January Frag Swap!

[cerreta]

I lost my Armor of God zoos and a Tubs blue frag. This is spreading and affecting nearly half my colonies now. Not sure what to do, but this thing turns the zoos to a white mushy mess and they are all dead within two days after the infection starts. The frags smell bad when I remove them, so I do not think it is a predator eating the zoos, but rather an infection.

The zoos I dipped are dying.

OMG, the AOG are dead! I am really bummed.

 

[Senn]

Scott does the infection look like a white fuzzy mess?? If it does the only thing that will help is to get the affected colonies out, cut off/out the affected parts, Lugols dip, big water change and run a boatload of carbon. From what I can gather if you have what I had is that it is stress on the colony that causes this problem.
Unfortunately there is really nothing you can do to save the affected parts of the colony. Just blow off what you can, cut, dip and if needed frag the colony cause it will wipe your tank out.
Heres a pic of what it looks like:

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[owsi]

Chris is right, cut, wash with powerhead in bucket of tank sg water and isolate. Flow is key, remember dipping is stressful though

 

[cerreta]

yeah, that kinda looks like how it starts, then the colenchyme swells with the fuzzy mess and fills in the gaps.

I think yo are right. I will try to save what I can tomorrow night. It does seem to be spreading to previously healthy colonies, so this is bad. I notice that it is moving to the right of the tank. The flow is predominant in that direction and the colonies on the far left seem to have been spared.

I got to see the graphite zoos from Van for a partial day (whoa, these were cool) then they have been closed since.

I'm bummed. I think this happened when I fragged some zoos for the Phx event. It was those two big colonies that looked the worse. They are nearly gone now. These were both well over 500 polyps. One was the green crosettes and the other was the French mint (chocolate mint) zoos.

 

[cerreta]

Well, after this adventure, I should have plenty of room to place my new crayola colony. I will try to do a FW pH adjusted dip with the powerhead blast in SW.

 

[Senn]

Trust me on this one. My tank came real close to crashing. I bought a huge colony and over night it set in and I had to scramble the next day. I ended up losing 3 colonies of Zoas and 4 other types of LPS. Anymore I dip and do a somewhat QT before I put any zoas in my tank for fear of this happening again.

 

[SWSaltwater]

tetracyclin and chlorum pheocol(sp?) can fix them. Tetracyclin I have Chlorum is hard to find and causes irreversable bone loss in some people. Death follows, but they are great to fix the bacteria that is killing your zoas. If anyone knows anyplace selling chlorum ph. let me know.

 

[cerreta]

I think you mean chloramphenicol. It is an antibiotic used for bacterial infections of sps corals. It has been used with soft corals with some success, but appears to work better for hard coral infections.
It is only available by prescription. It comes as a powder in pills and also in liquid form as an eye antibiotic. The eye dropper would be a great way to dose drops onto affected corals.

You can get a prescription from a Vetrinarian that specializes in fish.

Pop-i, this is what we need your prescription pad for, not for writing scripts for us, but rather so we can treat our fish and corals with human medicine

 

[SWSaltwater]

You can get it in Mexico fairly easily. Olin used Chloramphenicol on a trans ship that was heat stressed with some success. Tertacyclin worked great on my softies when I get a batch with bacterial infections. The hot pink zoas almost always have it and man is it stinky.

 

[buckeyenewbie]

Hey,

On another note. Do we have a replacement guarantee on the corals we get at the swap? I got the Metallic Torch from Vince and he said I should put it into strong flow - I think that was because it broke a little while cutting. I did the strong flow and then I read it was to stay in low or medium flow. Well - it was toooo late and the little guy bit the sand. I did not ask what the policy is, so maybe one of you could enlighten me.

Everything else looks great. I am looking forward to the next meet.

Later,
Sandra

 

[buckeyenewbie]

Hey,

On another note. Do we have a replacement guarantee on the corals we get at the swap? I got the Metallic Torch from Vince and he said I should put it into strong flow - I think that was because it broke a little while cutting. I did the strong flow and then I read it was to stay in low or medium flow. Well - it was toooo late and the little guy bit the sand. I did not ask what the policy is, so maybe one of you could enlighten me.

Everything else looks great. I am looking forward to the next meet.

Later,
Sondra

 

[AZreefkeeper]

sondra,
If I have another by the swap I will replace it, if not you can choose something else. How are the other corals you got from the swap?

 

[pop-i]

Hey Scott,
You should use your fiances connections in the hospital to get a scrip for the antibiotics. Or, you could always wait about three years and then I'd definately be down to fill all of the reefer scrips. Of course I'd have to ask for at least 10% of the pills on any of the good stuff :0 (J/K)

 

[cerreta]

hehehe. Yeah, I know she could do it, but it is more fun to raz you since she is out of country.

After doing some investigation on Chlormaphenicol, it is not commonly used because of its toxicity. I can get a script for it, no problem, but finding a place that carries it is.

In the mean time I lost one more colony and two others are looking infefcted. I image that I gave lost over $400 in zoanthids thus far. So, I decided to treat what I still had remaining using tetracyline.

After considering the losses, I was not willing to risk just blowing them with high flow. So I sniffed, and discarded the truly foul smelling items and salvaged the others by dousing with a few drops of diluted Lugols for 15 seconds. Then I placed them in a 5 gallon bucket with a powerhead blasting right at the polyps.

Those that had the infection went into a 1 gallon tank with 500mg tetracycline with powerhead and heater. I will let these sit overnight and then repeat lugols and a rinse before putting back into the tank.

Those that looked ok, but were not fully open got the lugols and jetstream then went right back into the tank.

If I can save half of the medicated zoos then I would be truly happy. These did look bad. I realize that I may loose some due to the stress, but I am willing to take that risk so that this can be halted.

I did a 25% waterchange tonight too.

Sondra, do to some issues that arose in previous events, we all came to the agreement that any items purchased at the event became ownership of the highest bidder. The new owner had rights to do whatever they choose to do with the purchase, this includes anything, keeping it, reselling it for profit, fragging it, growing it out for propagation, or even throwing it in the trash can. We do not have to agree with the choices the new owner makes, but will respect the fact they bought the rights to the animal and may do as they please with it.

We also agreed that the new owner is responsible for any losses and no guarentees are implied. With that said, most people selling the corals are willing to give another frag if one dies (provided that it was a frag that came from a colony), just send them a PM with a request.

 

[AZreefkeeper]

Scott,
sounds like you got a nasty bug, do you think it could be viral? post some pics of what it looks like maybe someone else has come across it.

I will get you those pics of the zoa's colonies and if there is anything there you want to replace any of your losses LMK we can frag them up, I was planning on seperating all the different colors anyway.

Chlormaphenicol is very toxic, I know of a guy that has liver damage just by being absorbed through his skin. Then again it has been proven very effective for most coral infections. I won't use it mainly because I don't want it kept around the house with the kids.

 

[owsi]

This tragedy is a prime example of why I don't like "Chop-Shop" fragging. In your case Scott, it was OK, you have the experience to recognize and deal with the problems. For a newbie it would be a disaster and possibly drive them from the hobby. Frags IMO should be done well in advance of an Swap/Auction, giving them time to heal/encrust. This gives them a chance to heal in their home environment, and the new owner can see they are getting a healthy, growing frag. That way if it dies, I feel pretty certain it was not my fault, but the new owners acclimation or tank conditions. I take this into consideration if someones frag dies and act accordingly. I have seen a lot of folks (especially with Zoo's) order a frag and chop it as soon as it arrives. Distributing it right away, now you have a stressed colony arrive, get cut up and more stressed/infected. Learn from this, look at everything in same tank/water system, wait till it has had a week to acclimate. In that week it will also show any infections or disease. If its at a LFS and you know it will get sold, ask them to hold or QT it yourself. Our Reef Tanks are getting invaded every day, now that we aquaculture and pass frags amongst ourselves. In the Ocean it is a big environment and nature controls. Our Reefs are a small culture dish, where the good guys don't always come in the same bag as the bad guys. This means we start treating/altering to "Cure" the problem, again throwing everything out of balance. Also remember dipping might help, but it is also a form of stress. Constantly dipping could aggravate more then it helps.

 

[cerreta]

Well, all the zoos that I medicated have survived. Still not sure if they will recover, but at least they look no worse than when I put them in the medication. I placed these in the sump and will give them mild light tomorrow.

I had a few zoos in the tank that looked like they were getting the infection but it was very mild. I took these out, blew them off and placed them back in the tank without any treatment. They died last night. These were the Bam Bam orange zoos.

I had a couple that I treated with iodine and blew off with powerhead and placed back in tank. These partially opened today but none died, yet.


So far I am happy that I made the decision to medicate. At least those medicated are alove and have a chance at recovery. Doing nothing, or just blowing off the white debris is not good enough. This infection seems to spread and kill colonies in one or two nights.

I noticed a couple more colonies looking a bit whitish and not fully opening, but I was not sure. I did nothing with them. One is a super orange zoo frag. We shall see its fate tomorrow.

Here are a few pics:

Pink zoos

Another pink zoo frag with speckles. If you look down and to the left you see what is left of a 40+ polyps frag of Radioactive dragon eyes. I noticed a slight closure on two poylps the night before and did not treat these or blow them off. They are all but dead now.

Pinks

 

[pop-i]

Sorry to see all of the destruction in your tank. It's always sad to see part of a tank succumb to the germ warfare that is waged everyday in our tanks. However, I'm glad to hear that you seem to have it under controll. If you don't have a UV steralizer and thinnk that one might help rid your system of some of the bad bugs you're always welcome to barrow the one that I have sitting around, but this might destroy the "super bacteria" that you've been building up. Anyway, if you'd like to give it a try PM me and I'll drop it by your house tomorrow when I get done with classes at noon.
Cheers right back at ya,
Kris

 

[cerreta]

No thanks. Things are looking better at teh moment and nothing died through the night, that is a nice change. I moved all the medicated zoos into a separate system for recovery. Half of them were opening today and none died. There are about 6 or 7 pieces that do not look like they will make it, but if it wern't for the medication, they would have melted into goo by now.

 

[owsi]

Scott, any update on the Zoo's

Scott, any update on the Zoo's

Hope the are doing better