Corals dying

[matt]

I posted this on both Shimek's and Eric Borneman's forum, without much luck in the way of responses. For the past month or so, most of my acros, including my two large millipora colonies, have been bleaching, retracting polyps, and generally dying away. I'm afraid I may lose all my SPS corals. The most likely cause, according to Shimek, is the nasty flatworm outbreak I've had. So, I treated with Flatworm Exit, twice, have changed a lot of water, ran carbon, but things still look very bad. Cyano is overtaking several of the frags, and even my caulerpa is not growing. I can't seem to figure this one out; water parameters that I can test for are fine. I have not done an accurate copper test, but that's next. I don't have any soft corals, so I don't think chemical warfare is a factor. The only thing I can think of that the flatworms, and subsequent treatments, may have decimated my sandbed population, leaving my tank unable to both feed the corals, and process the tank waste. (I feed the corals a few times a week with homemade seafood mush ala Borneman) Ca, alk, ph, nitrate, phosphate, salinity, temp are all well within normal rates, I haven't changed my lighting, water movement is okay. The funny thing is that my LPS coral seem totally unaffected.

Any ideas?

[captexas]

Matt -
Sorry to hear you are going through this. I had the same exact thing happen back when I had my 58g set up. Only my SPS corals seemed to be affected, other corals were fine. I also treated for flatworms, but don't remember the time frame in which things happened so I can't say if that was a factor or not. Maybe there is something about the toxins the flatworms give off upon death or something in the chemical treatment that causes a very slow death to the corals. I don't know what it is, but something causes the corals to expel their zooxanthellae and then die not long afterwards.

[SueT]

Matt, I have been going through the exact same thing with the exception of flatworms. I have worried, cried, and flat out wanted to toss everything out as this has progressed. I finally emailed Mike Paletta as he has helped me so much in the past.

His first email back hit the nail on the head. My ecosystem mud bed had died and so was not transporting any nutrients out, only leaching toxins into the tank. My sps die off was exactly like yours. I ended up removing the mud bed and added a skimmer, which I'm sure you already have, and have done numerous water changes. Mike also told me that I "had" to get some ROWAphos to run in a canister filter to take the phosphates out. Mine also tested out at undetectable.

Mike said that was to be expected. I am running my ROWAphos in just a filter sock and underneath my skimmer outflow tubes. It went in 48 hours ago and I cannot believe the difference in this short of time. ROWAphos is supposed to be the next big thing in reefkeeping. I know lots are using it and especially with sps corals. So far I'm a believer. Also my clams are not affected and neither are the fish, just sps.

Hope things get better for you, I know how it hurts.

[reefer]

i feed my corals once a week, sometimes twice (if that). the fish get fed once every other week. i do dose with kent's coral vite and accel everyother day, along with a few other elements.

i read an article sometime ago, about a marine biologist who was studing how coral reefs get their food. one thing the mb was trying to figure out, was were the nutirents came from since coral reefs are not considered nutrient rich. to summerise, what the mb did discover, and describes how coral reefs are feed by large cold underwater waves from deep in the ocean, but these large waves didn't occur very often.

i don't see how you can keep your water parameters in check by feeding so often, and imo, is part of your problem.

i just read suet's post, and i think if you follow her advice, you should be able to recover your tank.
hth!
8)

[::pete::]

As for the RowaPhos there is a cheaper alternative and Im sure you know. I just ordered one of these (Phosban Reactor) (http://www.northcoastmarines.com/SPECIALS.htm) instead of just throwing it in mesh and the sump. Hope it all works out.

http://www.northcoastmarines.com/pics/NEWReactorCMYK.JPG

[captexas]

Neat little canister. I ordered a HOT Magnum canister filter (about the same price as the Phosban Reactor if purchased online) to basically do the same thing after I had my problem many months ago. I used it to run carbon and phosphate remover. My tank never showed any signs of phosphates when tested, but the test kit isn't all that great to begin with.

[matt]

Reefer, I can feed my tank heavily because I have a pretty powerful skimmer; I rely on it to remove all sorts of junk, which it does. I'm going to try the rowaphos; as far as the reactor goes, I'll look into it. Sure doesn't look to be anything I couldn't make fairly easily.

Sue, what you're saying about the dead sand bed makes a lot of sense; there are very few worm trails in my sand, and I'm afraid the flatworm treatment decimated alot of the sand bed fauna. I did treat for flatworms once before, about 6 months ago. Since i did a double treatment this time, that's ALOT of flatworm exit in the system. I think I'll do a couple of 50% water changes, and get a 100 lot of worms and some more infauna from inland. Money, money...

Thanks!

[SueT]

There is a reason the Phosban is cheaper. The better of the 2 products is the ROWAphos. I was going to go the Phosban way and was told that the better is ROWAphos by Mike Paletta. He told me I would see the difference and I'll never do anything the cheaper way again. Luckily in my ecosump there is a ledge that my carbon fits in as does my ROWAphos bag too so it looks quite nice and fits as nicely too.

Matt, my mud bed was also like you described. I had freshly planted new caulerpa but couldn't understand why it was not growing. Yeah, it took root but the caulerpa blades did not grow at all. Plus my pods and such were not thriving as they always had. To this day I can only trace back the problem to the calcium reactor that went postal. Mike thinks it burned enough frags/corals to cause the dying to go into the mud bed and not be able to export it out.

[Henry]

i feed my corals once a week, sometimes twice (if that). the fish get fed once every other week.



I cant imagine going that long and not feeding my fish. What type of fish do you have? If I did that with my tangs they would all have pinched stomachs and be in bad health. The longest that I have gone without feeding my fish is 3 days.
IMO I think fish should be fed atleast every other day if not every day.

[Instar]

Matt, I hope you can lick this one. I was not optimistic when I saw your corals. And I did find many protozoans on them too and by now they have multiplied to enormous numbers. There is no doubt that a deep sand bed that dies is going to cause major and potentially leathal trouble. I don't have enough clean cultures to help you or you would be welcome. I can reseed your pods, but, that wouldn't do any good if they can't multiply. I really hope you beat this and save the corals. When the time comes, let me know about reseeding your pods.

[matt]

Sue, when you say your calcium reactor went postal, what exactly are you referring to? My reactor seems to work very well; very stable Ca and alk levels, and my tank ph almost never goes below 8.0, usually 8.1-8.3.

Larry, is there anything I can do about the protozoans?

[MikeP]

Those were spectacular colonies. I'd set up a separate tank , barebottom, lots of flow and just a few pieces of LR and new saltwater for the time being. I'd get the most delicate pieces into as pristine an environment as possible while you troubleshoot the main tank.

Were the flatworms the red acoel kind? I got them a few months back and they are annoying - was thinking about the flatworm exit route but after reading yours and others experiences I am wondering if that might not be the best idea in a predominantly SPS tank.

[Instar]

I don't know, Matt. The corals are pretty stressed at this point. Normally a coral dip will help with that, but, if the protists get into the tissue because its damaged or ailing in some way or injured, I don't think the dip will get past the slime of the coral to be effective. Its more prevention than a cure IMO. I thought you were making progress with all of it? I am seriously cringing at the thought of what is happening in your tank. I think the protozoans are eating the dying or dead parts. If they contribute to more than cleanup, is really hard to say. I saw two kinds basically and am not completely convinced that they will cause the trouble you have all by themselves. More like a secondary, opportunistic things to me. I really am inclined to go for water changes, maybe 10% in the morning and another 10% at night and run carbon, lots of it, change it often to get the toxins out of there. I really am leary of deep sand beds myself. They suck in the nutrients and turn them into raw materials for disaster that are so lethal that one dare not stir the sand bed or move the tank at all. After reaching saturation in a closed system, what then?

There is something that will detox some of the stuff of decomposition called (here I go with the "snake oil" as I am accussed of - but, near and dear to my occupation, I know what enzymes and co-enzymes do) - okay, the stuff is called Bacter Vital, made by Marc Weiss labs in Florida. He also has a sand bed booster. This is a combination of things in addition to bacteria. When my tanks have gotten out of wack, I've used it. Saved my breeder pair of gold stripe maroons without a doubt. The female lost half her side to an open sore one day. She looked like a gonner and I added that and the Reef Vital DNA Premium. Two weeks later that hole that went nearly all the way through her belly was healed up. She has given many successful spawns since then. The point is, when it comes to detox, this stuff works and it might help you when all else has failed. And if your sand bed has died or at least partially because of the flatworm exit, the Bacter Vital will help start things back up again. Like yogurt for you after an intestinal flu. I would still get some live sand starter when you think the water is all cleaned up. Don't know how to handle toxins if they are coming out of the sand bed itself other than a tear down if this doesn't work. Thats a mess for sure. My real concern is that you may be out of time to resolve this. I hope not.

Have you contacted Cubera about this? He may have an idea or put you on to something.

No kidding here - What does the water smell like?

[Instar]

And BTW, responding to an earlier post, there is a huge difference between food and nutrients. Coral reefs may be nutrient poor, but, they are food rich. The two are not the same. Animals need to be fed more than once every 2 weeks, thats for sure. Check with a hatchery or fisheries biologist if there is any doubt.

[Tim Marvin]

I feed my fish at least once sometime 2-3 times per day. Fish can't handle long periods of time between feeding. They have a primative digestive system and process very little of the food. Numerous small feedings will do them much better than one big feeding every couple days. As for my corals they get fed every other day. I do not use mud, rowaphos, or skimmers, and my tanks stay very stable with Kalk drips and refugiums. I do routine maintenance and water changes of 25%-30% per month. I've had single acros die in the past(probably from too much handling), but not entire tanks. While diving the reefs I am still looking for mud, but only sand seems to be there in nature....HMMMMMMM....Perhaps they call it miracle mud because it is a miracle it works at all, or they think it is a miracle they are selling mud. LOL....JK about the mud, I've never tried it.

[DeletedAccount]

What causes the DI to leach stuff into the water? Are you talking about just a bad DI cartridge that needs to be changed? High TDS readings?

[reefer]

if my fish are grazing off the reef, what need do i have to add more food? what purpose is there to overfeed? why provide an extra food source when there is a food source already present to be consumed?
i have a small purple tang, a small goldenspotted rabbit, and a catalina goby in my 125. all my fish appear healthy and very active. all of my clams are opened and looking bewtiful. corals looking great too!


Reefer, I can feed my tank heavily because I have a pretty powerful skimmer; I rely on it to remove all sorts of junk, which it does. this validates my point. what purpose is there to waste soo much, when it just ends up in the skimmer collection cup?


Coral reefs may be nutrient poor, but, they are food rich. The two are not the same
have a read thru this:feeding fish (http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31124) and feeding corals (http://www.thereeftank.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30393)
hth!
8)

[matt]

Feeding heavily and skimming heavily is not wasting food. The fish need to eat daily, and many animals in my tank live off the food that the fish don't get to. Reefer, you have a VERY low fish load compared to my tank, and I suppose if your fish can feed off what they find in the tank, terrific. Mine can't.

Besides, reef water has a lot of suspended food in it, particularly at night. The only way to get this into your aquarium is to put it there, unless you have an enormous refugium, in which case you'd need to feed that. The skimmer just allows me to do this without worrying about excess, uneaten food accumulating in the system. In nature the planktonic food is alive (not decomposing) and swept away with every wave. In a closed system feeding frozen food we don't have those conditions.

MikeP, I'm pretty sure these were the red planaria (sp?) flatworms; red-brown with 3 points on their posterior end. Maybe I can get my old 45 back and set up, but honestly I think I'm going to end up fragging off the living parts of the colonies and starting over on them.

I did another big water change tonight, will order the rowaphos tomorrow, try Larry's Marc Weiss snake-oil, and keep my fingers crossed. I know that adding a large number of healthy bristleworms and other sand bed fauna would help the tank tremendously. Anybody got worms they want to sell? I want ALOT. Hey Misti, if you still have that monstro worm, I'll give it a home.

Larry, I did contact John; he had some suggestions about dealing with the flatworms, and my water smells fine; nothing unusual. In fact, it's real clear and oderless, probably due to the 2 lbs of carbon I'm pushing water through.

[Tim Marvin]

Reefer, if you don't start feeding you fish better they will die of starvation in time. Fish eat constantly in the open ocean and just scavenging around a little pile of rocks, (like our tanks), won't do it. If you have ever looked close at a real reef they are teaming with macroscopic life. Clouds of tiny shrimp that the little tangs and fish are eating. Hopefully yours is finding enough right now, but the diet varies and a combination of frozen, flake, and fresh foods is the key to long healthy lives for our fish.

[Tim Marvin]

Well, I read the articles in the reef tank and it appears most people are feeding every other day over there. I'm sticking with daily.

[reefer]

tim, my fish are fine, i appreciate your concern but i do monitor how food they consume. i don't starve my fish, there is a clip of sea veggies in my tank right now. i placed it in there 3 days ago, and there is still plenty left on the clip.
matt, you're right, i do have a small bioload. and there is a reason for it. having a high bioload in a sps tank is counter productive to health of the sps corals. i saw pics of your skimmer, it looks great, i hope your tank recovers quickly.
peace!
8)

[GaryP]

I just wanted to clarify something that was said earlier in this thread. I'm sure the principal contributors understand this but others may not.

Flatworms release toxic body juices when killed with Flatworm Exit. Depending on the degree of the number of flatworms, these can result in toxic effects to corals, crustaceans, and other organisms in the tank. Treatment with Flatworm Exit is supposed to be followed with an immediate water change, heavy carbon filtration and skimming to remove thses toxins.

I have successfully treated with Flatworm Exit without observing any negative effects on my critters by following this procedure. I'm not sure what happened in Matt's case, but I just wanted it stated that Flatworm Exit is not necessarily a bad product. It is, however, a product that should be used with extreme care and close attention to the directions.

Note: I have some on order now to treat my 75 gal. softie/LPS tank. I'm also doing some experiments with wrasses, looking for a natural predator for a long term solution for flatworm control.

Gary

[Tim Marvin]

Reefer, so your fibbing to us. The tang and rabbit both eat the sea veggies and the gobie is so tiny it can survive on tiny specs of food. So since you have the veggies hanging that means you feed 24/7. Now I'm happy...LOL.....

[Richard]

Gary,
If you don't have success with any wrasses you could try a Velvet Sea slug (Chelidonura varians). Here's an article on them & flatworms...
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/may2002/short.htm

[GaryP]

Richard,

Thank you very much! This is exactly what I have been looking for. I got a yellow coris wrasse from you last week. He seemed to eat a few of flatworms but hasn't really chowed down on them.

Can you get Chelidonura? If so, do you have any idea as to an approx. cost? If so, please PM me.

Thanks,
Gary

[Richard]

LOL...I knew you were going to ask me that. I haven't been able find them for sure yet. I see velvet nudibranchs on suppliers lists but from their descriptions they don't sound like the correct species. I'm going to try a new supplier either this week or next week who claims he can get me anything I want positively indentified. We'll see :roll: ...I'll let you know.

[matt]

Of course I used the flatworm exit after doing ALOT of research on its use. Although there were no immediate fatalities, other than the flatworms, I'm pretty sure the use of this stuff had some deleterious effects on my sand bed population. Also, flatworms release toxins at death regardless of the cause of death; so if you have a very high population, some are bound to die, in which case there will be a low-level presence of their toxin in any heavily infested system.

The nudibranch you're referring to, Chelidonura varians, has a very dismal survial record in aquaria, much less than 5% according to what I've read. When it dies in your tank, guess what comes back with a vengence? I also researched that pretty well, and even heard about the poor success rate from inland aquatics, one of the main vendors of these slugs.

I'm still at a loss to pinpoint any specific cause for my SPS die-off. I do strongly suspect, though, that the root cause has something to do with my sand bed. It's possible I just have too high a fish load, as my tangs have grown significantly, and I added a fairly large copperband butterfly somewhere around the time these problems began. In my 110, I currently have a pair of oscellaris clowns, the butterfly, 2 3" tangs, a large bangaii cardinal, and 4 tiny chromis. Maybe the copperband went after some bristleworms, but I kind of doubt it. I really don't know too much about these fish, other than what Larry told me when we first talked about getting one to decimate my aiptasias, which it certainly did.

[GaryP]

Matt,

I just got a CBB from Larry as well. It has cleaned up the aiptasia that had just about wiped out my sun coral.

I think the problem with Chelidonura is that it has a short life cycle. Its natural life span is only a few months and doesn't breed in captivity.

I wasn't saying that you hadn't done your research Matt. I know you are the type to have planned the treatment to the nth degree. I was just trying to add some information for other users.

Gary

[matt]

Matt,

I think the problem with Chelidonura is that it has a short life cycle. Its natural life span is only a few months and doesn't breed in captivity.

I never heard this, but it would explain the survival rate. It only lives a few months? I think inland has them, if you want to take a chance. If you do, let me know how it works out.

[reefer]

tim, i'm not fibb'n. this clip was empty for a good week or so prior to me adding a small piece of sea-veggies. all i've done is to force (train) the tang and rabbitfish to graze off the rocks, and not expect food to be present in the clip. the sea-veggies are a "treat" for eating the bubble algea that i have on my few of my rocks. the goby has been muching on the little critters that scurry about. i added live brine shrimp to the tank when i first setup the tank back in febuary. i will add some more live brine shrimp sometime this week, this is done as an as needed basis.
8)

[SueT]

Matt, sorry to be so late in getting back to you about the reactor situation I experienced. I had someone set this calcium reactor up at the end of september and it worked great for 3 weeks. I was very impressed and then all heck broke loose. The levels went sky high and I could not throttle them back. During this time I was doing water changes and trying to get the reactor back to normal.

It was finally throttled back to what it runs now at 480ppm and alk. at 13.2. Mike Paletta thinks that the extremely high alk. may have started the entire process of burning some of the corals/frags and with the die off, some thing's in the mud bed died too. So it could very easily have started the mud bed leaching back into the tank before the new year. Or things could have been hanging on for longer and the mud bed dying happened more recently. As for now things can't be traced back to anything more than the reactor instability as my corals/frags were doing fine and my own idea that adding a calcium reactor might get me better growth.

[matt]

Sue, when I read your post my first thought was 'uh-oh' because I've used my aquarium as kind of a tweaking ground for my reactors; constantly trying to get maximum efficiency. But, I don't think I've ever run the tank higher than dkh12 or Ca 460 or so. Then I thought, well, maybe because the corals have not been growing lately, the alk might have spiked due to lower Ca demand. So I checked this morning, and my alk, Ca, and ph levels are right on the money.

The more I think about it, there are 2 or 3 key events that probably contributed to this. 1) I simply did not stock my sand bed aggressively enough, and an order from inland arrived in rough shape, which I never replaced. 2) the flatworm treatments undoubtedly attacked some sand bed life 3) adding a large fish around this time (copperband for aiptasia control) probably pushed extra phosphate into the system.

I'm going to heavily restock my sand bed, if anyone in San Antonio has some bristleworms, I'll buy them. I'd like to add 100 or more small worms in the next few weeks. I'm also probably going to remove a fish or two and some liverock. Then I'll try building up the tank eco-system very slowly over the next several months.

Oh yeah, Sue, it's likely that your reactor went nuts because you lost fine control over the CO2 input. A terrific solution to this is to use the Dwyer flowmeter to control CO2 flow intead of the needle valve that comes standard on aquarium regulators. It's much more reliable. Also, the first few weeks of running a reactor are a bit sensitive; you're adding a lot of CO2 into the tank, which is good for growth IF it's controlled correctly. And something many people forget is that the reactor is recycling tank water, which means that if you raise your Ca and alk over a few days, for example, then the reactor is now adding Ca and carbonate to water that already has higher levels, and already has a lower ph. Thus, it's effect can snowball. It's sort of a balance issue.

[Instar]

I have some small bristle worms and a little live sand I can bring you. Providing I can catch the darn bristle worms. They are always stinging me when I don't want to catch them. I have pure cultures without flat worms of these and a couple different types of pods too. Maybe I can bait some up to one spot where they are easy to scoop up. Do you want to shoot for.. say Thursday evening or Friday. You're money is no good here, its a donation to get you going again. I'd like to find some sand this grain size cause I keep using it to seed other tanks and need some more. Its aragonite about 0.3 to 0.5 mm grain. Not fine like sugar fine or southdown. Its a great sand bed and starter.

I was reading something about too many fish in your tank and had a long reply to that and lost it to fat fingering the keys. Anyway, I have at least as much fish load as you, if not more with two garbage can tangs, the pair of maroons and 4 copperbands that eat a very rich diet and some small fish; And some softies, including leathers too. With export routes, equipment (skimmers, etc) and water maint appropriate, its not a problem so long as maint is proportional and fairly regular IMO. Not really exactly the same as a large leather bio mass. I've had tanks with a lot more than this in them.

[matt]

Larry;

Thursday evening is perfect; thanks!

I think I'm going to frag the two large millipora colonies; save the bases and a few of the healthiest tips, and donate the rest to experienced reefkeepers who would like a shot at bringing these back to life. I will do this on Thursday or Friday evening if anyone is interested in picking up some frags. Obviously, these are not healthy corals and I suggest anyone interested quarantine the frags.