Nuke it, break it down, kill it with fire???????

[wmatt140]

Not sure of my next move, so here I am.

Background. I had a successful SPS tank for years. I upgraded my tank, 140 gal to 300 gal. I didn't like how much the vermetid snails had taken over my rock work so I wanted to start the new tank with dry rock and dry sand and use bottled bacteria.

It looked good for a few months and then my SPS started slowly declining. I ran multiple ICP tests over several months with no major issues including the Organo test for medications, pesticides, etc. All good. Running out of options, I tried Aquabiomics to test my bacteria population. BIG PROBLEM.

My tank had the highest percentage of Vibrio Owensi they had ever seen. Over the last year or so I have:

Changed Tropic Marin Reef Pro Salt to Tropic Marin Syn-Biotic

Added a 55 watt UV

Added a reactor with Dr. Tim's Pearls

Gallons of liquid bacteria, MicroBacter 7 and Clean, Dr. Tim's Eco Balance and others, PNS, etc.

Water changes, leave sand alone, clean sand, added some new sand from TB aquatics.

I still have some SPS in my frag tank and try and move some to check the display but within a week or two they start declining or die. I have successfully moved some back to the frag tank to recover.

Fish are fine, and the only corals to survive are zoas, GSP, a photosynthetic Gorgo and recently two torches. Also tried hammers but they didn't survive.

Aquabiomics is no more so I can't do any follow up tests.

Treat with antibiotics, replace the sand, rocks, both?

Thanks for reading.

Full tank shot

Example of what happens in the main display. Purple Stylo

Frag Tank

 

[DaJMasta]

You went from an established live rock system to a sterile new one, with only the carried over corals for seeding, this made your microbiome go crazy, which lead to coral problems, and then you made a huge correction maneuver to try and fix the problem, but even if it helped, a huge adjustment will make huge ripples for time to come.

You say it was good for a few months, but how old is the tank and how long has it been since the seeding correction? It could be that only now your live rock is getting fully colonized and even without the corrective steps would be starting to move in a good direction.

But the short of that angle is that it needs time. I do think that's true, but in upgrading, what did your equipment look like? For example, if you carried over the equipment that grew sps great in a 140 to the 300 with nothing more, both light and flow are probably too low.

It could also be checking the basic nitrate and phosphate - it's been observed that too high nitrate relative to phosphate can be particularly problematic within any normal limits. If your phosphate is low, it could be worth dosing/feeding to raise it relative to your nitrate.

 

[wmatt140]

For this issue, I'm trying to avoid this turning into a lengthy discussion about other parameters or equipment. Same equipment beefed up for the size, par readings good, ICP tests good. This is the only test that has come back abnormal.

Vibrio Community​

This section of the report is based on the new Vibrio-specific marker introduced in Microbiome 2.0. These data provide species-level identification for bacteria in the genus Vibrio that can’t be resolved using the standard marker. Read more here.


Vibrio Coral Pathogens

species	level	percentile
Vibrio_owensii	22.81	96.8
Note:
Level indicates percent of DNA matching each species, Percentile refers to the fraction of samples with lower levels than yours PS your report shows what may be the highest level of Vibrio owensii we've ever seen.. if you have coral issues this would be by far my top pick for whats causing them. Eli Meyer AquaBiomics - DNA testing for aquariums and aquaculture https://aquabiomics.com/

 

[DaJMasta]

My point is also that your issue is likely not a vibrio one and to point out the way it got to that place initially.

Vibrio species are known coral and fish pathogens, they are also present in quantity in every system. Bacteria grow to fill a nutrient vacuum (like a power vacuum, in that sense), and they do so extremely quickly. It is likely that even a day or two after that sample the number was noticeably down, and their explosion probably had a direct, but maybe not obvious trigger. Just the presence of sick corals could have multiplied the ambient vibrio population in your system by 10x the normal amount.

Since they are filling a nutrient void, if their food source goes away or another population springs up that can better exploit it, the balance can swing dramatically and quickly. The reason tank age and sterility at startup matter is that a microbiome that has seen more cycles and has more balanced and varied populations will tend to have nutrient vacuums filled by many types rather than just an abundance of one. The reason why nitrate, phosphate, flow, and par all matter is because those being off in a meaningful way mean coral stress, which promotes vibrio growth, which promotes tissue loss and a cascading increase in coral pathogens in the system.

Your problem now is not caused by the vibrio spike you saw a while ago, but the causes of the vibrio spike then very likely are still causing other issues in the system in the aftershocks of both the significant event and the dramatic treatment, and a still young system is less able to absorb those aftershocks.

 

[wmatt140]

I definitely don't have a low nutrient tank. I have a lot of fat fish. Phosphate .11 and nitrate 19. Same photons on my frag tank and similar par levels.

Circulation is a red dragon return pump and 4 MP 40's in the display.

Ok, I'm following you about the initial causes of the Vibrio spike. Shouldn't the tank have stabilized over the last year with few corals in it and gallons of "good" bacteria" and fish poop?

I'm going to do another ICP test since it has been awhile.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

It seems like you tried to substitute a mature biomme for gallons of bottled bacteria. IME its very hard to keep acro's in a brand new tank, and despite the gallons of bottled bacteria it was a brand new tank.

Have you kept track of the parameters in the new tank, especially the alkalinity? Has it remained stable the whole time the corals were in the new tank?