Need Suggestions

[goody]

I am very sad to say that after having my tank up for about a year and a half, I might have to tear it down. For the past month, maybe even a bit longer, I have been battling STN. I've been fragging and regluing pieces, but it would just hit another coral and keep on going. A few pieces were also RTNing. I recently went away on vacation and came back to several more dead prized colonies. I've tried several major water changes, changing salt, dipping, checking water parameters, etc... I am losing sleep over this and don't know what to do.

I still have several medium to large colonies unaffected as of yet. I also have 26 fish. So, do I completely drain tank and fill up with new water? Get a holding system, which I don't have. Ask other members or LFS to hold coral/fish for me? I'm at a loss, so please advise on what I should do.

[Duke4130]

Damn Brian sorry to hear that. You gotta find out the cause of the problem first before you start tearing you system down. If you don't figure it out it may just start up again at a future time. Personally if I see something dying I just take it out and toss it so whatever it has doesn't move on to the next coral

[Octoman4]

have u done bayer dip on some of the rtn/stn to see if anything comes off?

[Carq91]

Hey Brian sorry to hear about this. If you need any help let me know I can come over and give you a hand.

[AFUreef]

Damn hate to hear that your issue has become worse Brian. I'm not even sure what to reccomend or suggest. if you do need any help let me know. I have a few extra tanks around in case you need a holding system and you can stash anything you need to in my system as well if it comes to that. Best of luck bro

[naso tang]

So sorry to hear man. Try bayers to make sure you don't have the flatworm. When I had a crash after stopping biopellets, I think I did more harm than good by trying to change too much at once.

[Brian_reefragr]

I just went through something like that in my system, but only lost 2 colonies. One of them I had 2large colonies of thankfully. I would try the Bayer dip like others recommended. Let me know if you need anything from me. You are always welcome to hold things in my system too. Best of luck!

[jada1]

Man sorry to hear that..slow it down and dont make changes fast double check everything do process of elimination. .didnt you just change over to ca reactor from dosing...

[h20poloman]

So sorry to hear this Brian. Agree with the others that you need to do everything you can to find the root cause. Something brought up during our recent SDMAS meeting, Marc Levenson mentioned stray voltage. I would think you would have probably felt a zap by now with your hands in the tank but that could also be an issue that you wouldn't necessarily see anything in the water or on the coral itself. I'd also recommend getting a few different test kits to see if the numbers stay in the same ball park. I have some ELOS kits, salifert, and hanna checkers if you need me to swing by and help test some things out. Just let me know, more than happy to help out.

[AFUreef]

Brian also have you tested for copper by chance? are you running carbon? Jus curious. Trying to think what it may be..

[Funkateer_1]

http://www.zeovit.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14

filling out this questionnaire might help with troubleshooting...

[Anhdao84]

May be you already looked at this website but still here:
http://www.chucksaddiction.com/coraldisease.html
" I have seen a great many online questions regarding the loss of Acropora species as well as having other corals slowly becoming unhealthy and eventualy dieing. A great many times, this can be attributed to an improperly stocked aquarium. In that, we all would like to see a nice mixture of coral species within our systems. Yet this same mixture will most always lead to trouble in being able to maintain the more sensative species such as the acroporas. Of course, elevated levels of nutrients and the overall quality of the water can play a large role as well. But if you are trying to keep coralliamorphs (mushrooms), gorgonians, large polyped corals and others, such as hydnophora, galaxea or any of the "soft" corals. You are in effect creating a toxic soup within your aquarium through the release of such coral's chemicaly defesensive methods (aleopathy). So if you see your Acropora species losing tissue fairly quickly, you might want to take a hard look at what species you are keeping together. If you wish to keep species such as the Acroporas and Montiporas, I suggest you keep only those species in your aquarium."
I don't know if that's true but hope they get better.
Good luck.

[goody]

Thanks for all the replies. As for finding the root cause, I have racked my brain and had others also trying to help figure this out. One possibility could have been me putting my hands in the tank after applying sunscreen on my kids. I know I was putting sunscreen on them a lot this summer, and I very likely put my hands in without washing. BUT, I have done several large water changes, so I would think that, along with running carbon would have taken care of that problem.

I did just switch over to Ca Reactor, but all has been good with that. In fact, my parameters have been much more stable. I will go out and purchase some other test kits just to compare.

Victor, I might take you up on borrowing a tank or two and possibly holding some coral. Brian, I might also have you hold some things.

Do you all think if I remove any coral with signs of stn/rtn and do a very large water change that all my other colonies would be fine?

[naso tang]

Thanks for all the replies. As for finding the root cause, I have racked my brain and had others also trying to help figure this out. One possibility could have been me putting my hands in the tank after applying sunscreen on my kids. I know I was putting sunscreen on them a lot this summer, and I very likely put my hands in without washing. BUT, I have done several large water changes, so I would think that, along with running carbon would have taken care of that problem.

I did just switch over to Ca Reactor, but all has been good with that. In fact, my parameters have been much more stable. I will go out and purchase some other test kits just to compare.

Victor, I might take you up on borrowing a tank or two and possibly holding some coral. Brian, I might also have you hold some things.

Do you all think if I remove any coral with signs of stn/rtn and do a very large water change that all my other colonies would be fine?

should be if you've eliminated an inducer. If you've fragged aggtressively, sometimes you can recover the frags too. But probably safer to keep the frags in quarantine and get out all affected colonies. Otherwise, just watch em carefully for signs of rtn post fragging.