STN anyone know the things to check/adjust?

[BobinCovington]

Hi guys...I need some help, I have been having some STN on some of my SPS corals from the base up. I have lost several corals so far (hawkins, oregon and calif tort, pearlberry and now it is starting on my green slimer. For some reason it really likes expensive, hard to find or my favorite corals.

Initially I had let my alk get way too low which I think started it (I messed up reading my test kit...1 drop = 1 dkh). I adjusted things back in line and have kept alkalinity/calcium/PH, temp steady but still it is slowly progressing. I am running carbon and doing water changes to try and get any chemical out of the water that might be there. What is weird is that all the other fish and corals seem really polyped out and healthy.

I am hoping that stable parameters and frequent water changes should stop it, but is that realistic? What are the things I should be checking for or correcting? What are the typical "top" causes of STN to look for? I think my flow and lighting have been fine and I have not seen any bugs or flatworms.

I'm going to go through the tank today and do a water change and maybe try to frag the slimer above the STN and reattach. Hopefully some of you that have had this and beat it can help with suggestions.

thanks for the help

 

[reedman]

my experience has been like yours....low alk kicks it off

 

[Aquanaut]

Ok, I too had this happen 2mths ago. Firstly, check to see what created the Alk drop. I found that when I changed Salt brands for extra calcium--Reef Crystals from IO and increased salinity levels to 1.026. My thought was this would help stabalize Calc. Butttt... I ended up OD'ing and created a STN that affected only certain SPS not all. Calc soard to +600, thus dropping Alk & Mag. Sooo, many water changes later to a salinity of 1.023 eventually brought balance and growth to my tank. Whew never a dull moment in this hobby.

 

[Skimmy]

also might want to throw a volt meter on the tank to check for stray power.

 

[returnofsid]

Low Alk, Extremely high Alk and extremely low Mg have been problems, causing STN, in the past for me.

 

[apollothesun]

Hi guys...I need some help, I have been having some STN on some of my SPS corals from the base up. I have lost several corals so far (hawkins, oregon and calif tort, pearlberry and now it is starting on my green slimer. For some reason it really likes expensive, hard to find or my favorite corals.

Initially I had let my alk get way too low which I think started it (I messed up reading my test kit...1 drop = 1 dkh). I adjusted things back in line and have kept alkalinity/calcium/PH, temp steady but still it is slowly progressing. I am running carbon and doing water changes to try and get any chemical out of the water that might be there. What is weird is that all the other fish and corals seem really polyped out and healthy.

I am hoping that stable parameters and frequent water changes should stop it, but is that realistic? What are the things I should be checking for or correcting? What are the typical "top" causes of STN to look for? I think my flow and lighting have been fine and I have not seen any bugs or flatworms.

I'm going to go through the tank today and do a water change and maybe try to frag the slimer above the STN and reattach. Hopefully some of you that have had this and beat it can help with suggestions.

thanks for the help

im battling this also. curious where do you keep your salinity and alkalinity at?

 

[TWallace]

I had something similar happen to me last summer that lasted into early winter. It started with a heat spike in Seattle, resulting in my tank reaching 85 or 86 degrees. Not long after, I accidentally over dosed alk supplement. A couple of weeks later, the STN started on some acros, always from the base up, never from the tips down or anywhere else. Mine turned out to be caused by red bugs. I'd had red bugs for years presumably, as I had many frags from others tanks that I knew had red bugs. They were never a problem until my params got out of control.

It took me a long time to realize it was red bugs. I tried many things before I got to them. Many large water changes, to no avail. I added a Reef Keeper lite to help me keep an eye on params as well as a kalk reactor to help keep calcium/ph/alk stable. These things didn't help, but are beneficial on the whole. Eventually I started looking for parasites. I found mysis shrimp chowing down on the dying tissue at night, but I think they were only feeding on dying tissue, and were not the cause of it. I started dipping frags in Melafix and eventually saw some red bugs on a few corals, but not very many. I dosed Interceptor and within a week the tissue loss stopped on almost all the corals. I've repeated the dose a couple of times since then and now none of them are showing tissue loss anymore.

I'd dose Interceptor, it's relatively cheap and pretty harmless. I don't have shrimp or crabs, but I do keep 2 mandarins in a 125 that rely on copepods, which are rumored to be killed by Interceptor. The mandarins both remained fat and healthy through the dosing, so it must not affect the pod population that badly.