I keep hearing about RTN but the primary thing I fight in my acropora and pocillopora sounds more like Black Band Disease. Yet my coral reference says that BBD is not common in home aquaria. How many others have had it or is my situation unusual?
Gonna bump for a second shot at this q. Maybe nobody knows the answer but there are a lot of sps reefers out there so it's kinda hard to believe. Funny how many replies the off topic posts are getting these days and I can't snag a post about anyones experience with a coral disease. Not complaining so much as making an observation and asking for some info.
I have wondered that also James. Given the closed nature of our systems and the inverse ration of coral animals to water column in our systems versus a natural reef, it would not be surprising that the same disease manifests itself differently in our reef tanks.
What happened to my sps tank however was that I had a temp spike to the low 90's caused by a mechanical failure. The heat spike lasted about 12 hours. My pocillopora developed a black ring about 1/16 of an inch wide, starting at the base of the coral and advancing upward about a sixteenth of an inch per day. After losing about 1/3 of each affected coral I fragged the coral, saving the top third. I tossed the bottom two thirds and re-mounted the frags in the original positions. The frags were never reinfected and overgrew the adhesive at their base within 3-4 weeks.
My impression from reading people's experiences with RTN is that the tissue sloughs off rapidly, sometimes with hours. I have never experienced this and it does not sound like the same disease at all. Yet the problem I have had I can't remember being discussed.
