What's STN/RTN mean?

[clnreef]

..............

[massman]

rapid tissue necrosis

[onthefly]

I think the real acronym for STN is "sudden tissue necrosis", but many say slow tissue necrosis, since it is much slower than RTN

[ReefRockerLive]

STN(Slow Tissue Necrosis) Caused my lack of flow or too much flow. Sometimes it's due to critters that stress them out too far.

RTN(Rapid Tissue Necrosis)There is no accurate known cause for this disease. RTN is a disease that is difficult to stop once it has started.

HTH

[clnreef]

ok cool, thanks

[coralfarmer84]

thankyou for asking cuz i never knew myself :)

[reefeater]

Could anyone post pics of the two so I know what it looks like?

[sfsuphysics]

Basically if you see any coral turn white rapidly.. that's it

[carpus]

i dont find a pic would be too necessary. I experienced RTN, you go to sleep one night, and the coral is looking fine, and the morning you wake up, the skin is peeling off. You see patches of skin and patches of exposed skeleton and skin peeling off. Usually its water parameters. Like premature aquariums. Thats how my sps got affected. but its recovering and skinning over.

[Dog boy Dave]

I have stoped rapid tissue loss several times by moving a coral from a tank with a "bad " water issue to a tank with know good water. Often it isnt something you can measure. RTN and STN are both symptoms and either can be caused by multiple stress issues. Often I have found the slowere ressision is a pathogen. Either disease or a parasite. Rapid tissue loss is usually stress related or water quality. Or stress from "bad" water. But neither is necessarily a death warrant.

[Hef]

What's it Mean?
It means you're Screwed.
If you've been lucky enough to have never seen it, congrats.
Here's a photo of one of my losses.
Before RTN
http://jerseyshorereef.com/Dec05/PA3

After it started.
http://jerseyshorereef.com/Dec05/PA4

The 2nd photo shows the damage that happened on the first day. That night I fragged off the bad part, and within 48 hours the whole coral was gone.

It's a very Sick Feeling when you look in your tank and see it.
I've been wanting to try and stir up some intelligent conversation about what causes it, and or how to stop it.
Everyone has the opinion that it's just one of those things. Seems like we solve so many problems in this hobby, why cant we solve this one. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons for it, but for a healthy, stable, sucessful tank, there cant be that many causes.
I didnt lose a coral for just about all of 2005, as of Mid December, I have lost 3 frags. They were all fairly new frags for me, but I had them for over a month.

Anyway, I know what RTN means, I just dont know what to do about it.

Hef

[Dog boy Dave]

Recently I removed most of the sand from my main display. After about two weks of blindly following the same routine that I followed for the last 4 years I woke up one morning to find one of my favorite baby blue stags showing the same symtoms shown in the photo above. Because of the reduced alkalinity demands caused buy removing the sand I had managed to push my alkalinity to around 13.6 DKH. I imediately shut down my Ca reactor and stopped the addition of sodium carbonate and ca Chloride. Also unpluged my Kalk top off system. The piece was at least 9 to 10 inches high with multi branches. It continued to loose tissue for 24 hours. But within 48 was showing signs of recovering. This was on 12/3/05 As of today the piece is doing well. Lots of bare skeleton but all the places where flesh did survive are doing well. It was a large piece and so even though it was sloughing off in masses it had a lot to loose . A frag would have died. Like I said before it isnt a death setance. I have seen many pieces survive. On the other hand I have seen many that didnt.