Blasto disease

[saltylake]

Hello everyone,

I have a big colony of Blasto Merletti and for some reason over the past two weeks the polyps have been dieing slowly.

I have grown this piece from a quarter size to a size of a football over four years.

the piece is suddenly dieing but very slowely!!!!

should i dip the coral?

i have checked in the middle night and have not seen anything stinging the blastos?????

really wierd.

thank you for all your advice ahead of time.

 

[calero]

i have the same problem, some of the polyps are getting like frozen, pale, then die, i have a few colonies of merletti and is happening in some of them, not all of them, i have no idea what it is, can anybody help us ?

thanks

 

[ScotchMaster]

Funny.....This is happening to my welsi also....My large colony is almost dead.....Anyone know?

 

[Rothie]

I have had this problem before and am having it again.I finally found this bug in one of my Welsi about a year ago.It was months before I finally found it.All was well until about 2 months ago.So far,I have not been able to locate the critter.This pic was posted by someone else on RC quite a while ago.They called it an LPS tick.It looks just like what I found in my Welsi.

 

[ALTI]

i had the same happen to my nice green colony. ill check for ticks.

 

[Hooligomy]

A dip of blastos in Melafix we find usually helps if the blasto is suffering. Our success rate with blastos (many of them come in severely stressed from shipping) has tripled since we started treating with Melafix. Now we rarely ever lose a blasto.

This is also mentioned in Sprung latest book towards the end where he also dipped a blasto suffering from bacteria in Melafix.

 

[Hooligomy]

The above dip will not help if it is caused by a parasite like Rothie was mentioning.

 

[Rothie]

Sharky-
Great info. Do you use the dosing directions on the bottle?Do you mix it with tank water,and how long do you dip?

 

[Hooligomy]

Yes I would use the directions on the bottle. I use a stronger dose because I am usually dipping more then one (as you can probably guess with the number of blastos we have). I think the directions are 5ml per 10gallon. I only dip a couple gallons at a time. You don’t have to be too specific on the measuring because it is a pretty general anti-bacterial that’s mostly from natural extracts.

I give it around 10 mins and some shakes in the bucket. The bottle instructions talk about treating whole tank. I would not recommend this. Please use it as a dip only. You can also use this for other LPS but I would not dip anything until you see a problem. Just don’t dip for the dipping sake.

The response is pretty quick. You should see improvement next day and this dip can also be repeated.

 

[Laakmann]

on the subject,

is melafix safe for being used a quarentine tank for new arrivals?

If it is true that it get rid of some problems with coral, I think I should start dosing my new arrival tank with it, good idea?

 

[oddballs]

melafix is pretty safe with most things its great in the qt tank!if you need alot of it they sell pro melafix(extra concentrated)and pond melafix(more concetrated also) .i have been reading more and more of people using it on corals?

 

[Hooligomy]

I dont think melafix would do any harm in your QT tank. However, personally, I just don't like to unneccessary dip all corals if they are healthy. I like to dip the ones I have only indentified to have a problem. It puts an extra stress on the coral as well as potentially killing some "good" bacteria.

 

[stevedola]

I just had this happen to a fast growing merletti colony too. It was well established in my tank but suddenly it started to shrivel and die back. I did a couple of water changes (even though my parameters were 410, 9.8 dk, Nit<.1,sg 1.025 , and no dramatic temp swings). It seems to have worked to atleast stop the regression.