Stn/rtn possible tank crashing help needed

Katrina71

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I would suspect it was your new line running to the outside before anything else.
 
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Min

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I would suspect it was your new line running to the outside before anything else.
I disconnected it today just in case, but I ran the line thru a container filled with activated carbon. My apartment complex also usually notifies us if they're going to be doing any spraying/maintenance. I hope that was it and everything sorts itself out though.
 

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Yeah I have close to 100 acros all over the tank & in a frag section in my sump. How would you seperate them? I don't have another system setup but might be able to setup something basic/smaller. Or did you mean to just remove/throw away the dying ones?
You do not need a new setup for the time being get all the healthy acros that WERE NOT fragged due to rtn and place them in the right side of the tank with 2 inches apart in every acro and on the right side put all the acros that WERE fragged duse to rtn. And get coral rx and start dipping the ones that you fragged due to rtn
 

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bump ;)
 

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As I can see, without much digging, I do notice that you run a few extremely suspicious supplements that have been experienced a lot of times when bacteria diseases did break out as in your case.

Please read the WitchHazel RTN/STN post again, which I recently updated and pasted here for your convenience.
I can clearly see you are not following the rules as outlined, hence no success again this disease, you're fueling the tank with the worst ingredients actually.

Here the copy and paste in the next post, it may be deleted by Admins, but you know where to find it on Facebook in my profile on June13th, 2019 ;-)
 

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Copy and paste, hope it helps:


Post UPDATED at the Bottom on - 06/24/2020
Attention Reefing community!
I need you to help and share this post wherever possible to get more support on this subject!
Potential candidate against the battle of RTN/STN/Cyano been found!
Need more folks trying this if brave enough since it’s all on your own risk against this issue.
Read carefully:
As many have seen in the beginning of this year I was facing a severe RTN/STN outbreak.
Long story short, there was a culprit in my tank that contributed to the health of the corals likely leading to this outbreak. I posted a lot of microscopic evidence that led to the assumption that there was a bacterial outbreak responsible for the TN. In an attempt of desperation at the end, I used a dip of Witch Hazel to clean the infected corals with a very good survival rate, but corals tend to get reinfected in the tank, and I wasn’t really brave enough to perform a tank treatment with Witch Hazel.
However, with resolving the real culprit of excessive carbonic acids and resulting low PH below 7.8 in the morning, I took some corrective actions and performed some changes on the system which made the corals then resistant and healthy enough to overcome the bacterial infections.
Anyways, I never had the chance (was not really brave enough) to perform a real Tank Treatment with Witch Hazel at the time I had the large outbreak. However there were other people which did do perform this as a Tank treatment with apparently great success.
They were reporting that a Tank Treatment of daily 20ml per 100G were done over the duration of 4-6 days. The results were that interestingly Cyano patches started to disappear which is a great indication that Witch Hazel works against parasitic/pathogenic bacteria in the marine tank.
Last week I saw one minor patch of debris in the middle of a colony that seemed to cause STN around this spot. So I took the Witch Hazel bottle and dosed 20ml per 100Gallon in the evening after light turned off for 5 days. I observed that a minor Cyano spot deteriorated and disappeared by now and the TN spot on the colony shows re-encrusting already!
Under the microscope I did observe that Witch Hazel reduces bacterial count on infected corals, but unsure how much it does affect the bacteria biology in the tank!
So I would love to get peoples feedback, who else has done Tank treatments with Witch Hazel and report your findings on my Facebook profile main post, this was shared from.
If anyone is desperate enough to try this as well, on his own tank, on his own risk ,here are my comments concerning the battle against TN by use of Witch Hazel :
Dose Witch Hazel into the tank after lights are out, daily 20ml per 100G has been done by myself, up to you. Treatments of 4-6 days have been performed. Skimmer does not get affected so far, invertebrates, clams, fish and corals did not show any adverse effects. Actually many corals seem to open up much better next day after first treatment. T.N Dickinson’s Blue label Witch Hazel was used in all treatments, available in grocery stores, do not use other brands or products as substitute.
Avoid any Amino Acids during the battle, this will fuel pathogens!
Avoid the use of Reef Spec carbon, apparently it’s too powerful and will strip too much nutrients that the good bacteria need at the time the battle occurs.
Dose probiotic bacteria, such as Dr.Tim Eco Balance or Biodigest or both! Plenty of other products out there. Avoid other bacteria food for a while. They may fuel the pathogens during an outbreak.
UPDATE: Best results I heard was with the use of BioDigest.
PH shall not be lower than 7.8 in the morning, otherwise you have excessive acid issue. Use better aeration and co2 scrubbers to keep PH naturally up, don’t Bandaid with Kalkwasser or increased ALK levels, that doesn’t really make the carbonic acids disappear!
The "Reef Moonshiner Handbook" has a troubleshooting section that talks about low PH tanks and can be a helpful read against the battle of RTN/STN.
Keep temperature lower than normal. Ideally 76-78 which usually does not cause issues.
Maintain overall Reef chemistry as stable as possible, perform ICP to see if any trace elements are depleted. That is extremely important. Personally I recommend the ATI ICP test.
A lot of times the Reef Moonshiner's community did show lot of evidence that depleted Barium and Bromine levels also were noticed in majority of tanks where these depletions occured, noticed in my case as well!
I strongly recommend to look into the Reef Moonshiner trace element dosing method, that nowadays comes with a ICP test assessment tool and dosing calculation tool that does all the brainwork for you, at the end this tool simply tells you how much solution is required and how to dose it.
Download and start simply with reading the Reef Moonshiner Handbook. Websearch and download it. Can't hurt!
https://andremueller.e-junkie.com/product/1620933/Reef-Moonshiner26230393Bs-Handbook
So with this post, I hope I can spread the word and receive feedback of failure or success.
Let’s hope for the best!!!
Here another informative copy and paste, I did posted few times, maybe a good info:
RTN/STN/CYANO resolution !!!
Unfortunately there is no magic juice that can be simply poured into the tank to resolve the STN/RTN issues in a tank.
From all the microscopic evidence I have published, even while not peer reviewed and not replicated in comparable experiments, it seems to me personally that there are pathogenic bacteria attacking the coral tissue, leading to the loss of the symbiotic relationship between coral and tissue.
Very clearly it seems that infected corals that are weak, can’t self defense themselves to overcome the infection and the disease will spread.
Numerous experiments under timely pressure with all sort of dewormers, disinfecting dips, Hydrogen peroxide, Corals dips, Antibiotic treatments, do show partially positive effects however the reinfection rate is pretty high if the corals or frags are remain in the tank where the real culprit resides still.
The most important thing is to resolve the environmental issue in the tank that led to the coral or tissue weakening fact!
From experience, the most times it is a matter of one or a combination of the below issues:
Trace Elements or Element is depleted to extremely low levels or excessive high and it looks that a depleted trace is worse than an excessive element.
I use to manage the entire Reef Chemistry with the Reef Moonshiner method, which elements are not available in your country, however the method you actually could apply worldwide.
Join the Reef Moonshiner support Group on facebook and read up the so called Reef Moonshiners LITE method post, which gives you a quick and dirty summary of this method. Products and ICP tests I believe are available in your country too
1f609.png

Biology out of whack, means there is an issue with the Nutrients out of balance which goes back to a screwed up diversity of bacteria families. I have published an ebook “Andres Reef Guide Part 1” which talks and covers a lot of the issues on the biology for beginners and even pro reefer for a better understanding and possible solutions what to do in these cases.
Indications of problems are that either PO4 or No3 are high on one end and low on the other, or if any of them are at zero for a longer period of time which is causing an issue too.
Also I do see quite often where people have an issue with excessive carbonic acids, leading to low PH, leading to low O2 levels, due to insufficient degassing of the modern and silent Reef tank systems.
Using simply Kalkwasser or Soda ash to artificially resolve the low PH is not really resolving the issue of excessive Co2 in the water, it’s really only shifting and painting the problem away. However the excessive carbonic acids are still in the tank, even while the PH is then in an acceptable range of not lower than 7.8/7.85 in the morning. A tank that is not supplemented with KW or Soda ash and with sufficient degassing and limited Co2 introduction on the gas intake side, will start with a PH of 7.9 in the morning and has a strong PH increase until the late afternoon as soon the light comes on!
This is an indication of a healthy balance of Co2 concentration. A lot of times the gas exchange through the surface is negative impacted by high Co2 levels in the house, which makes the degassing difficult to achieve
1f609.png
However there are many ways and unfortunately sometimes multiple ways at the same time needed to achieve this goal.
Excessive carbonic acids is the worst influencing factor for TN issues.
High bacteria count is partially a result of the above factors. With high bacteria count of the good bacteria, also the bad pathogens are thriving
1f609.png

I see a lot of folks doing far too much carbohydrates into their tanks to manage low nutrients, which at some point affect the bacteria that causing the outbreak of the disease.
Also other bacteria fuels should be avoided while struggling with TN issues, such as avoidance of Amino acids, Vitamins, Carbohydrates temporarily until the tank is back on track for while.
Keep refreshing bacteria diversity during TN with products like Prodibio Biodigest for example.
Stability is important of mayor traces such as Alkalinity, Calcium and Magnesium. If Alk, Salinity for example changes quickly, that simply causes stress, which at the end is weakening the corals.
If then any of the above factors are the case then, this will be enough to cause the final outbreak, even while the corals were doing fine for long time. It’s just the “enough is enough” reaction from the corals will then be experienced. So try to avoid drastic Alk or Salinity changes, do things slowly in both directions to keep the stress level low.
Many people blame an Alk spike, but the other random environment issues were the real culprit, which without it, the corals would have no issues with the Alk spike!
Keep temperatures low temporarily. With lower temperatures the pathogens do worse than the good bacteria. That is a fact that medical and science knows very well.
Simply drop the tank temperature daily by 1 Fahrenheit / 1 Celsius to get down to 76/77 Fahrenheit to reduce the pathogenic bacteria activity and population rate.
That is a helpful action in the battle against TN.
Allow max aeration on skimmers! That goes back to the low PH issue that many have.
Simply allow the max amount of air going into the skimmer, clean the air diffusor as often as possible to remove the salt creep in the diffusor!
I always tell people a simple trick to avoid a potential air inlet reduction caused by salt creep of up to 30-40% within 48 hours on the skimmer (proven on many skimmers with Flow meters) by simply turning off the skimmer for a minute, multiple times a day via a control system or timer, that will allow to flood the diffusor with water, and get flushed away when the skimmer turns back on!
Then remove stupid silencers to allow more airflow and use Phosban reactors filled with Soda lime or pelletized carbon for silencing instead.
Keep the skimmer clean!
Then also do not hesitate to reduce the light intensity slightly during TN, that helps the corals to recover a bit better.
Dip frags in Witch Hazel if you have it available or Coral dips, but don’t expect a full healing, if the tank culprit is not resolved.
I think this is the high level summary I can recommend you to start to get your tank back on track.
Your tank is sick, likely because of your actions and setup the way it is.
Hard to accept sometimes, but Reef systems are sensitive pieces of nature, which we try to replicate in a few weeks time, what mommy nature took millions of years to create
1f609.png

UPDATE:
Please also read the post from September 11th 2019 !!!!
There the reasons behind TN are better explained which also explains the defense mechanism of corals partially. Then things make much more sense.
Summary of recommended procedure:
20ml Witchhazel per 100Gallon for 7-10 days in the evening
ICP test as per Reef Moonshiner method to ensure nothing is critically depleted. See above Barium/Bromine issues
Temp to be 77 and not higher
Lowest PH not lower than 7.8 in the morning, see notes above on this subject.
Avoid Aminos and carbohydrates for the time of treatment
Keep everything running as usual
Be aware that the Witchhazel will depress the higher level of the PH a bit so for the time during treatment the higher PH will be slightly lower.
Biodigest with 3-4 times the manufacturers recommendation on the first day, then normal amount every other day. Continue the BioDigest biweekly as maintenance, that's what I do with improved biology results and barely issues with Cyano, Dino etc. and all that other annoying stuff
1f609.png

Frag Dip in Hazel were done with 5ml on 1 Liter tank water for 30 minutes. Corals have however high risk of infection.
I may write up a more current summary of this subject soon in the Reef Moonshiner Handbook troubleshooting section or here on Facebook.
Reef on,
Andre
 

Katrina71

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Yeah, this is my thought. If nothing else, he probably had a big pH swing. May have been enough to irritate things and set it off.
I've had 2 mini crashes at the onset of heat coming on in the fall. Now I take measures to ward it off.
 
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I had been keeping an eye on my ph before/after running the airline outside and noticed no change, it stayed between 8.1 and 8.3 which is what my normal values are but I did disconnect it yesterday.

Also stopped adding aminos/other supplements minus alk/cal/mag yesterday. I have been testing my alk/cal daily since my issues started and haven't noticed a drop in consumption, it has stayed between 8.0-8.3dkh and 400-420ppm. I suppose that is a good thing, it means the corals are still consuming alk/cal? I test alk almost daily and everything else anywhere from once a week to several times a week, I keep a logbook and have not had any major changes/spikes since I started this tank up.

I will try lowering the temp by one degree/day for the next few days till I hit 77.

I also setup a seperate tank and put anything that had rtn there after cutting off any dead tissue.

Andre, are you saying that I should use the witch hazel as a dip or dose my tank with it? I did try it as a dip but noticed no difference with the rate of rtn/stn, have also tried coralrx dip. I'm not sure I feel safe dosing my tank with the witch hazel, have you dosed your tank with it? I don't have any prodibio biodigest but i have a bottle of dr Tim's eco-balance, I use half the recommended amount with every water change which is 15% weekly. I also kept on carbon dosing when I started using your program because your manual said "The Moonshiner method is intended to manage the Reef Chemistry with the focus on Trace elements and can be used along with any method that is applied to reduce nutrients.", so I figured it would be ok. I'm not trying to say that using your program or anything related is the cause of my issues, I am sorry if that's how it came across as. In the 2 months I've been trying it out my colors and growth seem to be much better than normal and I plan on continuing to use it.

I don't feel that it is a issue with my ph or anything I'm able to test for with what I have, all the corals look good as far as color/pe and inflating/opening up (i have clams, sps, lps, ps and nps gorgonians, mushrooms/softies and they all look good/happy). Just random sps corals that look good one day are starting to rtn (so far just acros and a stylo). I don't know if this helps or not but the rtn always starts from the outer rim of the base and moves towards the branches and then the tips. It has never started from the tips or the body.

I sent off a icp test last week and am waiting on the results, the last time I used this company it took them a month to get me my results, hopefully they're quicker this time around and it sheds some light on what is going on.
 

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glad to hear 2nd tank,keep us updated..best wishes
 

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I had been keeping an eye on my ph before/after running the airline outside and noticed no change, it stayed between 8.1 and 8.3 which is what my normal values are but I did disconnect it yesterday.

Also stopped adding aminos/other supplements minus alk/cal/mag yesterday. I have been testing my alk/cal daily since my issues started and haven't noticed a drop in consumption, it has stayed between 8.0-8.3dkh and 400-420ppm. I suppose that is a good thing, it means the corals are still consuming alk/cal? I test alk almost daily and everything else anywhere from once a week to several times a week, I keep a logbook and have not had any major changes/spikes since I started this tank up.

I will try lowering the temp by one degree/day for the next few days till I hit 77.

I also setup a seperate tank and put anything that had rtn there after cutting off any dead tissue.

Andre, are you saying that I should use the witch hazel as a dip or dose my tank with it? I did try it as a dip but noticed no difference with the rate of rtn/stn, have also tried coralrx dip. I'm not sure I feel safe dosing my tank with the witch hazel, have you dosed your tank with it? I don't have any prodibio biodigest but i have a bottle of dr Tim's eco-balance, I use half the recommended amount with every water change which is 15% weekly. I also kept on carbon dosing when I started using your program because your manual said "The Moonshiner method is intended to manage the Reef Chemistry with the focus on Trace elements and can be used along with any method that is applied to reduce nutrients.", so I figured it would be ok. I'm not trying to say that using your program or anything related is the cause of my issues, I am sorry if that's how it came across as. In the 2 months I've been trying it out my colors and growth seem to be much better than normal and I plan on continuing to use it.

I don't feel that it is a issue with my ph or anything I'm able to test for with what I have, all the corals look good as far as color/pe and inflating/opening up (i have clams, sps, lps, ps and nps gorgonians, mushrooms/softies and they all look good/happy). Just random sps corals that look good one day are starting to rtn (so far just acros and a stylo). I don't know if this helps or not but the rtn always starts from the outer rim of the base and moves towards the branches and then the tips. It has never started from the tips or the body.

I sent off a icp test last week and am waiting on the results, the last time I used this company it took them a month to get me my results, hopefully they're quicker this time around and it sheds some light on what is going on.
Yes, I did the Witch Hazel from TN.Dickinson, the brand and picture from my FB post to be used.
I have seen many others doing it, also the Pope of Reefing followed it ;-)
Anyways, the tank treatment did show mostly high success rates, while the other requirements have been fullfilled.

Something at the end did lead to your outbreak, I assume a lot of time the filtration system need too much carbohydrates in many setup and the Aminos in addition do fuel the pathogenic bacteria.
No real understanding from anyone on this but it appears as long the bacteria are in the tank and are thriving you can't get the corals healthy enough to withstand an infection.
 
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Update:

Recieved my icp test which showed nothing abnormal/out of range, several others corals started to rtn during that time.

I started dipping all affected corals in ampicillin, 500mg/250 ml after reading about others having success with this method. It has completely stopped rtn in its tracks and I have dipped everything else that I could as a preventative measure. I don't want to jinx myself but I think that has fixed whatever was wrong, several frags that never showed much pe before are starting to have their polyps out a noticeable amount. Corals that had rtn stopped and hasn't progressed further. Haven't had anything else start to rtn in the past 24 hours, previously I would have atleast 2 - 3 daily with the whole piece going within 12 - 48 hours depending on size.
 

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Update:

Recieved my icp test which showed nothing abnormal/out of range, several others corals started to rtn during that time.

I started dipping all affected corals in ampicillin, 500mg/250 ml after reading about others having success with this method. It has completely stopped rtn in its tracks and I have dipped everything else that I could as a preventative measure. I don't want to jinx myself but I think that has fixed whatever was wrong, several frags that never showed much pe before are starting to have their polyps out a noticeable amount. Corals that had rtn stopped and hasn't progressed further. Haven't had anything else start to rtn in the past 24 hours, previously I would have atleast 2 - 3 daily with the whole piece going within 12 - 48 hours depending on size.
Keep us in the loop and how it looks like down the road. Frags with Ampicillin treatment in that range before got reinfected after a while in the tank.
Wish you luck.
 

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Update:

Recieved my icp test which showed nothing abnormal/out of range, several others corals started to rtn during that time.

I started dipping all affected corals in ampicillin, 500mg/250 ml after reading about others having success with this method. It has completely stopped rtn in its tracks and I have dipped everything else that I could as a preventative measure. I don't want to jinx myself but I think that has fixed whatever was wrong, several frags that never showed much pe before are starting to have their polyps out a noticeable amount. Corals that had rtn stopped and hasn't progressed further. Haven't had anything else start to rtn in the past 24 hours, previously I would have atleast 2 - 3 daily with the whole piece going within 12 - 48 hours depending on size.
And please share the ICP result please, like to have a look at it.
 

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still here!following.:cool:
 
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