How’s this for vague. There’s many more just like it.
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Hello,
My name is Dr. Ryan Cunningham the owner and operator of Chumminghams Reef. I am a resident physician who depends greatly on my aquaculture production for the payments of my bills. I am the best aquaculturist in the Midwest and leader in the hobby as far as aquaculturing previously impossible corals like acanthophyllia, scolymia, Trachyphyllia etc for reproduction. That is kind of what I am known for but the biggest part of my collection is made up of SPS. As I am sure you are aware I have been discussing my issues with Lou Ekus who has made a great deal of effort to help me identify the source of my issue starting in August of 2021. I have been a 7 year supporter of tropic Marin. There was a period of time where I would force my service clients to use TM pro as a prerequisite to even ask me questions about issues they were having in their reef. In 2016 I made a big push to transition all people in the Midwest to TM pro as the only salt to be used if you are a serious reefer. I have been in the hobby since 2011 and I have never had a crash throughout this entire time. My reef is not just my livelihood it is my life, I love it and I love all the animals contained within it. I have put blood, sweat, tears and immeasurable time and money into my collection.
Starting in July of 2021 I purchased 4 new buckets of TM pro following a long drought of not having this salt available to me. These buckets were new looking and unbenounced to me were being produced in a new facility in Turkey. Shortly thereafter all of my SPS started to lose color and lose polyp extension. Then they all started to RTN. At this time I was working in the ICU as a first year resident coming home to a disaster in my reef of unknown etiology. I couldn’t believe it but I was losing corals at a rapid rate for the first time in the hobby. I worked up the issue for 6 weeks never blaming the salt. I went through the tank with a fine tooth comb with the brief period of free time I had while working 80 hour weeks at the hospital. The experience was traumatic and extremely scary as this created undue pressure on me financially and emotionally. It took me until mid august of 2021 of working up everything from magnets, to fans to hair products I was using. Finally one day when I was doing a water change I remembered back to the old bucket of tropic I had been using for six years and was like “why did they change the handle from metal to plastic?”. It was at this point that I realized the period of time I was having issues completely overlapped with the time in which I transitioned to the new salt production. I was still skeptical as I used to roll my eyes when people blamed the salt mix as a bad batch. Regardless I ordered a new salt, HW reefer. The salt came three days later. I did a 10 percent water change daily on a 500 gallon system and I kid you not, it only took ten percent change with HW reefer for me to see polyp extension on my sps for the first time in six weeks. As I continued to do water changes with this new salt I continued to see improvement and color returned in 3-4 weeks. It was shocking. I made a post in august on BRS and had multiple people start pm me about the exact same issue they had. People in my local area who bought salt from the same pallet and vender as I noticed the same issue as well. The minute they switched salts their issues subsided.
Prior I was blaming poisoning but was unable to determine a source after looking at every single magnet and piece of equipment in my tank. As I did water changes with the tropic, the problem accelerated which I still didn’t blame the salt thinking that the water changes were just tipping the corals into rtn from the micro elemental changes from the WC. Thirty minutes after doing the first water change with HW I saw sps that were actively rtning stop rtn immediately and polyp extension return. I made Lou aware of this and he said your tests were coming back clean. I made it evident that there was no way your facility could be testing for every last contaminant that could be present in the environment. When I sent out an Icp the test came back off the charts for manganese and iron. Lou disregarded this finding as nothing new.
It is now approximately 6 months later from my initial insult and my tank is back to health. I lost half of my sps which I value at 40-60k just in sheer value and not counting my time spent to get there or lost profits from the future as I am no longer and to frag mothers anymore. It also eliminated all of my clams from the system of which there were 9 200 dollar maximas and a 30 year old aquacultured derasa clam which was grown in a tank from 2 inch to one that would occupy a 40 breeder. It is now dead and the next opportunity I will have to own a specimen of that caliber I will be 65 years old, I am 35 now. To say that this was the most stressful and financially difficult time of my life is a complete and utter understatement. I had to borrow money to pay my mortgage and buy food as residency pays me next to nothing. We are now 6 plus months into this thing and it is literally filling my Facebook feed daily. People posting videos of using TM pro to salt their driveway, Shane backer making a massive thread on it on R2R and finally another leader in our hobby Andre Mueler making this post I have attached to this email to you today recommending everyone stop using TM PRO IMMEDIATELY.
I warned you guys months ago that you had issues that you needed to look into and you disregarded me. Now I am here to say that not only do you personally owe me an apology you are also financially responsible for my losses. The debate is officially over. Your issues are all over the internet and your sales will no doubt tank. Tropic Marin needs to pull itself up by its boot straps and recall all salt that has been shipped to the United States since July 2021 or be faced with a class action lawsuit. You are literally killing animals across the country at this moment and charging us 120 bucks a bucket to do it. This is gross negligence. Lou had already refunded me 440 dollars for my salt that killed my tank and now I’m coming for my losses. Please do not tell me you are still testing and coming back clean. You have the literal leaders of aquaculture in the hobby all telling you that your salt is contaminated and the discussion is over. I want an apology and to be made financially whole followed shortly thereafter by a recall to have all TM PRO be recalled so the death and destruction across this hobby can end.
Sincerely,
Ryan Cunningham MD MBS
Owner and operator of Chumminghams Reef
I don’t have skin in this game because I’ve always used reef crystals for a few reasons and I have no intention of changing any time soon.
Having said that, self qualification is the first indication of a lie (the leader in the Midwest, ok cool buddy) and a few things stand out as fishy.
If something in the water was harming his corals so much as to shed skin, a 10% water change and 30 minutes is not going to transition them from dying to thriving. The polyps extend so that they can use mucus to absorb the elements in the water, and deposit them as calcium carbonate in the semi-vacant area beneath them so that the skeleton can continue to grow. The transition from unable to survive to building new structures wouldn’t happen in 30 minutes even if he could wave a magic and wand and make the water 100% pristine for coral growth.
Also, him specifically mentioning the brand he switched to sticks out as suspicious as well. The point of his argument is that you need to stop using TM, so what salt he switches to is irrelevant. comes off as advertisement-ish.
Also, sure, other people’s corals are dying. That’s because everyone’s corals are dying all the time, and correlation does not equal causation. There’s a reason that importers keep shipping tens of thousands of pounds of corals every year. It’s because 90% of reefers kill more than they grow, and that’s the unfortunate reality. If more than 50% of all imported corals survived to double in quantity every year then you’d hardly need another shipment of corals again (assuming no new discoveries, for illustration purposes) considering the supply would be growing organically, rather than injection from importing.
Also, you owe me $5 because you couldn’t be more vague