Fed Rod's food and a bunch of LPS died

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richiev

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I mostly fed Reef Jerky + freeze dried mysis in my frag tank. I mostly feed TDO in my display. Sometimes seaweed. Historically I've had weird issues with LPS, particularly some torches.

Things have been stable, but I accidentally had N&P almost bottom out in my frag tank due to adding lights and having much faster SPS growth + some hair algae starting in my fuge.

I've gotten that back up by feeding even more, and dosing by hand N&P throughout the day.

Yesterday I decided to feed a chunk of Rod's food I have in my freezer to do another fish treat, and let the coral get some as it floats by. Since I was doing it there, I also fed into my display.

Across my 120 gallon display and 80 gallon frag I fed around 2cm worth of Rod's food. Not a ton. Thawed, poured.

This morning I was looking at my frag tank and my torch is toast, looking almost jellied. Also my giant chalice has a huge piece gone. The chalice is 1ft diameter, and in one edge there's 2in of chalice missing. Just skeleton.

That torch I got from AC last weekend and had a huge flesh band and was happy. The chalice did have a bit of recession near the spot that's gone from a previous issue, but had been stable and recovering for quite awhile.

My display also lost the only torch I had in it. That one I'd had for awhile, and it didn't have a great tissue band, but had been stable for quite awhile. Total polyps gone on both heads.

Correlation is not causation, but feeding that is the only thing that's unique in the past day. I'm trying to think if previous LPS issues were correlated with me feeding this.

SPS seem fine. Not all LPS affected.

Other things done recent that are not abnormal: Kalk remixed, ATO topped off. That's really all I think I've done in the last week.

Anyone ever heard of this before?
 
MarcosD said:
I know there’s a lot of uncertainty but people who I follow who have success with euphyllia, specifically torches, agree not to feed them.
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I always liked feeding my torches and other lps appropriately sized foods. Reef nutrition ROE seemed to be a good one, as well as the powdered foods. I understand that everything with a mouth needs to be fed, torches included.

My guess is something bacterial, especially if it was overnight. I've seen torches take and then spit out larger pieces of food.

Potentially a bad batch, but Rod's is one of my go to foods when I can find it.
 
Odd..I noticed this with a batch of Rods food I picked up as well...not with LPS, but with my carpet nem..

I've been feeding Rods to get my nutrients up and keep my CBB fed, but give the largest chunks to the nem every few days or so. One batch caused him to shrivel up all together on 3 different occasions. Like, to the point where I thought I was going to lose him. I also noticed the CBB didn't go for the food when feeding, but didn't correlate the two since he's always a picky eater.

I decided to switch it to a new pack and see if I had the same response and everything was totally fine. Nem stayed happy and CBB was back to eating.

QC issue with some batches of food maybe?
 
To clarify, there was no spot feeding. Broadcast fed. Dumped into both tanks after letting it thaw enough to separate when stirred.

Spot feeding or not I'd love to see a separate thread created for.
 
finalphaze987 said:
Odd..I noticed this with a batch of Rods food I picked up as well...not with LPS, but with my carpet nem..

I've been feeding Rods to get my nutrients up and keep my CBB fed, but give the largest chunks to the nem every few days or so. One batch caused him to shrivel up all together on 3 different occasions. Like, to the point where I thought I was going to lose him. I also noticed the CBB didn't go for the food when feeding, but didn't correlate the two since he's always a picky eater.

I decided to switch it to a new pack and see if I had the same response and everything was totally fine. Nem stayed happy and CBB was back to eating.

QC issue with some batches of food maybe?
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Hmmm. Very interesting.

Edit: adding more to this, my bag is almost used. I've had multiple LPS die offs though in my display awhile back, and looking back they were correlated with feeding this.

I didn't really connect the dots because I assumed it was me overthinking it or because I had shrimp in the tank and they were going after my coral when they had food in them. However, I have no shrimp in either tank right now and no fish that I've observed causing any coral issues.

It's been awhile, but I'm 95% sure the torch head bailouts I had in my display in the past were correlated with times I fed this.

I haven't fed any of it in months and my tanks have been thriving. This was a very surprising event.
 
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MarcosD said:
I was told because it could cause bacterial infections. I don’t feed mine because of this. I’m sure there’s people that do and have no problems.
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I saw this on a talk show. One piece that stuck with me. Small particulates of food gets trapped in between tentacles without proper flow. The food then decomposes/ grows bacteria and can give the LPS bacterial infections. Made sense to me too.

Just to put it out there I feed RODs food twice a week. I mix a small amount with flake food or cut a cube of frozen mysis shrimp with it. Never had issues. Will be on the look out for this though. Like in every product, a “bad batch” can happen.
 
Kensington Reefer said:
Which flavor of Rod’s food did you feed?
I incorporated 3 of them in my feed bottles along with several different cubes.
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The one I got a bad response from was the herbivore blend. The green one to the left.
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finalphaze987 said:
The one I got a bad response from was the herbivore blend. The green one to the left.View attachment 70258View attachment 70259
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Same for me, but a different run of it I believe.

Not trying to start a which hunt or attack on Rod's, just has been a very weird correlation. I am very very confident I've had repeated torch issues correlated with feeding this, and other LPS issues. In retrospect I should've considered it wasn't shrimp issues but could've been this.

I almost threw out the rest of my bag, but I put it back in the freezer. I may see if I can get a cheap torch somewhere, acclimate it into my isolation tank, and then do a broadcast feed of this and see what happens.

The only thing I could think is maybe the batch went bad due to a dethawing?

I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this. If so, let's discuss off thread where you bought it. @finalphaze987 and I got it from the same place, so I'm wondering if there's any weird correlation to that.
 
I feed rods original plus hikari mysis/spirulina and brine/spirulina to all my tanks twice a day (very heavy broadcast feedings) and have had nothing bad come of it. I've never tried the herbivore blend.
 
I remember reading somewhere that the reason why LRS and some other brands were "good" was because they used live/fresh foods that they processed cold and flash froze after blending. Perhaps this batch had temperature issues or a contaminated ingredient? Old or rotting food in the tank can encourage vibrio among other unwelcome bacteria to grow on uneaten or undigested foods.

There's people that keep gigantea anemones that don't even feed them for 6 months for fear of infection. And after only very small pieces of food (the days of using silversides is long gone).
 
Darkxerox said:
I remember reading somewhere that the reason why LRS and some other brands were "good" was because they used live/fresh foods that they processed cold and flash froze after blending. Perhaps this batch had temperature issues or a contaminated ingredient? Old or rotting food in the tank can encourage vibrio among other unwelcome bacteria to grow on uneaten or undigested foods.

There's people that keep gigantea anemones that don't even feed them for 6 months for fear of infection. And after only very small pieces of food (the days of using silversides is long gone).
Click to expand...
Unfortunately not for everyone…
 
This is complete no proof of evidence and internet fodder ;) , but I actually stopped feeding frozen foods a long while ago because vibrio (and most other bacteria) cannot be killed by freezing. So regardless of freezing or having a "cleaner environment" for processing fish, if there is any bad bacteria present, it will survive your freezer.

This doesn't necessarily explain your problem because I would imagine that one day would be far too quick to have bacteria reanimate and replicate in numbers that would be a problem in that timeframe.

At any rate, i posted this because I coincidentally found this a couple nights ago and was considering trying it.

Gamma irradiated food that kills all parasites and bacteria.

www.qualitymarine.com

Gamma Frozen Foods and their Nutrition

Gamma Foods are a staple here at Quality Marine (and our freshwater sibling distributor, Aquatropic) and Gamma gets fed to nearly everything that comes through these doors, except staff, we think. All our QM Labs aquacultured species are reared on Gamma Frozen Foods along with Nutramar Foods...
www.qualitymarine.com www.qualitymarine.com

 
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