RTN help

[Jill & Brian]

I am experiencing some tissue loss on a number of my SPS corals over the past week. It started on a purple montiproa digita that had grown up from a small encrusted frag to a 3-4" colony. This piece was 90% gone within one day with all of the polyps schlofing off and floating away. Over the last two days, I have seen some tissue loss on my two pink millipora frags, and a small area on the edge of my purple cap. I have been running carbon and skimming heavily since the first loss, but all of my sps corals are loosing color, and are showing signs of stress.

I also have some brown zooanthids that were on a rock with orange and yellow zoos. The orange and yellow ones are thriving, but the brown ones seem to be dying off, like the orange and yellow are choking them out.

All of my other zoos, trees, xenia, candy cane and 2 hammer colonies are doing good, although the LPS seem a little retracted from their normal levels.


I had a Major change to the system by adding a basement sump / fuge. This created a bit of a sand storm when the fuge was brought online. The tank was cloudy with detrius and sand for a little less than one day total. It has been clear since 7/10.

At this point what should I do? Would some large water changes help?

Parameters:
Nitrates - Barely detectable using a test strip
Nitrites / Ammonia - 0
S.G. - 1.026
CA - 430
dKh - 8.0
PH - 7.8 - 7.9 (has always been in this range)

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[skyedolphan]

HI BriaN sorry to hear about this but will say not totally unexpected any major change seems to bring out the worse in our corals was your added water for the sump at the same temp and salinity and ph as the rest of the system temp flunctuations in the summer are a major PITA on our corals at this point Continue with what you are doing but I would do a few small water changes also making sure the water is as close to your system as possible also any thing that is starting to RTN take it out and frag or frag from within I usually go a few cm. into the safe tissue when fragging use a turkey baster to get anything floating around if you do it in system you will have small frags for a while but they grow out fast enough and usually if left to their own they will just completely succumb to the RTN ( allthough I have had quite a few that pulled threw and regrew over dead tissue )HTH some

 

[Jill & Brian]

Thanks Dawn,

The purple digita was the hardest hit, and it has a couple of arms that did not go. It has been a week and they are still there. I am hopint that they will re grow over some of the dead skeleton. I did break off all of the dead arms

The two pink milli's are tiny, so fragging them may not be possible. I think I will be able to get one of them, because it is only affecting one of 3 small arms.

Thanks for the support, i have my fingers crossed.

 

[Greg Hiller]

>I had a Major change to the system by adding a basement sump / fuge. This created a bit of a sand storm when the fuge was brought online. The tank was cloudy with detrius and sand for a little less than one day total. It has been clear since 7/10. <

I think you explained the cause. SPS really don't like sand storms. I would have thought the RTN would have happened sooner after the sand storm than many days later. You don't mention your temperature. Is it possible that it's getting above 82F? It's been VERY hot the last few days, with high humidity which decreases the rate of cooling due to evaporation.

 

[Jill & Brian]

Greg, the first RTN happened within 2 days of the sand storm on the digita. The Millipora have been more recent.

The temp has been between 80 and 82 every time I have checked the tank in the past few days. I have an air conditioner oin the living room with the tank, but the basement has been unusually hot during this last heat wave. It is possible that the temp has spiked in the past couple of days, but not more than 83 or 84 in the middle of the day.

The tissue loss on the milipora is starting at the tips rather than at the base. Is this at all significant?

Thanks,
Brian

 

[gordonzoo]

Your pram's look Ok for the most part. Is your salinity checked with a swing arm? I had three swing arms and all three were off by a bunch from my refract. I don?t think they hold calibration well in the higher salinities. Anyway if nothing else has changed but the sump addition its most likely the sump. Is there a chance the sump or plumbing may have had a chemical residue of sorts?

 

[Jill & Brian]

I am using a swing arm, but my salinity has been consitant with it. I checked it against my LFS refractometer, and it is .002 off, so I read 1.028, and I have an actual salinity of 1.026. Either way, it did not change when I added the sump.

I hope it wasn't any chemical residue, and I hope tha carbon takes care of most of it if there is.

 

[Chuck Spyropulos]

2 things that pop out to me are :

1. the temperature spike could have started the RTN
2. your alkalinity is out of balance with your calcium...try bringing alk up to around 10.
Low alkalinity, or more likely, a fast reduction in alkalinity caused STN in my tank a while back.

 

[Jill & Brian]

Thanks Chuck, I added a fan to the sump yesterday to try to keep things more stable. The 95 degree weather is killing me even with the sump in the basement and the tank room Air conditioned. The temp did not rise above 83 yesterday even in the thick of the heat though. I think if I mention a chiller I will get kicked out of the house

I have been trying to slowly bring the alkilinity up, I will get it up to 10 this week.

I did notice on my pink millipora that one of the pieces is only loosing tissue where it is close to the blue/purple millipora. I am now thinking that there is fighting going on there that is causing the Tissue damage. I am going to try moving the pink to another rock. I fragged back the dead areas of the other pink guy last night and I hope he pulls through.

On a positive note, the colors seem to be coming back, and the polyps are starting to show again on all of the live areas !!