daelie
Active Member
First, a quick backstory on the tank. It's been running for over a year now and I've had good growth in most of my sps and generally I can buy a brown sps or pale white sps and get it colored up in a few weeks, but last week I came home to one of my favorite SPS RTN'ing from the base up. Alk has been rock solid around 7-7.2 for months. I keep nitrates in the 2.5-5 ppm range and try to feed twice a day to make sure I never bottom out phosphates as well.
A side view of a few corals in the tank:
Everything has been growing well and I grew this from a tiny frag into what was my last picture before the RTN event.
and top down
I'm not 100% sure what caused the RTN, as this is the only SPS in the tank that's been affected (that I know of) at this point. I'll probably never figure out the case, as I did a full round of tests the day it happened, when the base was completely gone and peeling about 1.5 inches up.
Alk - 7.28
Nitrates - 2.5
Phosphorous - 7 ppb
Mag - 1400
Cal - 440
Potassium - 390
I didn't take any pictures because I was a little busy fragging the colony above the RTN in hopes that I could save it. The following day, all 3 of the frags looked even worse with the two full fleshed frags having lost almost everything in the span of me sleeping. At this point I thought everything was lost and by the end of the day it was going to be completely gone on all 3 frags, so I decided to grab an antibacterial and do a heavy dosage dip on all 3 frags right then, because I had nothing to lose so I didn't care how harsh it might end up being. I had seen it somewhere (I would love to give credit where credit it due), but I couldn't find the thread again.
I expected to wake up the following day and everything be gone, but to my surprise the frags hadn't lost any more flesh since the dip. Now, by no means do the frags look good, but at the rate they were losing the flesh, this had been slightly encouraging.
Here's two of the frags, where it seems the RTN actually stopped dead in its tracks after one dip in Furan-2. You can even see some of the polyps that are left extending. I dipped again the second day with the same dose for twice the amount of time.
It's now been 8 days since the RTN, and 7 since the initial dip. Still the frags haven't worsened, though they are starting to get some algae growth on the bare skeleton, which I've been blowing off every day. At some point I'll have to try to frag what's still left, though fragging the one piece that almost has single polyps could be a nightmare. I really have no idea how to proceed with the frags the way they currently are minus clearing the algae to the best of my ability.
Hopefully these frags can somehow pull through, and while it's only 1 single instance of me doing it, maybe it'll work for someone else down the road as I do pray I never have to do this sort of thing again. It's still very very early but at this point I'm hopeful whereas I was completely dejected about a week ago.
I wouldn't recommend such a thing until I had seen it succeed more than a few times, but if you are down to your last resort, it could be something to try.
A side view of a few corals in the tank:
Everything has been growing well and I grew this from a tiny frag into what was my last picture before the RTN event.
and top down
I'm not 100% sure what caused the RTN, as this is the only SPS in the tank that's been affected (that I know of) at this point. I'll probably never figure out the case, as I did a full round of tests the day it happened, when the base was completely gone and peeling about 1.5 inches up.
Alk - 7.28
Nitrates - 2.5
Phosphorous - 7 ppb
Mag - 1400
Cal - 440
Potassium - 390
I didn't take any pictures because I was a little busy fragging the colony above the RTN in hopes that I could save it. The following day, all 3 of the frags looked even worse with the two full fleshed frags having lost almost everything in the span of me sleeping. At this point I thought everything was lost and by the end of the day it was going to be completely gone on all 3 frags, so I decided to grab an antibacterial and do a heavy dosage dip on all 3 frags right then, because I had nothing to lose so I didn't care how harsh it might end up being. I had seen it somewhere (I would love to give credit where credit it due), but I couldn't find the thread again.
I expected to wake up the following day and everything be gone, but to my surprise the frags hadn't lost any more flesh since the dip. Now, by no means do the frags look good, but at the rate they were losing the flesh, this had been slightly encouraging.
Here's two of the frags, where it seems the RTN actually stopped dead in its tracks after one dip in Furan-2. You can even see some of the polyps that are left extending. I dipped again the second day with the same dose for twice the amount of time.
It's now been 8 days since the RTN, and 7 since the initial dip. Still the frags haven't worsened, though they are starting to get some algae growth on the bare skeleton, which I've been blowing off every day. At some point I'll have to try to frag what's still left, though fragging the one piece that almost has single polyps could be a nightmare. I really have no idea how to proceed with the frags the way they currently are minus clearing the algae to the best of my ability.
Hopefully these frags can somehow pull through, and while it's only 1 single instance of me doing it, maybe it'll work for someone else down the road as I do pray I never have to do this sort of thing again. It's still very very early but at this point I'm hopeful whereas I was completely dejected about a week ago.
I wouldn't recommend such a thing until I had seen it succeed more than a few times, but if you are down to your last resort, it could be something to try.
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