Development of alternative in situ treatments for stony coral tissue loss disease

The overall goal of this project was to increase the number and variety of treatment options available to the state of Florida to combat SCTLD as well as better understand the dynamics of this disease. This year, in addition to testing new probiotics, the team also included a task to compare effectiveness of antibiotics versus probiotics versus a combination of the two. Results into new probiotics remain the same as previous years – while there has been some success with known stains, no new successful strains have been identified and the treatment only slows (not stops) disease progression. Results from the comparison portion of the study were inconclusive due to minimal disease at the time of testing. The experiment was run again in May and monitoring will continue through FY 23-24.