carbon, etc due to the sponges/filter feeders - but will continue to explore other options. Thanks everyone!

 

[Pod_01]

The Setosa looks nice, I am assuming it is Setosa.
Here is what I had few years back just before I turned my tank by accident into fresh water:

Lesson, when on vacation if something can go wrong it will go wrong.

 

[NanPoriferan]

The Setosa looks nice, I am assuming it is Setosa.
Here is what I had few years back just before I turned my tank by accident into fresh water:

Lesson, when on vacation if something can go wrong it will go wrong.

That's unfortunate you lost it! I was also distraught when I had to chop mine up - what you see in the pictures are what's left of what was once a very similar colony to the one you had

 

[Kzang]

There is no STN disease. Unhealthy corals is the issue. There are enough types of bacteria and protozoa already in the acropora to kill them if they are not healthy enough to keep them at bay - like another other living thing.

Whatever is impacting your corals are already in them. There is no strange disease that popped up out of nowhere that is killing them.

Here is how this went... company came along offering dna testing for things in your tank. They showed some as SCTLD when they categorically were not the real SCTLD. People needlessly freaked and went to the quick-fix of antibiotics and sometimes anti fungals. Nearly everybody who treated say unintended consequences and then a return (as stated by dfj in post number two). Whole hobby was impacted in a bad way, IMO.

You are just going to lose some SPS. It happens. Make the others strong with more stable water quality, better parameters and better light if you need to. You also might just find that a few corals will never do well in your tank so focus on the others.

I’ve always wondered if bacteria is the reason for RTN/STN like how BJD can affect torches. If a torch gets injured, it’s easy for them to get BJD. It seems if you pre treat with cipro or cure the BJD with cipro, they seem less likely to get BJd again.

It’s like the bacteria are fine when it’s healthy, but a stressing event causes the opportunistic bad bacteria to get a foothold to cause STN/RTN.

Just a theory. Might explain why a colony suffering from either RTN or STN doesn’t have a good survival rate when cutting above the areas suffering from necrosis. The bacteria is on the whole colony so when you cut it, it stresses it again, and leads to infection of that new cut with the opportunistic bad bacteria when leads to the new frag coral death.