Bad bacteria build up / toxic bio films etc.

[oceanarium]

At our recent MASWA meet i had an interesting discussion with Tony aka (ynotrahuk) in regard to the bad bacteria in our systems. I thought it might be of interest to widen the discussion to our forum.

I had already been thinking some of the bad bacteria as vibrio species may cause or contribute to tank crashes, old tank syndrome and just general coral disease and random infection.

Tony mentioned he had been discussing just the same with some fellow hobbyists. He did mention someone who was using antibiotics to nuke the system of bad bugs and reseeding with new good nitrifying bacteria. I sent him a PM so he might chirp in here

My train of thought was brought about from seeing things like;

When breeding clownfish you get a much better survival if sterilizing the rearing tank between batches.... removing the bad bacteria like Vibrio which can be quite present from the feeds used.

Mic Payne had similar issues on his seahorse farm.... In the earlier days he was very diligent with QT procedures to the point of even chlorinating his NSW and de chlorinating before water changes. After a while his success rate of larva plunged and even had issues with the brood stock getting infections on tails etc where they held the substrates. Eventually they had some scrapping of the bio films on the tanks tested to reveal very toxic bio films. Presumably from too much bad bacteria from frozen mysids, artemia, seahorse poo etc vs any good bacteria coming in via water changes. He nuked the systems and went to using fresh NSW and never looked back.

I have seen quite a few good systems go bad, from bad bacteria. A text book example would be RHYS123's amazing set up, it went from a world wide famous state to in the end he could not keep corals alive. All because an anemone went through a pump... the necrosis caused some bad bacteria to infect most of his corals. Months latter he could not safely add corals so he shut down the system.

I am really on the subject now because we were sailing well with no water changes for some 18 months. Then we started to get a few random infections with no explanation I could see. Could be any coral type and could be brown jelly, RTN, bail out etc. Nothing viral through the whole systems, enough to be both annoying and worrying... I always remove any such infection immediately for fear of it becoming a chain reaction.

The past 6-7 weeks I started regular water changes of fresh collected NSW just with the idea of flushing in some good new bacteria loads. The random infections have ceased.

I know Tony is using probiotics, for similar reasoning.

Either way the bad bacteria remain. I know Tony was seriously considering the nuke with antibiotics and re seed. I would certainly like to have that option available in the event of having an uncontrollable coral infection outbreak.

I am very interested in the benefits of the occasional nuke and re seed.

[saltydog]

Eutrophication: It's a chicken or the egg scenario.
It's reduced water quality favouring the 'bad' bacteria rather than the 'bad' bacteria reducing the water quality.

That's what I was getting at some years ago:

IMO, mainly because the system is new. Bacteria, algae, Meio/micro/macro-fauna... are still growing and generally taking up extra nutrients. Given time it should shift to more of a "trying reducing the nutrient load" depending on your maintenance.

Really nice journal. Always enjoy reading it.
Chris

Chris

[saltydog]

There is really two parts to this:
The first is why those types of coral diseases occur. Stuff written by Forest Rohwer is always interesting.
http://coralandphage.org/research_coral.php

An important implication of the coral holobiont model is that disrupting any one of these components may cause the whole community to collapse and lead to coral death. In order to test this hypothesis, we have performed several experiments exposing corals to different stressors and then looked at the changes in microbial dynamics and diversity, as well as coral pathology. In collaboration with Dr. Nancy Knowlton and Davey Kline at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, we applied stresses to different coral species in the presence and absence of antibiotics.

The second is why there is this reoccurring theme of tanks having stable periods followed by unstable periods (the first point).
That relates to what makes a filter (live rock, sand, etc) and the way it behaves over longer time scales.

Chris

[Ageofaquariums]

Its risky dividing bacteria into good and bad. Better to consider them like plants, in the wrong place we may consider them a weed, but that doesnt make them bad.

Also antibiotics are not the selective scalpel people seem to think. They are a sledge hammer and its always risky using them on something as complex as a reef microbial community.

If you are going to broad spectrum wipe the micro biota in an aquarium, its important to try re-colonize microbes in the correct order. Otherwise you can easily trade one out of balance setup for another.

Actually doing that reliably is almost impossible for the hobbyist, and usually through no effect of our own we rely on "nature finding a way" or the "if I build it they will come" mentality of loading the aquarium with suitable surfaces for the desired biofilms to attach.

[oceanarium]

Thanks salty.... Your comments are always interesting and informative.

I did note from the quoted study that the " This mortality is also inhibited by antibiotics "

So perhaps there is some room for there use to stop a chain reaction type scenario of disease ?

Ageofaquariums yes it would not be something done lightheartedly. Tony in our discussions was talking to someone who was pulling it off though. From what he said this person had done it a number of times without problems. Which is what pricked my ear.

I would think the process would be to do large and frequent water changes to flush the antibiotics and maintain them to keep things stable till the new bacteria establish.

I have started systems from cold and stocked from day one using the large and frequent WC mentality many times before and has always worked well for me.

I would be concerned about ruing good LR ..... but speaking from my perspective real LR is a thing I have not used in years.

A bit off topic but related to a re-seed type scenario is the current sale of reef safe LR. Rocks seeded from a bottle of bacteria in the LFS for 2 weeks then sold as 'reef safe LR'. I have been approached by two companies selling these LR alternatives the past few weeks. This mentality is what would be required to re-seed from scratch.

Pete

Pete

[Tone]

Nuking the system because of 'bad' bacteria is extreme. The system will start from scratch again resplendent with all of the new tank maladies all over again.

I'm another who has gone from a top class display to nearly giving it away ... always have something else to do whilst you wait it out, my golf handicap came down to 9 in the interim ... and now witnessing the resurgence of the system once more. It is all in the bacteria.

Treat the system right ... less antibiotics, more natural than mechanical / chemical intervention, and clean water.

[acronut]

I seem to remember reading an article many years ago i think it was in marine fish monthly and it was written by someone whos reeftank was 20 years old, it was his opinion that the reason for his long term success was because every year he made sure he introduced something fresh from the sea ie some rock or large shells something that would introduce some fresh bacteria..... Idk mabe he was onto something

[saltydog]

I did note from the quoted study that the " This mortality is also inhibited by antibiotics "

So perhaps there is some room for there use to stop a chain reaction type scenario of disease ?

This is my concern Pete:
In the study, coral mortality from elevated DOC slowed with the addition of antibiotics. But elevated DOC's can also reduce coral growth. DID pretreatment growth return after the addition of antibiotics?????
Is the use of antibiotics just masking a larger problem?

D.I. Kline, N.M. Kuntz, M. Breitbart, N. Knowlton, F. Rohwer. 2006. Role of elevated organic carbon levels and microbial activity in coral mortality. MEPS Vol. 314:119-125

Here we experimentally show that routinely measured components of water quality (nitrate, phosphate, ammonia) do not cause substantial coral mortality. In contrast, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), which is rarely measured on reefs, does. Elevated DOC levels also accelerate the growth rate of microbes living in the corals' surface mucopolysaccharide layer by an order of magnitude, suggesting that mortality occurs due to a disruption of the balance between the coral and its associated microbiota. We propose a model by which elevated DOC levels cause Caribbean reefs to shift further from coral to macroalgal dominance. Increasing DOC levels on coral reefs should be recognized as a threat and routinely monitored.

Chris

[ynotrahuk]

Hi all

Having run my system without a water change for ~2 years now, I see the occasional outbreak of disease in my staghorn corals.

This always always manifests itself in large lesions along the branches with flesh peeling off and the subsequent colonisation by opportunistic algae.There could be one lesion or multiples on all branches, but the result would inevitably always be the cessation of the RTN and the regrowth of the tissue around the affected area.
Therefore, my "treatment" was always to let it run its course, which is great if the 'infection' stops, but not so great if your whole tank collapses,such as those mentioned before or in the famous case of Sanjay Joshi's huge system collapse in America.
https://reefbuilders.com/2013/06/05/rtn-sanjay-joshi/

Of course, the obvious way to deal with this is to go on a huge knee-jerk series of reactions and try everything under the sun, possibly causing more harm than good or not knowing if something did work because 10 things were happening at once in the tank.

Studies by Luna et al. show that vibrio sp.are more common in diseased than healthy corals and several species of Vibrio have been identified.
http://carnuk.org/library/Environmental%20Microbiology/Luna%20et%20al.%202007.pdf

This of course is not new to science as people such as Bingman suspected the cause of RTN to be bacterial in origin and he proposed treatments using antibiotics both in QT systems and in the DT itself. He proposed that the most effective treatment for RTN is the use of chloramphenicol (like you get in eye drops),has published protocols for doing this and this is one treatment I am prepared to try out, as I have been experiencing another outbreak of this weird infection in my corals. Others have had good success with doxycycline too.
http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog/c_bingman_040697.html

Ido not see the problem in wiping out all of the bacteria in the tank and reseeding with other species known to be beneficial as a final solution.
Recently, I have been conversing with some South American colleagues who say they have had success with a probiotic bacterial solution that has shown to inhibit the growth of Vibrio shiloi,this study was done by Dr.Tim Hovanec. I have tracked this down and am running some trials to see if the infection stops (it has) and the tissue regrows.

Recently I also went back to some old notes on the use of GAC and its ability to absorb large amounts of DOC's in the water column.This is certainly an issue in a closed system such as mine. These dissolved compounds have been shown to be a trigger in bacterial infections in corals.I have also implemented the use of GAC in my tank and will document any benefits.

Cheers,
Tony

[oceanarium]

Thanks Tony, I look forward to seeing the results

I can see your point there Salty Perhaps at best it might only be a last resort in certain circumstances. AKA the example I used with RHYS123, when even latter when fallow new additions suffered, Tony's example of Sangay's or Mic's problem with toxic bio films. Even then there it is probably just as easy and legal to just nuke with chlorine and start from scratch.

Acronut, that has largely been a philosophy of mine historically, that perhaps i lost my way with in recent times. With a licenced coral farm it is not so easy to bring something in from the wild. Needing approval for translocation.... No longer a wild collect licence to collect any coral or rocks otherwise protected in WA. I have not brought in much new biota, other than what comes in the fresh NSW. I might have a look at the legality of a handful or two of some fresh live sand?

Tone I certainly agree with the clean water, I always have given great respect to the ability of large and regular WC of NSW to restore a aberrant system.