Massive RTN event

[homer1475]

I woke up this morning to nearly every stick in my tank, bare naked! No really, no skin on most of my sticks. Some have polyps still, but no flesh, and others are just outright dead. LPS, some sticks, nems, and RFA's all seem fine. Water tests come out normal(will post results below), with the exception of some elevated levels due to no consumption, as I figured. Nothings been changed in well over 5 months, and that change was just my T5's to new bulbs.

No idea what caused it, but my main question is......

Those that lost skin but still have polyps, will they recover? I know those that are dead, are just plain dead. But some seem to just loose thier flesh on the main branches, and still have polyps present. Like my green slimer, it has lost all its green skin, but the little green polyps I can still see on the branches.

Water tests:
ALK - 8.0 - up from 7.5
CAL - 440 - up from 420
MAG - 1440
NO3 - 5
PO4 - .03

Green slimer for reference. Easiest one to get pics of:

You can see it lost all flesh, but the polyps remain so I know it's not dead dead.

 

[Ron Reefman]

#reefsquad

 

[Foothill Corals]

That coral looks like it is bleached really bad not RTN. I suspect some sort of contamination from what you describe.

 

[homer1475]

So just bleached not RTN? I mean there missing all their flesh, thought that meant RTN?

Bleached because the polyps remain? In RTN I'm assuming the polyps die off too?

No idea what could have been the contamination as no one was home when it happened.

Should I just frag the slimer down to a nub again and let the colony die? Or can it recover? What ever caused it seems to have stopped, as any other stick this morning seems to be fine.

I did put in a fresh batch of carbon, and a massive WC(like 75%), so maybe thats what stopped it and cleaned up the "contamination".

 

[JGT]

Agree, don’t see any loose flesh hanging off., Looks like it bleached. Are the others the same?

 

[Ron Reefman]

The only time I've seen coral do that so quickly was when my chiller failed to shut off and my water temp went just below 60F overnight. The next morning all my sps were skeletons.

 

[Brew12]

So just bleached not RTN? I mean there missing all their flesh, thought that meant RTN?

Bleached because the polyps remain? In RTN I'm assuming the polyps die off too?

No idea what could have been the contamination as no one was home when it happened.

Should I just frag the slimer down to a nub again and let the colony die? Or can it recover? What ever caused it seems to have stopped, as any other stick this morning seems to be fine.

I did put in a fresh batch of carbon, and a massive WC(like 75%), so maybe thats what stopped it and cleaned up the "contamination".

I agree that it is bleached, not RTN. I still see some signs that the coral has it's flesh.

Adding the GAC and doing the water change was a good step. Check your temperature, flow, and lighting to make sure everything is working as you expected.

 

[homer1475]

Agree, don’t see any loose flesh hanging off., Looks like it bleached. Are the others the same?

Yes all others are exactly the same. the loose flesh I blew off them last night when I noticed it. It wasn't like the green flesh you normally see on a slimer(just using the slimer here as it's the easiest one to get a pic of), it was brown and stringy, almost like dino's when I blew it off. But I know it's not dino's.

 

[JGT]

Hmm, then maybe a mix but the slimer looks bleached.

 

[homer1475]

Only time the temp changed, was during my WC. I normally don't heat my WC water(it's just room temp like 70), the small amount doesn't decrease my temp much more then 1 degree.

Of course because I had 40G of unheated SW, it dropped my temps down to around 75 instead of the normal 78, but that was after the event.

 

[homer1475]

Just got into the stick game about a year ago and have never seen this happen, or witnessed any RTN or STN events yet so I was assuming this is what it was.

So do you guys think since the polyps are still there, they can recover?

 

[Foothill Corals]

It may help if you can post some more pics

 

[AquaBiomics]

In my experience once a colony RTNs that far, its over.

If youre interested in taking a sample we could find out if you have any unusual bacteria growing in your tank...

 

[homer1475]

More coral pics? I can do that. Just not sure how blurry they will be.

 

[homer1475]

In my experience once a colony RTNs that far, its over.

If youre interested in taking a sample we could find out if you have any unusual bacteria growing in your tank...

Lead me in the right direction, I'm all for it. Just did an ICP test and will get that mailed out today, but I'm not thinking anything will come of it as everything else is fine. Even some other sticks seem to be fine.

 

[Brew12]

Just got into the stick game about a year ago and have never seen this happen, or witnessed any RTN or STN events yet so I was assuming this is what it was.

So do you guys think since the polyps are still there, they can recover?

This is what I am seeing.

Where I have circled, I can see what looks like bleached (purplish with texture) coral flesh at the tips but with no jagged edges transitioning to missing flesh.
I've also never seen RTN where the polyps also weren't gone, but I guess it could be possible.

 

[xiaoxiy]

Check for a stray current/damaged pump. My tank did something similar over thanksgiving and that ended up being the culprit.

On Thanksgiving day, I noticed that these two milles seemed a bit bleached. I wasn't sure what was going on.

Several hours later, they started looking much worse.

Within a couple more hours, other acros started looking really pale/off too.

At this point, I knew that I had a potential crash on my hands. I changed out the carbon, started doing massive water changes, and grabbed some Polyfilter too in case the crash was due to metal contaminants. Turns out, one of my old butt (5-6 years old) reactor pumps had corroded and started leaking electricity into my tank.

Within 48 hours of the crash, these two milles were toast.

Fortunately, I was able to get things turned around pretty quickly. After I removed the pump, things started looking immediately better.

I was able to reverse/halt things from my crash by removing the damaged pump, and also by doing a huge water change, running carbon and polyfilter to remove impurities.

Best of luck.

 

[homer1475]

Yeah the slimer still has the striped "skin" so to speak, but just no color.

As I said I'm very new to the SPS game, so if you guys are just saying bleached and not RTN I will go with that.

Last night when I noticed it, the skin was peeling off, but it was like white strings comeing off them, not actual colored flesh.

Some others seem to have recovered a bit, and yet others don't seem to be effected at all.

perplexing to say the least.

 

[Brew12]

Yeah the slimer still has the striped "skin" so to speak, but just no color.

As I said I'm very new to the SPS game, so if you guys are just saying bleached and not RTN I will go with that.

Last night when I noticed it, the skin was peeling off, but it was like white strings comeing off them, not actual colored flesh.

Some others seem to have recovered a bit, and yet others don't seem to be effected at all.

perplexing to say the least.

Not having seen it, I'm thinking it could have been the slime released from the coral that you blew off. Hopefully anyway!

Do you run a GFCI and ground probe? I don't think electricity could cause this, but toxins released by a failed electrical component as @xiaoxiy mentioned definitely could.

 

[homer1475]

Ground probe for sure. And no not slime, I've seen that many times.

I did grab a few more pics. I'm horrible with pictures BTW!

Here is a frag of strawberry shortcake. You can clearly see the line of division between the skin that sloughed off, and the live flesh.

And here is fox flame. You can see the white "flesh" peeling off the skeleton. And how brown it has gotten. The brown if I blow on it with a turkey baster, will blow right off leaving a white skeleton, but still has polyps.