Me vs. SPS God

this is me

I like turtles
BRS Member
Just saying..
SPS.JPG
 
Okay. Some context. My tank has been doing extremely well. Frags are growing and fish are all healthy. And I barely have to do anything except feeding the fish since I run a continuous water change and a carx. I thought I was a reef god.
Then a couple weeks ago, I started to notice some STN on some acros. Didn’t think much about it. Today, I’m seeing a lot more severe stn on a couple colonies. I don’t even know where to start! These were started from 1” frags.
443C739A-5773-4D66-8964-759C9CC3047D.jpeg
 
I mean cmon!
I’ve also been very lazy to clean the glass lately. Too lazy to test the water. Too lazy to pull out the stn colony. I’m just gonna say f*** it.
DDB8122B-2AFF-44B9-9366-23F1C0494F3E.jpeg

E917CD48-6740-4190-9A7F-AF3A5EFAF648.jpeg
 
I just pointed it out to the wife and she said “eh, it’s just a few casualties”.
 
There's been some buzz about dosing witch-hazel for rtn/stn issues with some good success.

Some links:
 
Sorry to see the sps god do that to you. My tank had something similar several months back - killed every acro and montipora in my tank, including several fairly large, old colonies, over the course of months, one coral at a time. My guess is that reef gods occasionally manifest themselves as very toxic dinoflaggelates.
 
I don't think I have dino. What you see on the sand is coraline. Yes. I have coraline on the sand.
The algae grows on the dead issue of the acro also.
I have to do some testing this weekend and clean out some stuff. I usually run into this problem when the frags grow into colony in almost all of my tank. Some will die off and the rest will grow. It's like the tank has reach its capacity or something.
 
I feel your pain. I knocked a bali green slimer frag into a Stylophora colony. Touched for maybe a minute before I noticed, and now a branch of the Stylophora is shedding tissue today. Thinking about cutting, but the branch is very thick and I know I'm going to make a mess. Super glue? hmm.

Oh well! Keep things stable and see if it heals I guess.
 
I usually run into this problem when the frags grow into colony in almost all of my tank. Some will die off and the rest will grow. It's like the tank has reach its capacity or something.
Maybe they don’t like the combo of more shading and locally less flow at the internal polyps? Hard to address those though

STN very likely to have a microbial pathogen component, maybe soon we’ll get better probiotics sorted out to address that part.

Anyone tried an antibiotic dip to arrest STN? Ampicillin worked to arrest white band disease in at least one paper
 
Last edited:
By all means, the coral growth is spectacular to me since I last saw the tank. Sometimes reef god just wants to keep us on our toes and keeping the hobby interesting.
 
I had a mini crash when I changed the Chemipure Elite in my media basket. Now I'm afraid to even change the filter floss. The SPS gods can be cruel.
 
Upcoming Events

April 21, 2024
Paul B
Club Meeting

Back
Top