Dendrophyllia falling apart

[melev]

It looks like my Dendrophyllia is falling apart. I've seen this once before, but not sure why this coral is doing so after so many months of excellent growth.

While I was out of town for 3 days, the tank temperature reached a peak temp of 82F as far as I know, and it is a coral that is fed daily with mini mysis and cyclop-eeze.

Any suggestions what I might do to save it? I thought about a freshwater dip in case something internally is eating it, or perhaps a 5 minute dip in ReVive. Water parameters are pretty consistent to what it has lived in for months.

Everything seems to have occurred just in the past few days.

 

[thecichlidpleco]

Someone give love to the master of advice, I have never had mine appear to fall apart so I would assume it is some sort of internal problem with parasites or bristleworms. I would do freshwater dip to try and kill anything on it, but that would only be a guess for trying to solve the problem.

 

[ct_vol]

Have pics???

I can't think of any reason why a Dendro would just fall apart without something trying to nibble on it...

I doubt an 82F temp spike would do much to it... I've had my tank reach that during the summer...

I dipped mine in TMPCC when I got it a couple of years ago, and it did fine...

You might think about doing an Interceptor treatment if you think it might be something like a gall crab???

I'm just throwing ideas out there... Hopefully this helps???

 

[melev]

Here are a few quick pictures from today. Looking at the images on my monitor, I'm almost thinking it might be a jelly disease of some type. I've not had that occur in my tank in a very long time.

Here's a normal picture to compare against.

I checked my water parameters last night. The latest are on my Parameter's page. Magnesium is very high, although I've not dosed in at least 4 weeks.

I wonder if the Yasha Goby is taking bites out of the coral perhaps? The pairs have been in the tank for the last month and when I check on them they appear to be behaving. The Yasha shrimp has not tried to make a home under the Dendro, preferring to build small caves under the suncoral colonies.

 

[ct_vol]

It does look like a jelly disease...

From the way you described it before, I thought the skeleton was being crushed or eaten, but it seems like the flesh is the only thing being effected...

The only success I've had combatting jelly disease is to frag off healthy heads, and then use a powerhead to blow off the jelly effected areas, and then cover up the damaged portion with super glue gel...

Also, my dendros do better when they're mounted in the rockwork as opposed to lying in the sandbed... HTH...

 

[melev]

 

[ct_vol]

All is not lost yet...

Has it been getting progressively worse??? Usually jelly disease spreads moderately fast... If so, time is of the essence, otherwise, you might lose the entire colony...

 

[melev]

I just pulled it out, hit it with the turkey baster in a bowl of tank water, and it blew apart like a watermelon on a stage with Gallagher.

I cut away the three largest heads that were too far gone, and trimmed off the little guys in hopes some will survive. It looks pretty rough, but perhaps I'll be able to save some. It's pretty discouraging when you start off with three big polyps and end up seeing about 9 happy ones, only to go back to a tiny speck yet again.

 

[ct_vol]

Marc~ If you see evidence of it starting to re-gel in the morning, I would repeat the process with the turkey baster and cover the exposed skeleton with the superglue gel... The flesh will grow back over the superglue eventually...

I compare it to RTN and SPS... For some reason it works... I looked for some pics of the duncan I healed up, but couldn't find any of it in its recovery state or process...

 

[melev]

I didn't put any glue on the exposed areas, so I guess I'll do that tomorrow. There is already glue on the base of each coral that I handled, so I'd like to resist the urge to mess with them again today.

 

[graveyardworm]

I had a Dendro do the same thing, it was happy and fully expanding everyday. I fed it almost everyday. Then for no apparent reason just fell apart. At the same time that was happening my T. micranthis ( black suncoral ) which was adding new polyps and growing at a decent also began to fall apart, a few days later both were gone. Sorry I cant help, just my experience.

 

[melev]

I've been watching the suncorals as well to make sure they are okay, and they don't seem affected. Yet.

 

[ct_vol]

Did you have any slime build up today Marc???

 

[melev]

Here's the coral today, along with a few more shots from that tank.

 

[Ziggy953]

Wow that stinks Marc. I hope that it turns around and starts getting better again. I've always loved the Dendros, they are amazing looking corals.