jamo130788
Active Member
Thanks for the info @nickkohrn
Andre’s Full blown 300Gallon SPS Reeftank up within a week ;-)
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OP
OP
Yup. For public on Amazon.
If you have connections to scientific and pharmaceutical folks then these are important sources as well.
I usually get a thousand per batch through a friend.
OP
OP
Michael Naegeli
Captainspando
Lookin sweet man... great colors!!
OP
OP
Thx, yes. Back to my normal dosing regime and all I have to do now is watching growth and frag here and there ;-)
OP
OP
Copy and paste from a recent post on my FB profile ;-)
Attention Reefing community!
I need you to help and share this post wherever possible to get more support on this subject!
Potential candidate against the battle of RTN/STN/Cyano been found!
Need more folks trying this if brave enough since it’s all on your own risk against this issue.
Read carefully:
As many have seen in the beginning of this year I was facing a severe RTN/STN outbreak.
Long story short, there was a culprit in my tank that contributed to the health of the corals likely leading to this outbreak. I posted a lot of microscopic evidence that led to the assumption that there was a bacterial outbreak responsible for the TN. In an attempt of desperation at the end, I used a dip of Witch Hazel to clean the infected corals with a very good survival rate, but corals tend to get reinfected in the tank, and I wasn’t really brave enough to perform a tank treatment with Witch Hazel.
However, with resolving the real culprit of excessive carbonic acids and resulting low PH below 7.8 in the morning, I took some corrective actions and performed some changes on the system which made the corals then resistant and healthy enough to overcome the bacterial infections.
Anyways, I never had the chance (was not really brave enough) to perform a real Tank Treatment with Witch Hazel at the time I had the large outbreak. However there were other people which did do perform this as a Tank treatment with apparently great success.
They were reporting that a Tank Treatment of daily 20ml per 100G were done over the duration of 4-6 days. The results were that interestingly Cyano patches started to disappear which is a great indication that Witch Hazel works against parasitic/pathogenic bacteria in the marine tank.
Last week I saw one minor patch of debris in the middle of a colony that seemed to cause STN around this spot. So I took the Witch Hazel bottle and dosed 20ml per 100Gallon in the evening after light turned off for 5 days. I observed that a minor Cyano spot deteriorated and disappeared by now and the TN spot on the colony shows re-encrusting already!
Under the microscope I did observe that Witch Hazel reduces bacterial count on infected corals, but unsure how much it does affect the bacteria biology in the tank!
So I would love to get peoples feedback, who else has done Tank treatments with Witch Hazel and report your findings on my Facebook profile main post, this was shared from.
If anyone is desperate enough to try this as well, on his own tank, on his own risk ,here are my comments concerning the battle against TN by use of Witch Hazel :
Dose Witch Hazel into the tank after lights are out, daily 20ml per 100G has been done by myself, up to you. Treatments of 4-6 days have been performed. Skimmer does not get affected so far, invertebrates, clams, fish and corals did not show any adverse effects. Actually many corals seem to open up much better next day after first treatment. T.N Dickinson’s Blue label Witch Hazel was used in all treatments, available in grocery stores.
Avoid any Amino Acids during the battle, this will fuel pathogens
Avoid the use of Reef Spec carbon, apparently it’s too powerful and will strip too much nutrients that the good bacteria need at the time the battle occurs.
Dose probiotic bacteria, such as Dr.Tim Eco Balance or Biodigest or both! Plenty of other products out there. Avoid other bacteria food for a while. They may fuel the pathogens during an outbreak.
PH shall not be lower than 7.8 in the morning, otherwise you have excessive acid issue. Use better aeration and co2 scrubbers to keep PH naturally up, don’t Bandaid with Kalkwasser or increased ALK levels, that doesn’t really make the carbonic acids disappear!
Keep temperature lower than normal. Ideally 76-78 which usually does not cause issues.
Maintain overall Reef chemistry as stable as possible, perform ICP to see if any trace elements are depleted. Personally I recommend the ATI ICP test.
So with this post, I hope I can spread the word and receive feedback of failure or success.
Let’s hope for the best!!!
Here another informative copy and paste, I did posted few times, maybe a good info:
RTN/STN/CYANO resolution !!!
Unfortunately there is no magic juice that can be simply poured into the tank to resolve the STN/RTN issues in a tank.
From all the microscopic evidence I have published, even while not peer reviewed and not replicated in comparable experiments, it seems to me personally that there are pathogenic bacteria attacking the coral tissue, leading to the loss of the symbiotic relationship between coral and tissue.
Very clearly it seems that infected corals that are weak, can’t self defense themselves to overcome the infection and the disease will spread.
Numerous experiments under timely pressure with all sort of dewormers, disinfecting dips, Hydrogen peroxide, Corals dips, Antibiotic treatments, do show partially positive effects however the reinfection rate is pretty high if the corals or frags are remain in the tank where the real culprit resides still.
The most important thing is to resolve the environmental issue in the tank that led to the coral or tissue weakening fact!
From experience, the most times it is a matter of one or a combination of the below issues:
Trace Elements or Element is depleted to extremely low levels or excessive high and it looks that a depleted trace is worse than an excessive element.
I use to manage the entire Reef Chemistry with the Reef Moonshiner method, which elements are not available in your country, however the method you actually could apply worldwide.
Join the Reef Moonshiner support Group on facebook and read up the so called Reef Moonshiners LITE method post, which gives you a quick and dirty summary of this method. Products and ICP tests I believe are available in your country too
Biology out of whack, means there is an issue with the Nutrients out of balance which goes back to a screwed up diversity of bacteria families. I have published an ebook “Andres Reef Guide Part 1” which talks and covers a lot of the issues on the biology for beginners and even pro reefer for a better understanding and possible solutions what to do in these cases.
Indications of problems are that either PO4 or No3 are high on one end and low on the other, or if any of them are at zero for a longer period of time which is causing an issue too.
Also I do see quite often where people have an issue with excessive carbonic acids, leading to low PH, leading to low O2 levels, due to insufficient degassing of the modern and silent Reef tank systems.
Using simply Kalkwasser or Soda ash to artificially resolve the low PH is not really resolving the issue of excessive Co2 in the water, it’s really only shifting and painting the problem away. However the excessive carbonic acids are still in the tank, even while the PH is then in an acceptable range of not lower than 7.8/7.85 in the morning. A tank that is not supplemented with KW or Soda ash and with sufficient degassing and limited Co2 introduction on the gas intake side, will start with a PH of 7.9 in the morning and has a strong PH increase until the late afternoon as soon the light comes on!
This is an indication of a healthy balance of Co2 concentration. A lot of times the gas exchange through the surface is negative impacted by high Co2 levels in the house, which makes the degassing difficult to achieve However there are many ways and unfortunately sometimes multiple ways at the same time needed to achieve this goal.
Excessive carbonic acids is the worst influencing factor for TN issues.
High bacteria count is partially a result of the above factors. With high bacteria count of the good bacteria, also the bad pathogens are thriving
I see a lot of folks doing far too much carbohydrates into their tanks to manage low nutrients, which at some point affect the bacteria that causing the outbreak of the disease.
Also other bacteria fuels should be avoided while struggling with TN issues, such as avoidance of Amino acids, Vitamins, Carbohydrates temporarily until the tank is back on track for while.
Keep refreshing bacteria diversity during TN with products like Prodibio Biodigest for example.
Stability is important of mayor traces such as Alkalinity, Calcium and Magnesium. If Alk, Salinity for example changes quickly, that simply causes stress, which at the end is weakening the corals.
If then any of the above factors are the case then, this will be enough to cause the final outbreak, even while the corals were doing fine for long time. It’s just the “enough is enough” reaction from the corals will then be experienced. So try to avoid drastic Alk or Salinity changes, do things slowly in both directions to keep the stress level low.
Many people blame an Alk spike, but the other random environment issues were the real culprit, which without it, the corals would have no issues with the Alk spike!
Keep temperatures low temporarily. With lower temperatures the pathogens do worse than the good bacteria. That is a fact that medical and science knows very well.
Simply drop the tank temperature daily by 1 Fahrenheit / 1 Celsius to get down to 76/77 Fahrenheit to reduce the pathogenic bacteria activity and population rate.
That is a helpful action in the battle against TN.
Allow max aeration on skimmers! That goes back to the low PH issue that many have.
Simply allow the max amount of air going into the skimmer, clean the air diffusor as often as possible to remove the salt creep in the diffusor!
I always tell people a simple trick to avoid a potential air inlet reduction caused by salt creep of up to 30-40% within 48 hours on the skimmer (proven on many skimmers with Flow meters) by simply turning off the skimmer for a minute, multiple times a day via a control system or timer, that will allow to flood the diffusor with water, and get flushed away when the skimmer turns back on!
Then remove stupid silencers to allow more airflow and use Phosban reactors filled with Soda lime or pelletized carbon for silencing instead.
Keep the skimmer clean!
Then also do not hesitate to reduce the light intensity slightly during TN, that helps the corals to recover a bit better.
Dip frags in Witch Hazel if you have it available or Coral dips, but don’t expect a full healing, if the tank culprit is not resolved.
I think this is the high level summary I can recommend you to start to get your tank back on track.
Your tank is sick, likely because of your actions and setup the way it is.
Hard to accept sometimes, but Reef systems are sensitive pieces of nature, which we try to replicate in a few weeks time, what mommy nature took millions of years to create
Reef on,
Andre
OP
OP
All right, trying now 4K Videos but somehow the upload does cut off the quality ...... :-(
OP
OP
Great feeding response with my new Nitrogen source which I knew is limiting growth and colors apparently, now I just wait for the Device that can measure this Nitrogen source..... hint hint
I add daily about 3ppb and it may need more, considering I have only a handful of fish in this 300G.
OP
OP
That’s actually the case!
Haven’t been posted anything recently. Did work a lot and did not really tracked system changes!
Getting closer to the tank move and was playing a lot with equipment, added a different skimmer, changed to a macro algae reactor, changed to a maintenance hassle free pellet reactor and a couple other minor things ;-)
OP
OP
OP
OP
Copy and paste from a recent post on my FB profile ;-)
Attention Reefing community!
I need you to help and share this post wherever possible to get more support on this subject!
Potential candidate against the battle of RTN/STN/Cyano been found!
Need more folks trying this if brave enough since it’s all on your own risk against this issue.
Read carefully:
As many have seen in the beginning of this year I was facing a severe RTN/STN outbreak.
Long story short, there was a culprit in my tank that contributed to the health of the corals likely leading to this outbreak. I posted a lot of microscopic evidence that led to the assumption that there was a bacterial outbreak responsible for the TN. In an attempt of desperation at the end, I used a dip of Witch Hazel to clean the infected corals with a very good survival rate, but corals tend to get reinfected in the tank, and I wasn’t really brave enough to perform a tank treatment with Witch Hazel.
However, with resolving the real culprit of excessive carbonic acids and resulting low PH below 7.8 in the morning, I took some corrective actions and performed some changes on the system which made the corals then resistant and healthy enough to overcome the bacterial infections.
Anyways, I never had the chance (was not really brave enough) to perform a real Tank Treatment with Witch Hazel at the time I had the large outbreak. However there were other people which did do perform this as a Tank treatment with apparently great success.
They were reporting that a Tank Treatment of daily 20ml per 100G were done over the duration of 4-6 days. The results were that interestingly Cyano patches started to disappear which is a great indication that Witch Hazel works against parasitic/pathogenic bacteria in the marine tank.
Last week I saw one minor patch of debris in the middle of a colony that seemed to cause STN around this spot. So I took the Witch Hazel bottle and dosed 20ml per 100Gallon in the evening after light turned off for 5 days. I observed that a minor Cyano spot deteriorated and disappeared by now and the TN spot on the colony shows re-encrusting already!
Under the microscope I did observe that Witch Hazel reduces bacterial count on infected corals, but unsure how much it does affect the bacteria biology in the tank!
So I would love to get peoples feedback, who else has done Tank treatments with Witch Hazel and report your findings on my Facebook profile main post, this was shared from.
If anyone is desperate enough to try this as well, on his own tank, on his own risk ,here are my comments concerning the battle against TN by use of Witch Hazel :
Dose Witch Hazel into the tank after lights are out, daily 20ml per 100G has been done by myself, up to you. Treatments of 4-6 days have been performed. Skimmer does not get affected so far, invertebrates, clams, fish and corals did not show any adverse effects. Actually many corals seem to open up much better next day after first treatment. T.N Dickinson’s Blue label Witch Hazel was used in all treatments, available in grocery stores.
Avoid any Amino Acids during the battle, this will fuel pathogens
Avoid the use of Reef Spec carbon, apparently it’s too powerful and will strip too much nutrients that the good bacteria need at the time the battle occurs.
Dose probiotic bacteria, such as Dr.Tim Eco Balance or Biodigest or both! Plenty of other products out there. Avoid other bacteria food for a while. They may fuel the pathogens during an outbreak.
PH shall not be lower than 7.8 in the morning, otherwise you have excessive acid issue. Use better aeration and co2 scrubbers to keep PH naturally up, don’t Bandaid with Kalkwasser or increased ALK levels, that doesn’t really make the carbonic acids disappear!
Keep temperature lower than normal. Ideally 76-78 which usually does not cause issues.
Maintain overall Reef chemistry as stable as possible, perform ICP to see if any trace elements are depleted. Personally I recommend the ATI ICP test.
So with this post, I hope I can spread the word and receive feedback of failure or success.
Let’s hope for the best!!!
Here another informative copy and paste, I did posted few times, maybe a good info:
RTN/STN/CYANO resolution !!!
Unfortunately there is no magic juice that can be simply poured into the tank to resolve the STN/RTN issues in a tank.
From all the microscopic evidence I have published, even while not peer reviewed and not replicated in comparable experiments, it seems to me personally that there are pathogenic bacteria attacking the coral tissue, leading to the loss of the symbiotic relationship between coral and tissue.
Very clearly it seems that infected corals that are weak, can’t self defense themselves to overcome the infection and the disease will spread.
Numerous experiments under timely pressure with all sort of dewormers, disinfecting dips, Hydrogen peroxide, Corals dips, Antibiotic treatments, do show partially positive effects however the reinfection rate is pretty high if the corals or frags are remain in the tank where the real culprit resides still.
The most important thing is to resolve the environmental issue in the tank that led to the coral or tissue weakening fact!
From experience, the most times it is a matter of one or a combination of the below issues:
Trace Elements or Element is depleted to extremely low levels or excessive high and it looks that a depleted trace is worse than an excessive element.
I use to manage the entire Reef Chemistry with the Reef Moonshiner method, which elements are not available in your country, however the method you actually could apply worldwide.
Join the Reef Moonshiner support Group on facebook and read up the so called Reef Moonshiners LITE method post, which gives you a quick and dirty summary of this method. Products and ICP tests I believe are available in your country too
Biology out of whack, means there is an issue with the Nutrients out of balance which goes back to a screwed up diversity of bacteria families. I have published an ebook “Andres Reef Guide Part 1” which talks and covers a lot of the issues on the biology for beginners and even pro reefer for a better understanding and possible solutions what to do in these cases.
Indications of problems are that either PO4 or No3 are high on one end and low on the other, or if any of them are at zero for a longer period of time which is causing an issue too.
Also I do see quite often where people have an issue with excessive carbonic acids, leading to low PH, leading to low O2 levels, due to insufficient degassing of the modern and silent Reef tank systems.
Using simply Kalkwasser or Soda ash to artificially resolve the low PH is not really resolving the issue of excessive Co2 in the water, it’s really only shifting and painting the problem away. However the excessive carbonic acids are still in the tank, even while the PH is then in an acceptable range of not lower than 7.8/7.85 in the morning. A tank that is not supplemented with KW or Soda ash and with sufficient degassing and limited Co2 introduction on the gas intake side, will start with a PH of 7.9 in the morning and has a strong PH increase until the late afternoon as soon the light comes on!
This is an indication of a healthy balance of Co2 concentration. A lot of times the gas exchange through the surface is negative impacted by high Co2 levels in the house, which makes the degassing difficult to achieve However there are many ways and unfortunately sometimes multiple ways at the same time needed to achieve this goal.
Excessive carbonic acids is the worst influencing factor for TN issues.
High bacteria count is partially a result of the above factors. With high bacteria count of the good bacteria, also the bad pathogens are thriving
I see a lot of folks doing far too much carbohydrates into their tanks to manage low nutrients, which at some point affect the bacteria that causing the outbreak of the disease.
Also other bacteria fuels should be avoided while struggling with TN issues, such as avoidance of Amino acids, Vitamins, Carbohydrates temporarily until the tank is back on track for while.
Keep refreshing bacteria diversity during TN with products like Prodibio Biodigest for example.
Stability is important of mayor traces such as Alkalinity, Calcium and Magnesium. If Alk, Salinity for example changes quickly, that simply causes stress, which at the end is weakening the corals.
If then any of the above factors are the case then, this will be enough to cause the final outbreak, even while the corals were doing fine for long time. It’s just the “enough is enough” reaction from the corals will then be experienced. So try to avoid drastic Alk or Salinity changes, do things slowly in both directions to keep the stress level low.
Many people blame an Alk spike, but the other random environment issues were the real culprit, which without it, the corals would have no issues with the Alk spike!
Keep temperatures low temporarily. With lower temperatures the pathogens do worse than the good bacteria. That is a fact that medical and science knows very well.
Simply drop the tank temperature daily by 1 Fahrenheit / 1 Celsius to get down to 76/77 Fahrenheit to reduce the pathogenic bacteria activity and population rate.
That is a helpful action in the battle against TN.
Allow max aeration on skimmers! That goes back to the low PH issue that many have.
Simply allow the max amount of air going into the skimmer, clean the air diffusor as often as possible to remove the salt creep in the diffusor!
I always tell people a simple trick to avoid a potential air inlet reduction caused by salt creep of up to 30-40% within 48 hours on the skimmer (proven on many skimmers with Flow meters) by simply turning off the skimmer for a minute, multiple times a day via a control system or timer, that will allow to flood the diffusor with water, and get flushed away when the skimmer turns back on!
Then remove stupid silencers to allow more airflow and use Phosban reactors filled with Soda lime or pelletized carbon for silencing instead.
Keep the skimmer clean!
Then also do not hesitate to reduce the light intensity slightly during TN, that helps the corals to recover a bit better.
Dip frags in Witch Hazel if you have it available or Coral dips, but don’t expect a full healing, if the tank culprit is not resolved.
I think this is the high level summary I can recommend you to start to get your tank back on track.
Your tank is sick, likely because of your actions and setup the way it is.
Hard to accept sometimes, but Reef systems are sensitive pieces of nature, which we try to replicate in a few weeks time, what mommy nature took millions of years to create
Reef on,
Andre
Exclusively for my followers here on R2R, only in this thread ;-)
Here a recent post from my FB profile about something extremely interesting that explains what's going on within our corals, copy and paste:
Hold my Beer.......
RTN/STN explained……….
Unbelievable that I did not find this document earlier which basically greatly supports the theory myself and many other hobbyists always had, and explains what I have found under the microscope during my STN/RTN journey in the beginning of this year.
It also supports the reasons why the natural treatment with Witch Hazel works or at least supports as a Tank treatment
I was always very suspicious about what is going on during the TN issues in the Tissue itself. I found a lot of activity and saw phases of TN under the microscope how the TN progressed in a variety of physical activities deep inside the tissue and underneath or in the gel layer, the Mucus layer.
This is where this article describes in a very nice way actually what’s going on in the Coral mucus layer and why bacteria are the reasons for our dying corals! It may upset one or the other Product Manufacturer, but the outcome of these scientific researches and summarized in this report I linked, is self-explanatory and every Reefer should read this. At least try it, lol.
In a nutshell,
The Mucus layer contains a large variety of symbiotic bacteria, that protects the Coral host from infection of pathogenic bacteria by producing antibacterial agents and antibiotics, that do restrict the growth of pathogenic bacteria on the Coral tissue. Basically it is it’s self defense mechanism!
Unfortunately this symbiotic bacteria self-defense mechanism is extremely negatively affected by increased Co2 levels in the water as well increased temperatures!
Also everything else in the Aquarium environment that fluctuates too harsh will have similar negative effects such as chemistry changes etc.
Especially changes on the Carbohydrate household seem to significantly affect this mechanism as we see it after Alk swings.
If you want to go right to the point, read page 16 or Chapter 1.4.4 at least.
However, the entire article provides a very interesting summary of the Coral Tissue and it’s functions as far it’s explored for now……
Simply click the PDF download button.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/…/d20a850fc1b89d4b7cfd4f036…
Exclusively for my followers here on R2R, only in this thread ;-)
Here a recent post from my FB profile about something extremely interesting that explains what's going on within our corals, copy and paste:
Hold my Beer.......
RTN/STN explained……….
Unbelievable that I did not find this document earlier which basically greatly supports the theory myself and many other hobbyists always had, and explains what I have found under the microscope during my STN/RTN journey in the beginning of this year.
It also supports the reasons why the natural treatment with Witch Hazel works or at least supports as a Tank treatment
I was always very suspicious about what is going on during the TN issues in the Tissue itself. I found a lot of activity and saw phases of TN under the microscope how the TN progressed in a variety of physical activities deep inside the tissue and underneath or in the gel layer, the Mucus layer.
This is where this article describes in a very nice way actually what’s going on in the Coral mucus layer and why bacteria are the reasons for our dying corals! It may upset one or the other Product Manufacturer, but the outcome of these scientific researches and summarized in this report I linked, is self-explanatory and every Reefer should read this. At least try it, lol.
In a nutshell,
The Mucus layer contains a large variety of symbiotic bacteria, that protects the Coral host from infection of pathogenic bacteria by producing antibacterial agents and antibiotics, that do restrict the growth of pathogenic bacteria on the Coral tissue. Basically it is it’s self defense mechanism!
Unfortunately this symbiotic bacteria self-defense mechanism is extremely negatively affected by increased Co2 levels in the water as well increased temperatures!
Also everything else in the Aquarium environment that fluctuates too harsh will have similar negative effects such as chemistry changes etc.
Especially changes on the Carbohydrate household seem to significantly affect this mechanism as we see it after Alk swings.
If you want to go right to the point, read page 16 or Chapter 1.4.4 at least.
However, the entire article provides a very interesting summary of the Coral Tissue and it’s functions as far it’s explored for now……
Simply click the PDF download button.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/…/d20a850fc1b89d4b7cfd4f036…
That makes a lot of sense. I’m glad my temp has been 78. I’ve been tempted to increase it after Sanjay said corals grow faster at higher temps. My CO2 levels are relatively low due to my high pH from Kalk and running my skimmer intake on outside air. Wink Wink!
I’m dodging a few bullets. We need Mindstreams!
OP
OP
Waiting for my Mindstream ;-)That makes a lot of sense. I’m glad my temp has been 78. I’ve been tempted to increase it after Sanjay said corals grow faster at higher temps. My CO2 levels are relatively low due to my high pH from Kalk and running my skimmer intake on outside air. Wink Wink!
I’m dodging a few bullets. We need Mindstreams!
You didn't!!!!!!
OP
OP
I sure did!
That’s an important instrument for me to work out some Nitrogen supplements ;-)
Check this out:
Mindstream Monitor - Tank Data Sharing thread
Hey everyone, So I'm very exited and wait for my Midstream monitor to arrive! Many of the Reefer here know me from R2R, articles, Facebook and my STN/RTN guidance via Witch Hazel which is becoming very popular at the moment. Anyways, while I run a pretty strict routine and method of Trace...
www.reef2reef.com
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