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STN on a SPS frag and not sure what to do


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Hi all, I got a bit of a perplexing situation. I have a 3/4" or so frag that looks like it is having issues with STN but water parameters are fine; Ph 8.1, Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate .5, Phosphate .25~, Ca 460, Mg 1400 (little high), dKh 10, salinity 1.026. Any ideas on how I might be able to save this coral or is it something that I will have to ride out and hope the coral recovers?

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keep cutting up or superglue over the necrotic tissue. keep the parameters stable. Mg is pretty forgiving, but your alk is on the high side. Don't change those drastically, just monitor them long term and dont let them creep. 

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Super glue above part of the live tissue to hopefully prevent the STN form continuing. Switch salt to non-pro version until your alk consumption increases on your tank. You really don't need a salt that mixes at 10 dKh currently, you could just use coralife or some other regular brand of salt that mixes at 8-9dKh... Save the pro version fro when your alk demands increase.

FWIW, if it were my tank, keep PO4 below 0.18 ppm, alk below 9 dKh and nitrates above 5 ppm.

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This is my personal experience and I don't know enough to say if it matters in your case, but I continued to have failures from the same issue until fairly recently when two things occurred:

1.  Time.  I finally hit where my alk, pH, nitrates and phosphates stayed reliably steady around 9 mos in.  Many people believe that STN from the bottom is a symptom of alk swings, especially when nitrates and phosphates are very low. 

2.  Quality of frags.  I stopped buying from cheapie eBay auctions and instead rely on local hobbyists (thanks Ty and Gig 'em) and the better online stores (WWC, Battlecorals, Fraghouse, Cherry Corals, Pieces of the Ocean, etc.).   Starting with healthier, proven livestock makes a big difference.

That being said, sometimes it just happens.  "STN Happens" would probably make a good t-shirt.

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That is an oddly specific cutoff [emoji14]
Just from my own personal tanks over the years, 0.18 ppm phosphates was were I would always see STN if it ever got that high in my acro tanks. Plenty of other conditions that may be specific to my own systems to possibly cause it but just a number in my head I always stay below.
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Ironically I did get this coral from UC live sale earlier this year the only other frag that is showing any other issues is the rainbow stylo I got from Ty at the meeting, but that's because a goby I thought died about a month ago suddenly resurfaced and half buried it where it was located and it is slowly recovering. @Sierra Bravo I agree that if a shirt was made with that saying it would sell. I will say that my phosphate measuring was using a slide color chart test and I picked a value that I thought was not above when it came to selecting a value... I want to get a hanna checker for phosphate but haven't gotten around to it yet.

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You can try 3 drops of Lugal's iodine in a syrenge with 16ml of tank water and treat it where it's sitting at in your tank.   Here's a link to a thread I posted a couple years ago on treating an Acropora ehinata frag in situ.  Some of the links are broken when Photo bucket stopped hositng for free but there are pictures further down the thread that show it's recovery.

 

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