Any of you sps experts face this before ?

[steveweast]

Yesterday, I noticed several corals near the surface with a very bad case of what appears to be tip burn. These three corals are clumped together near the surface....but are different from one another (Cali tort, carolinana, robusta). These corals have been there for many months...years in two cases. No where else in the tank is this recession visible.

I suspected that one of the three halides over this immediate area had gone bad....maybe releasing uv. I could find no visible damage on any of the three bulbs....but, I replaced them anyway. I may reduce the light in this area for awhile. Have any of you faced damage from a suspected bulb gone awry ?

[Tasher80]

What is Tip burn? When the tips start to turn white?

[drw94]

Any pics, never heard of tip burn!

[tdwyatt]

Usually see it when the bulbs are replaced without adequate shielding, or when the specimens have been literally "handled" a bit too much or too roughly with either bare hands or rough gloves. Also seen when shipped specimens have contact with bag material (inadequate floating with blocks) and the plastic of either the bag or packing material literally suffocates the tips of the coral in contact with the material.

I cant say I've had it happen due to a bad bulb per se, but I can see it happening, especially with DE bulbs. Although tropical midday sun at low tide on exposed corals in the wild is pretty intense, I dont think our corals are acclimitized to that the way that gradual growth into the low tide environment would.

Watch these spots for algal growth. For me, corals that experience this seem to want to take on epiphytic algal growths there, in spite of a relative absence of hair algae anywhere in the tank.

Get a set of dental pics to keep these cclean until the coenenchyme closes over the bare skeleton and aciao growth resumes (usually ends up with a braching at these tips with two or more aial tips)

Sorry, I haven't had such a bulb failure for any reference, but I have seen it happen in poorly acclimitized or mishandled or misshipped specimens.

HTH

[aussiereefer82]

Steve i don't know, but i cant believe you dont consider yourself an expert, you are a very modest man indeed. Your tank (should i say swimming pool, 850g, WOW) is simply the most stunning privately owned display i have ever seen, period! I have your site in my favorites and can not help but drool every couple of days, what an inspiration.

Simply the best Steve, keep up the good work and i hope your troubles pass.

[yardboy]

Well, I'm certainly no expert but the UV shield on my DE's is two pieces and the crack between the two has always been an entrance for UV (until I finally got an overlapping piece) and in my experience it wan't just tips that got burned. It would have taken me awhile to figure out what it was if there hadn't been such a neat line running down through a segment of the tank, right under the crack. You could even recognize the propagation of the UV light waves, with the damage narrow high up in the tank and wider as the depth increased. Hopefully you figured out the problem though. When I spotted it and closed the gap in the two pieces the corals recovered quickly with no permenant damage, even the second time when it turned some Stylophora branches completely white.

[steveweast]

I use unshielded mogel 400 watt bulbs on HQI ballasts. I was expecting to see a crack or something on the exterior of one of the three suspected bulbs that would allow uv to pass....but, I found nothing....maybe the spectrum changed to an unacceptable level ? The suspected bulbs were not that old yet....3mo....5mo....and 7mo. The carolinana took the most damage....this colony is about a foot in diameter and has grown in this area for over a year now. It does have some algae growth on the now bare tips. The damage on all the corals in question is confined to the tips that were most exposed to the light....tips that were partially shaded or off to the side a bit are not damaged. I also noted some abnormal sliming from these corals just before the damage was visible.....I'm hoping to see improvement today when the lights come on.

[yardboy]

No chance of a big change in water clarity recently? When I treated for flatworms I did a 25% water change and used a gallon of carbon to remove the flatworm juice, and it made my tank so clear it bleached several light sensitive corals. They recovered within a week.

[tdwyatt]

Steve, I have thought about this post since your original posting, just curious, do you use phosban or have a phosban reactor (or the other stuff that is Ferrous hydroxide?)

Sorry to see you have this going on, has it stopped yet?

[steveweast]

Tom, I do use Rowaphos....and have for a long time. However, the last change of media was about two weeks ago..... and ....I used too much, I think. I'm starting to think that the Rowa leaches something into the water (perhaps Fe ?) and becomes toxic at some point....or never if less is used....or is diluted through water changes....or macro sucks it up.....etc. Since the tip recession spread to a few other corals, I felt that a faulty bulb was not the answer. I pulled the Rowa, did four 25% water changes over a weeks time, and filled my Rowa reactor with carbon. The recession seems to have stopped.

I find it strange that the coral tips closest to the light were the ones affected most....shaded areas...or corals lower in the tank were not affected. I surmise from this, that light plays a major role in the recession/burning.....maybe the zoo algae is having a party with the suspected high Fe and trashing its host ?

[tdwyatt]

I dunno, anything I say on mechanisms causing this will be purely speculation. I have spoken with a few folks that have had a problem like this, but not too severe, all of them (heh, two folks, and you now) use very high (400w) wattage bulbs and it seems that blue specimens are affected first, especially if they were directly under the bulb, and both use Rowaphos or Phosban (they may both use one or the other, I don't remember which it was). I will have to get back to you on if they had changed dosage amounts or recently changed the media (one is in a reactor) as well as if this was a particular brand issue. One of these involved the use of a new set up with an unshielded DE bulb, so I really do not attribute this the the ferrous hydroxide media necessarily, although I find this interesting that there may be a casual relationships. If it is a high dose issue, it could be just as likely that it is due to a sudden drop in phosphate as it would be an issue with some toxcity to the medium itself, especially in view that the substanc is relatively insoluble, especially as the phosphate.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but IME there may be a relatively large drop in pH when starting a new batch of the media, but this appears to be related to the size of the initial dose, whether it was rinsed in RO/DI first, and alk levels in the tank being treated. I am now soaking the media in RO/DI for about an hour at around 20:1 V/V before I am putting it into the tank, which seems to minimize this effect in a system volume of 240 gal to a drop of 0.05 units (8.15 to 8.10) for about 30 minutes at lable dosing rates.

In higher animals, iron may precipitate phototoxic reactions in organisms that have photoprotective dermal pigments, so this may be an issue related to iron salts if there is a detectable level of iron showing up in the coral tissue (dinoflagellates are usually concentrated in the tissues away from the tips, as well as the photoprotective pigments, so I would speculate that this is not an issue involving the zooxanthellae, rather some issue with either superoxidasesor other growth related biochemistries unique to the tips.

Was there damage into the tissues where photoprotective pidments existed? Did the necrosis extend past lighted areas? Has the system been exposed to any other medications? If you prefer, we can discuss this off-line rather than in a public forum.

Lemmeno, I have a few thoughts on this.

I don't see enought here to make me stop using the stuff, but I don't use 400 watts directly over ANY coral specimens in my systems either.

I will dig and see what I find, drop me an email with an addy and I'll send the info to you directly.

[steveweast]

Thanks Tom....

I've been using Rowa for a long time and I'm aware of the alk/pH drop associated with new media being added. I always add buffer when I change the media. My controller constantly monitors the pH.....and the normal low is around 8.1....when the media is changed, the low might go to 8.05 for that night, but that's all. I also rinse new media by coinciding media change day with water change day. I run 165 gals of water through the reactor before it engages into the system.

I have both green and blue corals that are affected. All are near the surface and only acropora species are affected. I also noticed that before the recession would start, the coral generated long sweeper like tentacles....like a defense mechanism....and a couple days after that, they would lose tissue in that area.

[Illusion]

Steve... I had an Issue like this as well a while back when I was using Phosban in my 55g tank... I used about 150g for the tank and lost a few corals that were up high in the tank... The lower corals were not Affected... I for the most part stopped using Phosban... I have some coming today to hopefully clean up some Algae that seems to have miraculously shown up... I only plan on using a very small amount... IMO I think that the Phosban/Rowa pulls something out too Quickly and causes the corals up top to get burnt... Since I have not ran Phosban in the new system since I have started it I can let you know how things go... I plan on only using about 50g in a reactor to start off with and hope that all goes well and this algae dies back...

James

[Spanky]

Originally Posted by steveweast

maybe the zoo algae is having a party with the suspected high Fe and trashing its host ?

I think maybe you're right.

I've been telling you guys for a long time, rust does funny things in salt water.

[Illusion]

Well I just Threw in 100g in my Reactor and have it running thru... I rinsed It very well... I figure its 1/3 of the suggested usage for my tank so well see... I have never ran it thru this tank so I guess we will see how things go..

James