Preventing An Outbreak: Concerns

[1Matthew]

Hello all! I recently just tore down my 90 gallon tank and placed every surviving peace of coral in my 55 gallon tank in my other room. I posted a thread earlier on it and everything level-wise looked really well. No swings, levels in check and stable, did an icp test which came back with nothing and even rented a par meter and found that my par was a little low, not high. Talked with all of our local shops and our trusted friend who runs a coral shop as well. He supposes that the bad bacteria out competed the good. When removing the surviving corals, they looked completely clean. we run a UV sterilizer but I think the bulb might need to be replaced. My question is, how can I prevent this from happening in the future. Is there any sort of dips that you guys recomend prior to placing corals in? Any media material that I can place in the sump to promote more good bacteria that can live in the sump? Certain medications? I will set the 90 gallon back up, my plan is to fill the tank up with freshwater in hopes that it kills anything that is remaining in the dry tank then add salt and cycle the tank. Is this a good plan of action?

Adding on to this, all corals that are currently in my quarantine 55 gallon are not being treated with anything, they are just placed in water that I tested the other day with good parameters. Should I be dosing any antibiotics or medication into this tank?

I will link my other thread if anyone wants to look over the par of the tank, settings of my lights, icp test results, and the big elements that I tested. I covered every nittpicky thing over there.

All the help I can get is super appreciated!

Link to prior thread:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/help-massive-coral-die-off.1017001/#post-11936652

 

[Dan_P]

There is nothing in your post that supports the idea that bacteria are the cause of this problem. Many new reef aquaria die back and the owners never discover why. Even macro algae can fail to grow in new systems and continue to be a challenge. This might be one of those situations.

 

[V_Sh]

Hello all! I recently just tore down my 90 gallon tank and placed every surviving peace of coral in my 55 gallon tank in my other room. I posted a thread earlier on it and everything level-wise looked really well. No swings, levels in check and stable, did an icp test which came back with nothing and even rented a par meter and found that my par was a little low, not high. Talked with all of our local shops and our trusted friend who runs a coral shop as well. He supposes that the bad bacteria out competed the good. When removing the surviving corals, they looked completely clean. we run a UV sterilizer but I think the bulb might need to be replaced. My question is, how can I prevent this from happening in the future. Is there any sort of dips that you guys recomend prior to placing corals in? Any media material that I can place in the sump to promote more good bacteria that can live in the sump? Certain medications? I will set the 90 gallon back up, my plan is to fill the tank up with freshwater in hopes that it kills anything that is remaining in the dry tank then add salt and cycle the tank. Is this a good plan of action?

Adding on to this, all corals that are currently in my quarantine 55 gallon are not being treated with anything, they are just placed in water that I tested the other day with good parameters. Should I be dosing any antibiotics or medication into this tank?

I will link my other thread if anyone wants to look over the par of the tank, settings of my lights, icp test results, and the big elements that I tested. I covered every nittpicky thing over there.

All the help I can get is super appreciated!

Link to prior thread:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/help-massive-coral-die-off.1017001/#post-11936652

Hi,

too many questions.

what's your media?
what bacteria did you use?
you should not use different bacteria products from different companies (did you?)
give us an updated picture
freshwater won't kill bacteria
you may consider MARINE MELAFIX for coral bacterial disease
use a carbon source for bacteria
reef tanks take a massive time to establish
natural marine sands are one of the best media that seems you don't have
antibiotics can affect your corals
do you have an ozonizer? sterilize the tank with ozon before adding salt
do you use Seachem "Reef Deep" or any other coral deeps?
bad bacteria, good bacteria??? what bacteria? where? this is not a scientific thing
temperature matters which you didn't mention

 

[1Matthew]

There is nothing in your post that supports the idea that bacteria are the cause of this problem. Many new reef aquaria die back and the owners never discover why. Even macro algae can fail to grow in new systems and continue to be a challenge. This might be one of those situations.

The system wasn’t new, around 2 year old system that we just took down. Just want to prevent this happening for when we reset the tank

 

[1Matthew]

Hi,

too many questions.

what's your media?
what bacteria did you use?
you should not use different bacteria products from different companies (did you?)
give us an updated picture
freshwater won't kill bacteria
you may consider MARINE MELAFIX for coral bacterial disease
use a carbon source for bacteria
reef tanks take a massive time to establish
natural marine sands are one of the best media that seems you don't have
antibiotics can affect your corals
do you have an ozonizer? sterilize the tank with ozon before adding salt
do you use Seachem "Reef Deep" or any other coral deeps?
bad bacteria, good bacteria??? what bacteria? where? this is not a scientific thing
temperature matters which you didn't mention

Tank is currently disassembled, all corals placed in a holding tank. I dipped all corals prior to putting them in, I’d have to look at the type of dip when I get home. We had carbon in the tank. Temp of the tank was at 78.

 

[Dan_P]

The system wasn’t new, around 2 year old system that we just took down. Just want to prevent this happening for when we reset the tank

I understand. I think what caused the problem is not known and whether resetting the system helps is not certain. I hope it does something good.

 

[1Matthew]

I understand. I think what caused the problem is not known and whether resetting the system helps is not certain. I hope it does something good.

That’s what I was getting at. Hopefully it helps. Just trying to see if I can add anything to the new system to help. Currently, running slimmer, 2 filter socks, a reactor, uv filter, and the heaters in the sump

 

[V_Sh]

Tank is currently disassembled, all corals placed in a holding tank. I dipped all corals prior to putting them in, I’d have to look at the type of dip when I get home. We had carbon in the tank. Temp of the tank was at 78.

Hi,

for the temperature you can decrease it to 24 C (75.5) whenever you have a problem with bacteria, it helps a lot in my experience (I usually decrease it to 22 C)

It is also better to use ozone at a slightly high rate for sterilizing the main tank before you introduce living things.

Seachem Reef Deep I like and suggest Any symbiotic invertebrate can be a massive help to keep your corals healthy (I don't know if you can provide like crabs from the Tetralia genus)

never use two different bacteria for your tank, different strains of bacteria from the same species gonna compete with each other and make a problem.

I highly suggest you add natural sand with the 1mm grain size I prefer and for starting inject some ml of your bacteria into different parts of the sand bed, if you see bubbles coming out of your sand bed months later, it means you did it right and enough, if not do it again

my choice for bacteria AquaVitro "Seed"

Healthy microbiome = a healthy reef tank

 

[Cell]

How stable was your alk over time? Any swings?

 

[1Matthew]

Never had an all swing, levels have been pretty stable. That’s why I’m restarting the tank because it would take way too much time to figure out the cause of the issue when I already have a mature tank that is just waiting for some coral.