frag starting to STN
 

well i was hoping this would never happen but i came home tonight and noticed that my purple slimmer sps frag is starting to STN. also on of my mille frags is showing some white spots and a few nights ago i noticed my emerald crag on the slimmer and found a black crab that looks like an emerald on the mille. Everything else is looking good and tonight i will be doing all my tests to see if i have any issues there. I have extremely careful with what goes into my tank and lately i have opened up to a few different sources. I traded with a member some colonies for some frags and the colonies all stn'd on him.

Corals aren't getting blasted by a powerhead, i am 2 days behind on my water change schedual but i don't think thats where my problem lies, i also have some cyano (sp) algae forming in a corner (probably due to lack of flow back there). but the slimmer has been growing great since i purchased it 3 months ago so this is a suprise for me. anyone with experience with stn'ing in coral please give me some insight to what your issue was so i can look into it in my tank.

check your alkalinity and run carbon. I don't know what else to suggest.

what are your tank parameters?

What she said:mrgreen: Get in there and crazyglue the edge between the living and dead tissue...that might stop it from progressing.

Sorry to hear of your issues lorenz0, Seems to be a spring thing. double check your perameters, run carbon, and try and clip the pieces

J

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I had a buddy of mine tell me, that when spring time comes that he sees a spike in his phospahtes.

I have been going through the same thing the past few weeks! Really sucks.

My ALK was low but even after raising it and everything looked ok, I have noticed today some more STN.

Yup I'm lossing quite a bit myself.

I bought 2 emerald crabs a while back and they both were stripping the bases of my acro frags starting where the frags were encrusting the bases up about 1/2". Make sure those crabs of yours arent causing problems

Jeez! You too! I am sorry to hear this Jason. Man this is a bad time for a lot of tanks :sad:

thanks guys, ya tomorrow is my day off so i am going to be a mad scientistwith the test kits. will post parameters.

also will probably pick up some carbon and run it in the phosban reactor since its not being used at the time. thanks for all the suggestions guys

But wow, weird to hear how alot of people are also getting stn right now... something is in the air and i am not liking it lol

You guys are making me feel better about my problems lately!

Oh yeah you too. I forgot :sad:

This is crazy!

Oh my gosh, I had that happen to me too for 2 of my SPS, but i was on vacation and saw it when I came home and thought that was why haha. I wonder if there really is some correlation with the seasonal change and SPS health :question: Hope you get it together Laurier.. and everyone else who posted in here too haha!

Last year at this time I lost a bunch of acros...maybe it is a seasonal thing

This is like a the seasonal flu that goes around! Stay away from my tank!! :twised:

Only time I have noticed Phosphates too is this spring.
Weird

Its undoubtably seasonal. I went back through my excel tracking sheet, and every year around this time something like this happens to me as well.

This year it was one colony, and half a colony.

OK.... so let's assume for a moment that this is something seasonal. What is the cause? Is it phosphates? Something else in our supply water? Temperature?

swine flu....lol

I thought aquariums for supposed to REDUCE stress? Sigh . . . welcome to the wonderful world of SPS, I guess ;)

add me to the ranks, i just checked my tank, and one of my smaller stags, bit the dust.

lorenz0 - got some of that stupid aggressive silicate/phosphate resin if you want to snag some (can't remember the name off the top of my head - something german :lol:)

I caused my own headache ... Woke up at 2am this morning went to grab a drink, wondered why there was so much light coming from the basement... Saturday morning while I was doing some cleaning/re-arranging - I flicked the timer to on so I could get started... Apparently never flicked it back to timer... Poor guys got 92+ hours of straight daylight, explains why the fish were acting strange last night at feeding time... Now of course thinking about it - i think i may have switched it to off instead of timer in my 2am haze... Crap... Time to get going on that arduino reef controller to avoid andy's stupidity...

You can add me to the list of sps troubles lately. Haven't lost anything completely yet, but definately have a few pieces that are not looking good.

losses
 

Yep lost my Hulk acro in one night! Nothing else seemed affected. All test seemed ok. 2 days later my Rainbow Tort started to STN from the bottom up. I fragged what was left and crazy glued the exposed skeleton and that seemed to have done the trick. It was a small colony to begin with, not much left now.
I haven't lost anything in a week so... fingers crossed!

So the test results are in

PH- 8.1 (elos)
CA- 470(elos)
MG- 1340
dKh- 10
Salinity- 1.023

my dkh is high due to using RB salt which is no suprise, has always been like that ever since i started using it. and lately i was wondering why my coraline algae was going so good which is now explained by the CA result. All and all i am starting to agree with the seasonal thing, i am still going to keep my eyes open and see how everything works out.

As for phosphate media, i refuse to run it. I ran it twice and both times my corals just looked like crap. really its just the slimmer that i am worried about, i think the mille was damaged when i moved it cause i accidently went in front of a powerhead...whoops lol.

I told myself if i loss all my sps i am going to a softy/lps tank with a few sps cause like everyone think tank worries me sometimes

Obviously I dont know where everyone else's tanks are in there homes, but perhaps the seasonal relationship is due to an increase in ambient light. Not only the number of daylight hours, but the intensity as well.

Not disagreeing - I'm running it at about 1/4 the recommended dosage; as part of the theory in my world is nothing good happens fast (including removing a waste product). And while the 110 is 'breaking in' - and the typical spring phosphate spike has started, seemed like a reasonable way to keep the levels down to avoid a nasty algae bloom...

Good luck fingers crossed for those two SPS :) They looked really good!

Woke up this morning to more recession. Its all from the tips right now which makes me think ALK but it's testing 8 with a few kits.

Any corals I have had for more than a year though are fine.

Your parameters look good; however, you should probably bump your specific gravity up .002 -.003 to 1.025 to 1.026.

- Watch your temp swings (common this time of year, especially at night)
- Watch for low PH at night
- Water change........
- Make sure your Top Off and make up water is "0" TDS, higher phosphates this time of year could be due to the water supply chemistry changing due to spring run-off etc.... Just a thought.
- Test your Potassium level (should be fine with RB salt) does not hurt to check.

water change has been done. Ian I am raising my salinity but slowly

was at red coral today and am thinking about picking up a aquacontroller jr for better monitoring of temp and ph. going to research more into them to see if they have the options i am looking for.

but wierdly the stn hasn't proceeded much today. almost the same as it was yesturday.

but i am agreeing with doug about ambient light since i get direct light in some of my tank at some points in the day

thats funny about the seasonal thing, because i noticed today also mine is STN on me.

A controller would be a good investment, send me a PM if you are looking for one.

Just a thought. The amount of pollen in the air this time of year could be causing things like phosphate spikes etc. Perhaps running a filter sock if you don't already, and changing it daily may help.

The seasonal drama for me is always related to water. When everything melts there is a little something extra in the water that always seems to get past the filters regardless of the TDS reading.

I lost four colonies in two days for no apparent reason... we are on a well, and I am thinking it needs to be shocked and we need a new RO/DI system. Very strange thing to happen and everything else is awesome as always. NO changes in my params and things are just as they should be... will be replacing the carbon in the reactor this evening just to safe.

So perhaps we should stop doing water changes in the spring? :lol: Or store up enough water during the winter (properly circulating) to get us through the spring run off months?..

That makes me think of my brother, his two dogs and their back yard after the snow melt... doggy rockets everywhere!

awwwww i got some stn on one of my smaller frags... could it be because there is a power head aimed at it about 8 inches away??? well thats rubbish o well ill frag my... frag i guess lol.and i have another colony and a few of the types have been white but not bleached skeleton white the polyps are still extended and the rest of the colony has great color ... does anyone know what would cause that???

I have had 2 colonies on the last month stn on me for no reason. I now believe in this spring effect. No sure what it is as my tank has not changed its water prams in months.

i had a couple start to stn but stopped and they healed themselves. can't complain now