Large toadstool help needed

[radone]

My large toadstool is missing pieces. What could be causing this? and how do I correct it. It's mainly on the top and at first thought it was caused by being out of the water it reaches from the bottom of the tank and comes out of the water on some days so I thought it might have been caused by sun burn basically. Now it seems as though chunks are eroding or being stripped of.

Any suggestions
TIA

 

[The steven liu]

Can you include a picture to illustrate the situation?

 

[radone]

I will try

 

[radone]

Here's a couple shots

 

[AcroSteve]

Got adequate flow in that area?

 

[Qwiv]

Looks like rot from a fungis or an infection. Leathers will get that in a low flow area as they have a hard time shedding.

 

[radone]

This is right next to an output from my return, in fact I think sometimes it blows it over. I redirected the output to blow right on it and it seemed worse so I put it back the way it was.
I did turn off that light yesterday and it seemed to help alot, I might need to leave that one off for a couple days to let it heal which it seems to be doing slowly.
Also did a water change to maybe rid the tank of bad stuff, and will be setting up carbon again.

Thanks for your guy's inputs, surely don't want to loose this thing now since my wife is kinda attached to it.

I'm surprised she hasn't named it yet

Romeo

Any suggested reading for things like this?

 

[Qwiv]

(2) other things it could be:

A Coral Burn from another coral
Predation. I forgot what type of creature it was, but there something that will attack a leather like beatles attach trees. They dig tunnels into it and eat it from the inside out. I think it was a worm. I read about it on Reefkeeping. I think it was a Dr. Ron article, but I can't remember. Examine the leather some more to see if that might be a possibility. If so, I will help you find the article.

 

[aquaman67]

I had a large toadstool and it did the same thing.

I was told to cut it before it spread.

Here's a pic of mine when it was healthy.

I cut the head off in the pic and a new one has grown back.

 

[rustybucket145]

I would personally frag it. It is actually one of the easiest corals to frag. You do need to remove it from the aquarium and cut the entire cap off. Cut as far down the stalk as you need to to remove all dead/infected parts. Then cut out all infected parts off the cap with scissors or razorblade. Then just cut whatever is remaining into pie wedge shaped pieces. Then just rubberband them to rock pieces and they will grow new toadstools. The stalk will also (fairly quickly) regrow a new head and hopefully it will be clean and healthy.

 

[aquaman67]

FWIW,

I didn't remove mine before I cut it. The rock it's on is huge.

I did fill a HOT Magnum with carbon first.

Here's a great guide for fragging toadies.

http://www.garf.org/MPegs/SarcoPropagation.html

 

[radone]

Well an update
It seems as though it healing some
I did consider fragging this but it would be impossible to do since I would need to disassemble the tank to get the rock work out. It is attached to about 6 different rocks and actually streches from the bottom sand bed level to coming out of the water in the 125.
I wanna try to leave it alone for now as my 210 project is getting ready to get underway soon.
The polyps have been coming out more in the past day or two so maybe this is a good sign.

 

[The steven liu]

I agree, I would just cut off the infected area and let the rest of the animal regenerate.

 

[ri]

Leave it alone - you'll be amazed on how quickly it can recover.

When I upgraded from a 94 to my current 180, my leather (which was over 12" in diameter at the time) spend an evening in a smaller tank. While in the small tank, a "slice" of the coral rotted away. With tears in my eyes, I gently placed the coral in my new tank. Within days the coral was starting to look better. A few months later, the coral had grown larger and there was NO signs of any damage. The leather is now about 18" in diameter.

You may want to siphon away any loose flesh and keep moderate flow around (but not directly on) the coral.

Good luck!

ri

 

[radone]

Well things are lookin up. So far it seems to be healing well so cutting it is out for sure. I will probably let it run its course and frag it some when I get ready to put it in the 210.

Thanks for the help to all of you, I think sometimes somethings are better to leave alone. As for the rot areas I did remove this stuff and wow what a smell. I thought skimmate smelled bad but this was way worse.

As for it toughung anything else it does touch a monti once in awhile but doesn't seem to bother it. I did have some kinda tube looking thing emerge from the rock then it died so I'm kinda thinking this had something to do with the problem in the first place. I removed that from the tank and it smeeled about the same way.

I guess I'll have to keep an eye on it till it heals but I think it's on it's way