Montipora, stylophora thriving, acropora all dying

covjéfé · Sep 11, 2021

Hello all! I have an SPS dominant tank that’s been fully running for a year and a half. It was thriving since the beginning, but about three months ago I noticed some acros starting to lose tissue from the base up. This gradually spread to ALL acropora, frags and colonies, and has completely annihilated my collection. During this time I’ve done everything I could think of and have dipped, done water tests, done water changes, refreshed carbon reactor, added UV, added wrasses, blasted colonies with turkey baster in the evening, etc. None of it helped. I’m out of options. Tonight I fragged the last three colonies I have left, so now I down to my last few frags. Has anyone experienced anything similar and know the cause.

Parameter wise the tank’s pretty stable, with all-for-reef as my main supplement. I run the tank at 35 ppt, 8.0 dKh, 0.04-0.05 PO4, undetectable nitrate but I dose aminos during the day. I both carbon dose with a skimmer and run an algae reactor as export.

Whats confusing me the most is that all the other corals are thriving. Noticeable monti and stylo growth weekly. LPS looking healthy. Anemones in a small tank plumped into the same system doing well. I think dipping (polyp lab reef primer) slowed the death a little bit, but it didn’t stop it. what the heck is going on?

edit:
Causes I haven’t ruled out:
- lighting: some montis seem to grow a bit downward. I haven’t tested the pad in the tank and I can’t get the equipment here. Tank is a Waterbox peninsula 4820, 120 cm wide lit by two XR30s at 50% schedule intensity. i have the matte screen attachment (dont remember what they’re called) on them. I lowered the settings to 48% a month ago but death continues.

- UV unit is a coralife turbo twist. Ive read some bad reviews about these on here but mine doesn’t seem to have the metal casing that’s causing grief in some users’ tanks. However I cant rule this out completely because I haven’t checked the insides for awhile. The plumbing makes it pretty hard to take out.

- Pests. I don’t believe I have AEFW, but I do have flatworms. I got tamarin, yellow coris, green coris, blue star leopard, and regular leopard wrasses so I don’t think it could be flatworms.
Not sure about other bugs. The RTN seems to only occur in the evening. I’d usually wake up to find a portion’s tissue flailing away but it doesn’t progress much during the day. I strongly suspect it could be a pest that only targets acropora that comes out at night. Any suggestions here?

Causes I have ruled out:
- flow should be adequate
- temperature slowly fluctuates between 25-26 throughout the day. My apartment is temp controlled.

Any other factor I could be missing?

covjéfé · Sep 11, 2021

I do have flatworms (hence the wrasses) but they’re the harmless kind. I believed it was some unknown pest damaging the corals but the dead colonies lookEd clean. I honestly have no idea anymore.

Gabaghoul · Sep 12, 2021

Have you tried ICP test to find out if there are any major irregularities in your tank water? You didn’t mention anything about the water you use either. Is it RO? Have you kept up with the filter changes on those? If these SPS were growing, as you say, thriving, at one point, I would say pollution or pest. And it seems you have ruled out pests. I’m assuming you have not seen any bites marks or eggs from AEFW. BTW, I’m not a big fan of undetectable nitrates. Wonder if these guys are starving. There are alot of unknowns here in your description. You say you use aminos? May want to hold on adding these for a bit. You need to start eliminating variables. I would stop the carbon dosing too. Let the nitrates rise some. Are you feeding your fish daily? Besides wrasses you mentioned, what fish do you have? BTW, turn off the UV sterilizer too. Is your skimmer producing lots of nasty skimmate each week ?You may be starving those corals. Thats off the top of my head.

N1gh7m4r3 · Sep 12, 2021

Following

Staghorn · Sep 12, 2021

Do you remember any events where possibly there was a spike? Alk, Temperature, Ph? Salinity? Did a heater break or your air conditioning in the house? Run out of 2 part? Ato get stuck on or run out of water? This happening occasionally or sometimes even only once is enough to wipe out Acros, and the bad thing is sometimes it takes days or weeks before you see the effect. The other sps in the tank and the lps generally are more tolerant of these kinds of fluctuations.

covjéfé · Sep 12, 2021

Hello Staghorn! I switched from a two part to All-for-Reef about 3 liters ago. Not exactly sure how long it’s been. By then the RTN had already started, but it wasn’t widespread. Most acros were thriving but one or two frags werent doing well.

I just remembered something. i believe when things really started to go downhill (old thriving colonies RTN from base up) was around the introduction of the UV unit. The skimmer took a week to go back to normal - it wouldn’t skim at all for a week. I did daily water changes during this time but regrettably didn’t test for nutrients. This was end of June. RTN was already happening to some frags so I didn’t think attribute the onslaught to this.

covjéfé · Sep 12, 2021

Gabaghoul said:
Have you tried ICP test to find out if there are any major irregularities in your tank water? You didn’t mention anything about the water you use either. Is it RO? Have you kept up with the filter changes on those? If these SPS were growing, as you say, thriving, at one point, I would say pollution or pest. And it seems you have ruled out pests. I’m assuming you have not seen any bites marks or eggs from AEFW. BTW, I’m not a big fan of undetectable nitrates. Wonder if these guys are starving. There are alot of unknowns here in your description. You say you use aminos? May want to hold on adding these for a bit. You need to start eliminating variables. I would stop the carbon dosing too. Let the nitrates rise some. Are you feeding your fish daily? Besides wrasses you mentioned, what fish do you have? BTW, turn off the UV sterilizer too. Is your skimmer producing lots of nasty skimmate each week ?You may be starving those corals. Thats off the top of my head.

Thanks for the brainstorm! I’ll try answering all these questions here.

Yes I’m using RODI water I make at home. Just tested a new batch with Hanna UL checker and phosphorus was at 20 ppb. I changed the DI resin just now.

Yeah I haven’t noticed any bite marks, but I’ve never dealt with pests before so there is the possibility that i don’t know what to look for. Looked up some images online and didn’t find anything similar on my dead skeletons.

I’ve reduced amino (AB+) feeding by half. I might stop it entirely next week.

I feed four times daily. Two frozen meals in the morning and evening. One pellet mix and one pods/plankton mix in the afternoon (these two are on automatic feeders). I have two bimacs, two dispars, and one fathead sunburst. This is why I feed often and carbon dose. This is also why I think it’s unlikely the acros were starving.

Also relevant to the above. Fish stock in the system: four fairy wrasses, six wrasses, two pairs of clowns, one royal gramma, five anthias, one pair of red dragonets, one diamond watchman goby, one pygmy angel, two medium tangs.

Turned off UV today.

Before adding UV, I had an undersized skimmer (BM curve A5) that I had to empty every day or at most every two days. Thickness of the skimmate I’d say is medium, for maximum carbon dosing efficiency. I also underdose carbon. I upgraded to the A8 two weeks ago to eliminate oxygen deprivation because I carbon dose and use all for reef. Kind of relevant - algae reactor is on opposite lighting cycle. New skimmer is dialed in at approximately the same efficiency as before, but the cup is bigger so I only need to empty it every four or five days I think. Haven’t run it long enough to have a steady number. It’s very nasty.

The other thing you mentioned, pollution - so I had a new mini peninsula built for nems and mangroves and plumped it in a month and a half ago. This could have caused issues. I run a carbon reactor, and I added an extra bag to the mangrove tank’s pump area. Not sure if this did anything to offset the toxins from the new pipes and PVC glue. This is the only source of pollution I can think of. I don’t cook. AC is regularly serviced.

The only ICP I can do is by sending samples to Germany. I probably should do it anyway.

There were so many things that might have contributed to my problem, and I’m honestly a little fuzzy on the exact timeline because I didn’t document changes and tests. Going forward I should start documenting everything if I’m ever keeping acros again.

LuizW13 · Sep 13, 2021

Lately, a lot of the reading and watching I've done on tissue necrosis on Acropora seem to suggest bacteria as the culprit. You even mentioned that you started to notice a decline on their health when you introduced the UV sterilizer. It could be a coincidence, but I think that path is worth investigating further.

zeronum · Mar 17, 2022

Any up date on this. I am going Thur it as well but mine is much much faster. 1 colony or so every other day. I just fragged out everything in my tank and gave it to a buddy just in case of a tank crash. I do icp ever 2 months so chemistry isn't a issue.

sculpin01 · Mar 17, 2022

No nutrients + amino acid dosing is a setup for an Ostreopsis outbreak. Don't know if that was the case here, but that combination can lead to exponential dinoflagellate outbreaks.