Heartbreak hotel

[PoonTang]

Did you dip the frag before you added it? perhaps this did some damage although it doesnt explain the rest of the corals. I doubt chloramine is the problem or else you would have sick fish too, although mabey you levels are still low. Try an ammonia test. Do you have a TDS reading from your RODI, mabey your membrane is shot? Try running a different salt and definately run Carbon 24/7. Another thing you should try is routing your skimmer air intake outside the house. It could be related to new/old house syndrome, cooking,do you smoke? almost anything but you did state it all started when you moved so most likely its either the air or the water at the new house.

[Samw]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

What were the symptoms that made you think vibrio?

I'll do some reading on that. I'm reading a few threads on RC where people have theorized about pathogens, so it seems I'm not alone on this one after all. But how can you tell? I'm rather uncomfortable with the notion of an antibiotic treatment, or at least proceeding on something based on an uneducated guess.

Symptoms of the bad strain of vibrio would be Tissue Necrosis (Rapid or non-rapid). The presence of the bacteria alone doesn't mean all acros are going to get sick. Like in humans, not everyone that comes into contact with vibrio vulnificus will exhibit flesh eating disease and die.

http://www.epi.state.nc.us/epi/gcdc/vibfacts.html

"On very rare occasions, people may get sick when they come into contact with Vibrio vulnificus. People infected with V. vulnificus are often hospitalized, and some die."

In a small closed system like our tanks though, it is probably easier for vibrio to takeover a weaker coral. A coral can be weakened by poor water quality of the owner's tank or from being recently transported in a bag by plane or from poor water quality in the holding tank of the retailer. Once a coral is infected, you might have an outbreak and it might make it easier to infect the next weakest coral, and so on.

http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog...an_040697.html

"It has recently become apparent that most of the losses of Acropora and other small-polyped stony corals in captivity are due to bacterial diseases. "

"How do I know if my corals have a problem?
The brief answer is that they die. There are a number of ways that can happen, however.

• Rapid Tissue Necrosis
• Bacterial-Induced Tissue Necrosis

Both of these describe syndromes where acropora and other SPS corals rapidly (or not so rapidly) slough tissue from thier skeletons. "

"I've had it cultured, others have as well. I'm in the process of fulfilling Koch's postulate with the organism, and showing that it causes disease in corals by placing clean corals in contact with the organism.Vibrio vulnificus is a tough customer. It secretes powerful proteases into its environment. It can liquefy wounds in humans. In corals, it seems to break the bonds between cells and between the coral and the skeleton, which leads to sloughing of tissue. "

I'm sort of wondering if running UV might be something to look into.

I wanted to suggest this earlier. I would agree with this idea. It wouldn't hurt.

[andestang]

Do you have an empty tank in the vicinity. It may be sending out some sort of curse. (Just trying to lighten your mood )
I'm with the water issue. After some new carbon and phosban(how long since changed-sorry if I missed that somewhere) the frag idea sounds reasonable step. My last house I had a horrible time with all kinds of issues/losses. Now I'm have much better luck and on well water to boot.

[Der_Iron_Chef]

I would love to see you take several gallons of your existing water, an SPS frag, and relocate it all to a quarantined test tank in someone else's home. At least that would rule out something in the air/walls/etc.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

What were the symptoms that made you think vibrio?

As I said offline Tony, every time I put my hand in the tank, I'd get heavy infections in any open wound. I spoke with my doctor who agreed it could be a strain of vibrio (not flesh eating disease ) and that the broad spectrum antibiotic could help. Being the idiot I often am, I used all th emeds on my tank instead of me, and the tank did clear up after treatment. I also stopped getting infections from scratches on the rockwork. Vibrio?? Who knows, but the antibiotic did resolve whatever was sloughing my acros. No science here, just experience...

[Samw]

This is another look from the bacteria angle and is being applied to all corals, not just Acropora. I'm of the opinion that Acropora are more fragile than other SPS and are more easily infected by bacterial disease. I think the last sentence is interesting.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-03/eb/index.php

"Several years ago, an article appeared that described the bacteria, Vibrio shiloi, as causing bleaching in the Mediterranean coral, Oculina patagonica (Kushmaro 1996). At the time, most people were of the opinion that the conditions of this were unusual. It seemed to occur in a single species in a non-coral reef area. Most researchers were relatively unconcerned. Julian Sprung spoke vocally about this event in a discussion on NOAA's coral-list, and it was similarly met with some skepticism that it could be much of an issue for corals, in general. To be sure, I was one of them. "

"However, one could have heard a pin drop during the elegant and outstanding presentation by Dr. Eugene Rosenberg of Tel Aviv University (Rosenberg 2002). This man single handedly threw the proverbial monkey wrench into the coral world that morning. In the years since the original articles have been published, Rosenberg's team has not only fulfilled Koch's postulates for this pathogen in a textbook-like fashion, but has proceeded to describe the etiology in an extremely impressive manner. "

"In short, Vibrio shiloi is a newly described species of bacteria, related to V. mediterranei, with an as-yet undetermined reservoir; that is, it is not known where or if the presence of this bacteria is normal to the environment, or if it is somehow just recently showing up to affect the area. It follows the temperature cycles of the area precisely, and causes bleaching in warm months followed by recovery as the water temperature declines."

"Interestingly, it only takes 120 bacteria to cause an infection, and the bacteria can reproduce to 109 bacteria/cm3 in five days!! With water cooling below the virulence temperature, the bacteria die rapidly. "

"The reader may ask the same question that has occurred before, and was described above. So what? It's a Vibrio that is found not on coral reefs, but is specific to one coral species that we don't keep and will likely never see. The implications are certainly interesting, but what does it mean to tropical corals? Rosenberg had an answer to this, too. Knowing the skepticism that existed in the community, he has recently gone into the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea and looked at bleached Pocillopora damicornis. Is everyone ready?

A new species of bacteria, Vibrio corallyticus, was consistently found in the tissues of the bleached Pocillopora at a level that already fulfills the first of Koch's postulates. The virulence is even more amazing. At 23° C, there are no visible signs of disease. At 25° C, bleaching occurs. At 27° C, there is rapid tissue lysis. A virulence factor is being produced by this bacteria that correlates extremely well with the temperatures commonly cited as causing coral bleaching. Furthermore, Rosenberg describes the bleaching as spreading; a characteristic seen all too often by both field observers and aquarists. "

"As a final note to this incredible tale, and as if the reader has not had enough already, Rosenberg also found that Oculina in shallow water, even in high temperature and exposed to V. shiloi, rarely bleached. They found that UV radiation acted as an effective sterilizer for V. shiloi on the coral surface! "

[Aquattro]

Sam ,that might be a good answer in that thread from a week or so ago on the benefits of UV. I'm not sure it was brought up there.

[Joe Reefer]

Originally Posted by reef_raf

As I said offline Tony, every time I put my hand in the tank, I'd get heavy infections in any open wound. I spoke with my doctor who agreed it could be a strain of vibrio (not flesh eating disease ) and that the broad spectrum antibiotic could help. Being the idiot I often am, I used all th emeds on my tank instead of me, and the tank did clear up after treatment. I also stopped getting infections from scratches on the rockwork. Vibrio?? Who knows, but the antibiotic did resolve whatever was sloughing my acros. No science here, just experience...

This is funny.

[digital-audiophile]

You know, that actually makes sense. I have pretty bad excema on my hands, but in the past couple couple months I have found that my hands seem to be getting worse. My doctor prescribed me a cream that is actually for jock itch becuase he figured I have some kind of fungal infection. The cream does not seem to be helping that much and maybe it is becuase I have open cuts from the cracked skin and I keep infecting myself in the tank water...... hmm very interesting.

[Canuckgod420]

I've been fighting a problem like this for over a year now.....I had a tank full of sweet acros along with an anemone, cabbage leather, toadstool leather, some zoos, and a bunch of GSP.
One day I noticed that the cross piece on my trim up top had completely broken free and now the tank was bowing out alot. So I clamped the tank, all was ok.
I got the replacement part and set a side a day to drain the tank and replace the top trim.
At the same time I made the decission to change my lighting set up( I didnt like the cheap reflector I was using) and I also changed my salt from kent to tropic marin.
The work went fine, all was well. Then just a few days later I began to notice that the acros were beginning to lose tissue on the tips...I just assumed this was from air exposure for the hour it took to do the work. But as the days went on things got worse.....panic set in.
My fish were fine, softies were fine but the zoos started to suffer as well, then the anemone moved into a shaded area........what was going on?
I couldnt figure it out. Needless to say all the sps died...it sucked....so I left everything else in there for several months....all the fish looked good.
Then I tried another couple of frags of sps...they died in 3 days.
So I stripped down the tank, removed all the sand and sifted through it, someone had told me to check for a penny. Nothing was found......so I rebuilt the tank added some new sand and a few new rocks and let the tank cycle again.
Then I added some more sps....guess what? They were doing ok.....until 3 days ago......I removed some glass pieces I had on top of the tank for cleaning(about 30 minutes) and not even an hour later some of the sps were dumping tissue again....now I have several frags that are suffering. I attribute this to too much light....I'm probably wrong but what else do I have to blame?
I moved my lights way up and shortened the time the lights are on....we'll see what happens.