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Tank Crashed: Leather toxins...last update (with pics)


RustyRocket

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FML...guys a little help...My clowns took out the six line wrasse when I was out of town for work, and had been fouling the tank for a good few days and I came home to a right mess.

I'm guessing the ammonia spike must have agitated the colt corals or lemnalia causing die off and release of toxins in the tank. Everything is shedding/slathered in soft coral sheds. 

I've got brown jelly and black die offs flying everywhere and its constantly reinfecting other corals, its like a chain reaction. Even the Zoas are done for. I have never seen zoanthids shed...but they're peeling. The LPS & gorgonians are done for. 

 

I think I've got the ammonia under control, I'v done a 20 gallon water change first day back and 5 gallons every day after and threw in 2 bags of purigen and upped the BRS carbon to 4 table spoons. But I cant stop the leathers from melting, dropping sclerites and getting reinfected with the bacteria causing black tips. I have no way to isolate each coral either.
I'm struggling to save them, and Im nervous about fragging them now since I might cause more damage. 

 

What the heck can I do?

There goes 4 years of collecting rare leathers :(...

 

Details below:
Tank IM 30L

No skimmer

Usually Reactor with 2 tablespoons of BRS GFO and 1 table spoon of BRS Carbon

1 filter sock.

 

Corals:

8 types of sarcophytons

4 sinularia

2 Neptheas

3 Colts

Lemnalia (almost completely disintegrated.)
5 other miscellaneous leathers. 

10 types of zoas on frag plugs, but they're done for.

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Speaking from hard experience with a nano - remove all the corals now - the ones past saving bin, the rest put in hospital tanks separately.

They will keep snowballing each other until nothing is left.

 

I am sure others will put forward more expert opinions than mine.

 

Sorry to see :(

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I had a huge chemical war in a 40 gallon. I removed the ones that were 100% gone as they were just fouling the water more. I fragged some of the leathers since half of them were rotting away and the other half looked good. The fragging DID save them in my case. I did 100% water change, ran tons of carbon changed frequently, dosed prime. 

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If the leathers are melting/falling apart trying to frag the healthy area possibly is the only way to save them.

 

They will continue to foul the water, I would remove them from tank and place in a bucket to attempt saving them

 

 

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On 25/02/2018 at 5:20 PM, jbb_00 said:

Water changes and Carbon are going to be your best friend for a bit. Obviously Get anything dead out of the tank, and try to clean out the jelly. 

B, I was reading your thread for when you had the polyp die off (bite marks) in your leathers back in September. What was your treatment like? You dipped everything in ReVive and what is that Restor product?

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3 minutes ago, RustyRocket said:

B, I was reading your thread for when you had the polyp die off (bite marks) in your leathers back in September. What was your treatment like? You dipped everything in ReVive and what is that Restor product?

I took the coral , and 1 gallon of tank water and placed in a bucket with a small powerhead. I put the proper amount of Two Little Fish Revive in and let circulate for 10 minutes.

 

After the 10 minutes, I rinsed the coral in another bucket of clean tank water and place the coral back in the tank.

 

I then dosed the tank with Brightwell Restor per product directions , and then repeated again a week later.

 

 

That's all it took.  

 

 

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Just now, jbb_00 said:

I took the coral , and 1 gallon of tank water and placed in a bucket with a small powerhead. I put the proper amount of Two Little Fish Revive in and let circulate for 10 minutes.

 

After the 10 minutes, I rinsed the coral in another bucket of clean tank water and place the coral back in the tank.

 

I then dosed the tank with Brightwell Restor per product directions , and then repeated again a week later.

 

 

That's all it took.  

 

 

Thanks for the tip, I think I might try this to whats left of my tank. 

Brightwell Restor, is that just a typical Amino acid based coral food? And did you broadcast feed or spot feed the leather? the packaging says specifically for coral tissue, is that for both sps and softies?

I'll give the tank till the end of the week to see if the melting stops, I'm losing a branch of 2 of coral everyday still! It's so frustrating and disheartening and all for 2 clownfish which bites the sh!t out of me every time my hand goes in the tank. They're definitely going back to the store. 

 

Come the weekend, think I'll do a full wipe of the tank, take everything out, rock and all, pulling all salvageable coral out and frag everything I can and just start sterile and go for frag stand style for a while until things look better. My marine pure balls should be enough to hold the cycle when the rocks come out. 

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4 minutes ago, RustyRocket said:

Thanks for the tip, I think I might try this to whats left of my tank. 

Brightwell Restor, is that just a typical Amino acid based coral food? And did you broadcast feed or spot feed the leather? the packaging says specifically for coral tissue, is that for both sps and softies?

I'll give the tank till the end of the week to see if the melting stops, I'm losing a branch of 2 of coral everyday still! It's so frustrating and disheartening and all for 2 clownfish which bites the sh!t out of me every time my hand goes in the tank. They're definitely going back to the store. 

 

Come the weekend, think I'll do a full wipe of the tank, take everything out, rock and all, pulling all salvageable coral out and frag everything I can and just start sterile and go for frag stand style for a while until things look better. My marine pure balls should be enough to hold the cycle when the rocks come out. 

It is amino / fatty acids , and can be used for all coral. 

 

 

I did a standard broadcast feed with it . If you are having issues with softies I would look at removing the marine pure, I have read where the aluminum that is released from it has a major impact on soft coral. 

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I had a Kenya once melt on me yrs ago.

 

It made such a mess and made things so mad in the tank.

Happened late at night too.

 

Discarded the melted coral, did a large waterchange, new carbon.

 

Once the leather and the mess it made was removed, everything bounced back.

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1 hour ago, jbb_00 said:

It is amino / fatty acids , and can be used for all coral. 

 

 

I did a standard broadcast feed with it . If you are having issues with softies I would look at removing the marine pure, I have read where the aluminum that is released from it has a major impact on soft coral. 

Wait...do you mind sharing that article? I have seen a slightly less polyp extension on the leathers around the time of adding the marine pure balls, my interpretation was that the tank had a lot less available nutrient because of the quicker processing from the bacteria in the balls. I thought those things were inert and would not leach anything. So please do point me in the right direction, I need to do more research for sure. 

 

1 hour ago, Clown79 said:

I had a Kenya once melt on me yrs ago.

 

It made such a mess and made things so mad in the tank.

Happened late at night too.

 

Discarded the melted coral, did a large waterchange, new carbon.

 

Once the leather and the mess it made was removed, everything bounced back.

Thanks for the input Clown, but unfortunately its not that simple for me. You see my tank is mainly leathers. I have about 20+ different types leathers ranging from frags to 8" colonies all in the IM 30L (in hindsight this is probably disastrous.) And they are all melting. I don't want to just throw the entire colony away as soon as they show sign of melting because some are not easy to come by again, especially with the fiji ban. I am siphoning and clipping away melting or black tipped sections on 1 or 2 of the corals, then a day later another would be showing the signs and it'll go in full circle where the first one loses more branches, and its been doing this for about a week or so. Everything has their polyps retracted and still in heavy shedding mode :(

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11 minutes ago, RustyRocket said:

Wait...do you mind sharing that article? I have seen a slightly less polyp extension on the leathers around the time of adding the marine pure balls, my interpretation was that the tank had a lot less available nutrient because of the quicker processing from the bacteria in the balls. I thought those things were inert and would not leach anything. So please do point me in the right direction, I need to do more research for sure. 

 

Thanks for the input Clown, but unfortunately its not that simple for me. You see my tank is mainly leathers. I have about 20+ different types leathers ranging from frags to 8" colonies all in the IM 30L (in hindsight this is probably disastrous.) And they are all melting. I don't want to just throw the entire colony away as soon as they show sign of melting because some are not easy to come by again, especially with the fiji ban. I am siphoning and clipping away melting or black tipped sections on 1 or 2 of the corals, then a day later another would be showing the signs and it'll go in full circle where the first one loses more branches, and its been doing this for about a week or so. Everything has their polyps retracted and still in heavy shedding mode :(

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-much-aluminum-will-it-leach-lets-guess.247034/

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  • 2 weeks later...
Christmas Corals

Look like you did everything you can! Excellent proactive approach! Glad you didn't wait around. The media and waterchanges should really help stabilize the system! ??

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RustyRocket
1 hour ago, Christmas Corals said:

Look like you did everything you can! Excellent proactive approach! Glad you didn't wait around. The media and waterchanges should really help stabilize the system! ??

Thank you. I think I have it under control now. Lost a lot of mass on my corals, but at least most are still here for me to grow back out. 

 

Quick update, I've taken the clowns out and all the rocks and sand, scrubbed everything, but didnt put them back in. The Marine Pure balls is enough to hold the cycle with the fish gone. Leather coral wise I fragged what was unsalvageable and snipped off all dying branches and gave everything Revive/Iodine baths for the past weeks as recommended on the bottles. To be honest, they look like the ran into the lawnmower and came out hurting, with holes and tissue missing, even in the Toadstools. Their polyps are still retracted on most of whats left and with visibly protruding sclerites (little white needles) but they are holding themselves upright which is a good sign. The tank is pretty much a grow out tank at the moment whilst everything recovers. Zoas have been going through the second treatment of Furan-2>Iodine>Revive and seem to be bouncing back.

Going forward will try to keep the water conditions stable for another month or 2 and then get my hands on some Brightwell's Restor and get the leathers building coral tissue fast. Any input/recommendations on Leather coral tissue healing would be good :) 

 

Thanks.

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  • 3 weeks later...
RustyRocket

This is more for my own record than anything. This will be my final update for the crash. Parameters have been stable for the pass week and a half. No more melting and die offs, start seeing poly extentions, no dramatic growth on leathers but yes on Zoas. Leathers corals, only 3 colonies left which have yet to bounce back but they seem stable. Still a little upset over the mass (size) lost on some of them but just happy they’re still alive.

 

Solution summary: Frequent testing and water changes to keep parameters stable and clean. Weekly changes of 4 Teaspoon of BRS Carbon. Reduce frequency as nitrates becomes less than 20 during tests. Removed fish and heavy bioloads. Dip colonies in Revive and Iodine every 3 days until tissue lost (visibly) stops. Removed rockwork and mounted corals on plates and egg crate. Increase flow dramatically Max on Jebao RW2.

 

Will most likely keep the system like this for a long while for grow out and later go for tank upgrade.

 

Thanks for following along.

 

Before:

833C73C1-0219-47B9-8D63-71DC1E61C0FD.jpeg

After:

C8DF2FC7-FA0B-4460-860F-AA6403C286BB.jpeg

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  • 3 weeks later...
RustyRocket
On 18/04/2018 at 5:41 AM, bluecard said:

I really liked this tank. What new tank are you looking at?

 

Thanks, the IM Nuvo 30L is a really good tank. My only issue is with the back chamber and displacement, I only have about 22gal of water volume. Say I over dose some trace elements or phosphate levels increase and theres a mass shedding from the leather, water quality goes down the drain. I like the size of the display, so maybe moving to a 40B but with a sump, so I can add more water volume :). We shall see, with the previous die offs, Theres a little more space for growth at the moment. 

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I got the 30l as my first tank and I don’t like the dimensions. I like the length and height, but the depth is driving me nuts. It’s only about 9 1/2 inches in the display part. I am looking for a new tank already. Maybe I overlooked it, what lighting are you running?

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RustyRocket
3 hours ago, bluecard said:

I got the 30l as my first tank and I don’t like the dimensions. I like the length and height, but the depth is driving me nuts. It’s only about 9 1/2 inches in the display part. I am looking for a new tank already. Maybe I overlooked it, what lighting are you running?

Oh man I agree with you there, that depth is a right pain to aquascape! As you can see I literally cant put more than 2 colonies in line back to front. I have to stagger them and in the grow out setup, I have to place them into 3 levels just to make space. But even still, they are closer than I'd like. I use a current USA light. its long, low profile and has a narrow band of light, pretty much perfect for the 30L. It's not enough light for sure to bring out the best colors in the coral tho. 

 

I have a Radion Pro Gen 2 for the upgrade, so really leaning towards that 40B I think. 

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I am very surprised your snails/shrimps didn’t take care of the dead fish. Anytime I had a fish die there was usually nothing left as even the nassarius snails feasted on it.

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RustyRocket
2 hours ago, roblox84 said:

I am very surprised your snails/shrimps didn’t take care of the dead fish. Anytime I had a fish die there was usually nothing left as even the nassarius snails feasted on it.

Thats probably because I dont believe in clean up crews much, their algae control is minimal. But thinking about it now...just need some scavengers...to eat up the dead tissue...I added a few hermits and 2 snails.

 

Thinking about it now, since the fish is gone...I wonder if the hermits has been picking on a few of my leathers thats why they arent opening up...

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