STN Pathogen destroying my coral

[Spare time]

I respectfully disagree. Corals will give tell tale signs when they are starving such as pale colors and lack of growth, well before you would incur any death. The tissue loss was linear, a progression, and spread between two corals that were touching each other.

I get the correlation and causation argument, but when you have a tank that is absolutely cranking and then dose something and within days have death, it is pretty compelling. I don’t blame Fluco as a direct killer but I think it is feasible that it can cause stress and thus make it susceptible to other factors. For me it just means I will rely on other means going forward such as a more robust clean up crew.

Luckily I had no issue from the H2o2 dosing, even to corals in close proximity. I have dosed in the past on other tanks at 1ml per 10 gallons and had no negative results.

It's also important to remember that, to fight an infection, nitrogen and phosphorus are likely needed. I don't know anything about coral "immune systems" but fighting infection is energetically intensive in general. Again, not saying that the 0's are the cause per se, but thag it could be harming things. Infections like vibrio are seemingly something that possibly takes advantage of a coral already facing some other issue. One thing you might wanna try is something like reef energy (dissolved food is less energetically expensive to process compared to lets say planktonic food) and dr tims eco balance which basically provides bacteria that will try to compete and kill other bacteria that could cause infection.

Best of luck and hopefully it all works out

 

[Spare time]

I respectfully disagree. Corals will give tell tale signs when they are starving such as pale colors and lack of growth, well before you would incur any death. The tissue loss was linear, a progression, and spread between two corals that were touching each other.

I get the correlation and causation argument, but when you have a tank that is absolutely cranking and then dose something and within days have death, it is pretty compelling. I don’t blame Fluco as a direct killer but I think it is feasible that it can cause stress and thus make it susceptible to other factors. For me it just means I will rely on other means going forward such as a more robust clean up crew.

Luckily I had no issue from the H2o2 dosing, even to corals in close proximity. I have dosed in the past on other tanks at 1ml per 10 gallons and had no negative results.

PS I always welcome a disagreement
That's what makes this forum great

 

[DeeBee]

It's also important to remember that, to fight an infection, nitrogen and phosphorus are likely needed. I don't know anything about coral "immune systems" but fighting infection is energetically intensive in general. Again, not saying that the 0's are the cause per se, but thag it could be harming things. Infections like vibrio are seemingly something that possibly takes advantage of a coral already facing some other issue. One thing you might wanna try is something like reef energy (dissolved food is less energetically expensive to process compared to lets say planktonic food) and dr tims eco balance which basically provides bacteria that will try to compete and kill other bacteria that could cause infection.

Best of luck and hopefully it all works out

I completely agree on the importance of nutrients. I'm not at 0 though, 4 - 5 on the nitrate and .01 on phosphate (which in actuality is most likely higher based on the hair algae I am fighting - thus the need for Fluco). I have Anthias that are autofed TDO pellets so I feel there is a steady supply of nutrients going in the tank.

I use Ecobalance quite regularly, and feel that it is one of Dr. Tim's most underrated products.

Both the Montipora's are growing back quite rapidly where they were once dissolving so I feel the worst is over. This is after 6 days of H2o2 spot treatment and two modest water changes.

I have a PC rainbow colony that turned gray and stalled during all of this so hoping it recovers with time. Otherwise, I lost a gold hammer and a frag of blue stag. Everything else was mostly uneffected.

 

[Ultra Aquatics]

Could have been the fluconazole for sure. I lost quite a few when I dosed it long ago. I wouldn’t count out nutrients either, you say po4 is .01, from what I know Hanna accuracy is +/- .02.

 

[Midrats]

I screwed my tank up with fluc. Certain SPS died quickly, others slowly from the bottom up. Lots of water changes and carbon later, it appears the STN may have ceased (fingers crossed). Everything was thriving and growing before the fluc addition.

I did a double dose as recommended on the bottle for stubborn algae. It killed all of the Valonia, but it's coming back already.

 

[DeeBee]

So it's been a while and the tank has stabilized and is growing well. I now have more algae to contend with as a result of the nutrients from the coral die-off, but that can be managed with time. I ended up losing two large birdsnests colonies, a large Granulosa acro, gold hammer and a couple SPS frags - but most all the coral in the tank had significant die-off.

In retrospect I think this was attributed to a combination of issues that led to the downward spiral. I didn't realize it, but I had an older RO membrane and possibly high lead levels (if the ICP is accurate) although my TDS was always 0. Once I started noticing that my tank drastically took turns for the worse post water changes, I changed all my RODI filters and performed large changes and things improved. The Fluco may or may have been a factor in an already stressed situation.

I had a biome test performed by @AquaBiomics and they did detect a fairly high amount the following coral pathogen:

Coral Pathogens​

Your sample contained one or more suspected pathogens of corals.​

Type	Frequency	Name	Prevalence	Average level	Typical range
438	0.00817	SCTLD-associated Planktotellea sp.	0.193	0.003	0 - 0.011