Acropora tip burn

[Delphinus]

I am running carbon now.

I don't have a UV. If this was your tank would you consider buying a UV? Or ozone? ..

I was running Zeovit for a while, also ran Reef-resh before that. Not currently running either of those at the moment though. But I am using Taylor's "NO3 Destroyer".

I did in the past try a sulfur denitrator on this tank, but it never worked, so I gave up on that idea. That was nearly two years ago, would there be any residual sulfates? Even if there were, I thought they were supposed to be inert?

Throw some polyfilter into the mix maybe?? If it's something toxic I don't know what else I can do. Basically all I can think of is things like Chemi-pure, copious carbon, and polyfilter. I guess I can try UV but I don't just have the understanding behind it to know what size and flowrate to look for.

[Samw]

I had the same problems in the past. Things turned around for my Acroporas when I started running a UV while all else stayed constant and I was finally able to keep Acroporas alive and growing for about a year. Then, they started slowly dying again. My theory was that some kind of bacteria/vibrio was killing them and the UV sterilizer helped. When I neglected to change the UV bulb, the bacteria came back and I slowly lost all of my Acropora.

[fencer]

I prefer ozone because it will also take out any (some)toxins UV is only biological. You didn't say if the pieces died eventually or they just suffered that tip burn and lived.

[Jason McK]

The Reason I asked about the Bacteria based systems is that I did not want to recomment UV or Ozone to someone running that kind of sytem. Both UV and Ozone would destroy the bacteria.

This is my thoughts as Well. I think Brad had a treatment for vibrio at one time

Originally Posted by Samw

I had the same problems in the past. Things turned around for my Acroporas when I started running a UV while all else stayed constant and I was finally able to keep Acroporas alive and growing for about a year. Then, they started slowly dying again. My theory was that some kind of bacteria/vibrio was killing them and the UV sterilizer helped. When I neglected to change the UV bulb, the bacteria came back and I slowly lost all of my Acropora.

J

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Jason McK

I think Brad had a treatment for vibrio at one time
J

Ya, went to the doctor and convinced him to prescribe an antibiotic. Seems to have worked. Can't recall what the med was, but I'll look it up.

tony, I'll talk tou you offline about the symptoms I had that put me in that direction.

[Delphinus]

These pieces pictured haven't died yet, they are pretty much as shown at the moment. However given past corals as a guide for what to expect, there is no hope of recovery at this point for the pictured corals. Well, maybe not the hoeksemai as yet per se, but I am greatly distressed to see the white starting to form on that piece, up until this weekend it had seemed to do really well. It did get knocked over the other day though so I suppose it could just be distress from the fall and landing on something, but ..... I suppose the more realistic explanation is that it's just this coral's turn now.

I'll consider UV or ozone at this point .. clearly me focusing on the parameters, hasn't really netted any results, so I have to broaden the scope of what to consider.

So it looks like J&L sells Coralife and Pentair Aquatics brand UV, and Ocean Aquatics sells Current USA. Are UV systems created more or less equivalent or should one steer away from the less expensive models? What about Ozone? Is that a better option? It looks like an ozonizer with controller will cost roughly double that of a UV. (Oof )

[NAS]

I see in the back ground that you have a colt coral??? Or some leather by the looks of it. Try (Gasp) running activated carbon for about a week, and crank up your skimmer. A quick scrup will help take any organic toixins out. You will have to keep an eye on your trace's but a regular dose should be fine.

That's my two bits....

PS: The carbon wont be harmfull in the short term regardless of which carbon school of thought you subscribe to.

[Delphinus]

Background of picture #1? That's actually a monstrous sized xenia. No leathers (that would be a very plausible explanation otherwise - leathers and SPS don't play well together).

[Delphinus]

Ok, let's look at this from another angle. What if the lighting was totally inadequate? I know things would likely brown out first but could inadequate lighting cause damage this extensive this quickly?

[Sebae again]

IMO they would brown out not burn.