Acropora tissue bubbling. Disease?

A

asylumdown

New member
I've had some ups and downs with my mainly SPS tank over the last year, something disastrous happened last february that wiped out half the tank that I was never able to explain, and then in the summer after things were finally on the up and up there was a renovation in my house that took out about half of what was left. Since then things have been pretty much recovering and I've added new coral to replace what died, but I've been having a heck of a time keeping alk and calcium up as the corals that were unaffected (mainly montipora species) have grown to gargantuan proportions.

The entire year I've been experiencing this issue - select colonies of acropora will develop what looks like tiny balloons in the tissue of their growth tips. As soon as it starts, the growth tip starts growing all stunted and weird. I thought It was pretty much done, but woke up this morning to find one long branch that has grown on one of my colonies in the last month just covered in them. It happened literally over-night.


Has anyone experienced this before? Is it a disease?
 


I have experienced symptoms like the above picture. best thing to do is check your major 3 alk cal mag. I found a problem with my alk being low caused by bad batches of tropic marin reef pro salt. changed salt, and the problem went away. I think it causes the tissue to reproduce at a faster rate than the skeleton can keep up with.
 
asylumdown said:
Mine don't look quite like that. I'll try to take a pic tonight with my underwater camera.
Click to expand...

sweet look forward to help diagnose
100_4136.jpg

anything like this?
 
These pics are of two colonies, one's a purple bonsai, I don't know what the other is. I tried to take from different angles with and without the flash. Photo bucket, of course destroys the quality of the image.









On the second coral this happened in the space of 3 days. One day it looked perfectly healthy, the next it looked like it had broken out in water filled warts.
 
That's what I'm wondering. When things got really bad in the tank last February and I was losing corals like it was my job, this was happening to all of them. The only thing I could ever really pin that mess on was a drastic change in the way I was using biopellets - it's a long story but even though they'd been on the tank since day one I did some things that was the equivalent of starting up a brand new biopellet reactor on an established tank with about 15 times more pellets than recommended.

Other than a brief re-attempt at pellets in the spring (which immediately preceded a second mini wave of coral losses) I haven't used them. I have been using Orco labs nitra guard biocubes via the bomb method for the last four-ish months, however.

At this stage it's just these two corals. Both got hammered hard in the first wave of damage last february, and nearly bit it completely when they replaced the porcelain floors in my house in August, so they've been teetering on the edge for a while, but both were recovering really well - I cut away most everything that had died, there's lots of healthy, fresh new growth, tissue looking OK... then a couple weeks ago this starts up on the bonsai again, and that second coral only began turning in to that warted mess on the weekend.
 
The only other thing I can think is that it's maybe allelopathy of some sort? It's a pretty mixed reef - overwhelmingly dominated by acropora and montipora, but I do have a small collection of ricordias, a giant elegance coral, two very large frogspawns (one's about the size of softball, the other a basketball), a couple trachyphyllias, fungias, and acans and favids.

I've had most of my LPS and soft corals for the better part of three years so the acros have been in the tank with them for a good long while. The LPS and softies were all teeny tiny little frags when I got them so they didn't seem like they would ever be an issue, but at this point they're approaching the biggest things in the tank in some cases.
 
once you dip these corals on the infected area do they end up looking like the second pic I showed? have you dipped your infected corals? whats your temp? and major 3 levels? what kind of test kit? have you cross referenced your specific gravity with other reefers? I ask these questions because to narrow the cause down, you'll have to go through such procedures to find out if your water is off. If all else is well, than you can start looking at the strands as the causal. I found in the past that my corals would bubble (1st pic showed), then after dipped they would end up with the hard skeleton with minimal amounts of tissue (2nd pic showed). It only affected select few corals and the rest looked damn near perfect in health. any info on your system would be fantastic.

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2468109

sorry to put you on the spot, but this thread is pretty recent, please check your alk and let me know what your levels are at. When I had problems with stony corals such as abnormal growths, I knew my alk was not in check. last I remember my alk was in the 6dkh range before I switched salts, now I keep mine hovering 7.7ish range with no problems whatsoever.
 
Last edited:
My alk was low for a long time, in the 6 range. I've got some huge montiporas I couldn't keep up with. I bought a new doser (my old one was sad and inconsistent) and it's now up in the 7.2-7.5 range.

This most recent round of bubbling only began after I got the dKH up back in to the 7s, and when it first started a year ago my dKH was 9.

And I haven't dipped these corals. They're not really removable without a traumatic amount of fragging. The bonsai is 14"x16" viewed top down, and the "trunk" part that's fused to the rock is 6" around. The smaller one I suppose I can do, but it's already pretty stressed so I'm not sure if it would survive. Might be worth it to try dipping a piece and see what happens.
 
I was reading online about o2 and co2 levels could be the cause. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2086636

well anyways keep a close eye on the infected areas and don't change things drastically. Are any of the infected corals showing signs of tissue necrosis?

I had problems of fluctuating alk causing similar symptoms. Any more info on your system would be great. and let us know how things go.
 
I'm not sure this is the same. A club member described something like this. Found it was bacterial caused by the new brand of biopellets. I would have to ask him about it. Do you use biopellets?
 
I get this on my oregon tort when I dose Sponge Power consistently for sometime (smells like vinegar). I've also gotten this in the past when vinegar dosing. Never noticed any correlation with Alk, cal, and mg levels. It's almost always carbon source related, from what I have seen in other tanks.
 
Hi.

I just posted a similar thread -- Yours is brand new. There is almost no info about this problem on the interwebs.

We haven't had any losses associated with it, no crashes or anything. Growth and color is still really good on our coral despite this. Impacts both Montis and Acros. Smooth skinned acros hit the hardest.

Alk/Calc/Mag all are right in line (~8, ~420, ~1300.)

No one seems to know.

Edit -- We don't carbon dose. Only dosing we do is 2 part, and regular water changes. Just added Carbon last weekend incase it is allelopathy.
 
I had this one year ago, at the end I think it was due to very high Mg 1600+, from a not well mixed batch of Red Sea Coral Pro.

dfceecbd6c557b33b647c491dd0abd0c.jpg
 
Panta rhei said:
I tried CoralRx but did not notice any improvement.
Click to expand...

gotcha, for what its worth, select few of my coral were looking like the first pic I posted and after I dipped looked like the second pic. healed after alk issues were solved. I was using biopellets, but like 50ml in a 65g system so it had little effect. was using the biopellet pearls.
 
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