My $300 blue/purple Gig is almost dead.

Reefahholic

Reefahholic

New member
This is the 3rd time he has went down. The first two I was able to bring him back to good health and this time he is getting worse. He's been in tx for about 3-4 days and not looking good at all. He's not responding well to Cipro. Septra is on the way but won't be here for about five days. I'm not sure he is gonna make it till then.

Anything you guys recommend doing until the other medication gets here. I really want him to make it. I've had him about 4 weeks now.

Lights on or off? Should I change to amoxicillin or maybe dose a little of both. When I went up to 500mg on the Cipro, he didn't seem to tolerate well. I'm back at 250mg. Been doing 50% or more on the water changes depending on how bad the water looks.

I'm getting really worried about loosing him. Minh...D-Nak...anything you guys can think of that will hold him over.











After WC when the new water flow moved him.

 
It looks like their is dead tissue around the mouth. Watch out for it.

Do you have any other anemones or large corals in the tank?
 
If it was mine, 100% water changes, not 50%. Age it 24 hours before use. aerated. Tank aerated also. Also, suck out anything you see in the tank, all floaties, snot, and debris. Still needs light, but that one is a tough call on how much, as there are differing opinions on this one. Sorry to see. Good luck, lots of work ahead.
 
Reefahholic said:
Lights on or off? Should I change to amoxicillin or maybe dose a little of both.
Click to expand...

my late ritteri always reacted very well to amoxicillin. actually it reacted best to human antibiotics than cipro or other pet antibiotics

youd better run dimmer lights. sick anemone hates strong lighting. My present ritteri is quite sick so it moved half of its body to under the rock, leaving the healthy part exposed to the strong lighting and wave

presumably you gotta change all the water. you can get a bucket of fresh water, change 100% water with dt and refill dt with fresh water

finger cross you. my ritteri was in very bad shape but it was kinda rescued until it recovered enough to wander and vanished in the tank. even my clowns failed to find it
 
M Woodhill said:
my late ritteri always reacted very well to amoxicillin. actually it reacted best to human antibiotics than cipro or other pet antibiotics

youd better run dimmer lights. sick anemone hates strong lighting. My present ritteri is quite sick so it moved half of its body to under the rock, leaving the healthy part exposed to the strong lighting and wave

presumably you gotta change all the water. you can get a bucket of fresh water, change 100% water with dt and refill dt with fresh water

finger cross you. my ritteri was in very bad shape but it was kinda rescued until it recovered enough to wander and vanished in the tank. even my clowns failed to find it
Click to expand...

I may cut the lights out and back off on the meds a bit.

Everything thus far has failed.
 
it looks to me this nem is going through a stressfull time dealing with a physical injury (a tear near the mouth).

I would not panic and do too many things which would stress it out more. if I were you I would do the following:

Continue the 250mg Cipro daily
Change the water 50-90% depending on water condition. use clean water that is properly heated and the should be 1 day old to make sure all salt are completely desolved.
when you suck the stuff out of the tank, DO NOT try to suck out pieces of junk from the nem, you might end up sucking the nemand do more physical damage.
Be patient, when you panic you do more harm than good. Let the nem go through it's healing process. the Cipro is to prevent secondary infection.

be patient my friend. I don't believe it's a near dead anemone.

edit:
I might want to do only 50% water change unless the nem do s stress spawn and make the water cloudy. Make sure you have live rock in the tx tank, more rock is better to make sure the water does not get ammonia. the nem will be fine if you handle it properly by not stressing it out more. DO NOT feed it. moderate/gentle flow to sway the nem gently.
 
Reefahholic said:
He's got about 2 days tops.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't write it off until it falls apart, or turns to a ball of mush. Worst case, you spent some extra time and water. You never know. I always give it the benefit of the doubt.

You ask for opinions, you'll get a million different ones. I hope your nem pulls through. Fingers crossed. :)

I've already stated what I'd do, but the reason behind me doing 100% changes with 24 hour freshly made aerated salt, Every tank is different, with different animals taking different stuff from the water, how can one know for sure or test? Healthy animals can adapt. The closest thing you will have to "perfect" water, is freshly made, not used in a reef already-may not be perfect, but close as one could hope for. Levels drift, evaporation, "bucket salt isn't perfect, so I added x,y,z", etc.... list goes on and on. If rotting is happening, why would one want even 10% of that left behind? Again, another opinion, there's millions of them... :)

I agree with lower light for a struggling nem, but again, others disagree with this thought.
 
Man I hope your right. I appreciate the info. Wanted a Gig for a long time. Finally got a $300 blue, and now he's near death for the 3rd time. I'm not sure if I want to keep light on him or not. He responds differently both ways. The flesh inside is mouth is almost coming apart. Light hits him he tightens his mouth up and seems to kinda like it, but then at times I think it may be too much. I have a full spectrum reef breeders par 38 on him. Not sure what to do at this point.

Pinkskunk said:
it looks to me this nem is going through a stressfull time dealing with a physical injury (a tear near the mouth).

I would not panic and do too many things which would stress it out more. if I were you I would do the following:

Continue the 250mg Cipro daily
Change the water 50-90% depending on water condition. use clean water that is properly heated and the should be 1 day old to make sure all salt are completely desolved.
when you suck the stuff out of the tank, DO NOT try to suck out pieces of junk from the nem, you might end up sucking the nemand do more physical damage.
Be patient, when you panic you do more harm than good. Let the nem go through it's healing process. the Cipro is to prevent secondary infection.

be patient my friend. I don't believe it's a near dead anemone.

edit:
I might want to do only 50% water change unless the nem do s stress spawn and make the water cloudy. Make sure you have live rock in the tx tank, more rock is better to make sure the water does not get ammonia. the nem will be fine if you handle it properly by not stressing it out more. DO NOT feed it. moderate/gentle flow to sway the nem gently.
Click to expand...
 
A few thoughts.

Gigs, unlike mags, rarely bounce back when they are fully deflated and begin to show necrotic tissue. I am very concerned about its mouth too. If it's "floppy" and begins to detach, place it in a shallow plastic container which will make it easier to remove should it die (the reality is at that point, it will probably will die if it's in that bad shape).

I've had better luck doing close to 100% water changes than 50%. I would not add any rock to the tank. Since you're doing daily water changes -- maybe more if need be -- you don't have to worry about an ammonia build up. IME it just makes it harder to keep the tank clean.

As mentioned, gigs frequently stress spawn (or what appears to be a stress spawn, when they expel a white, cloudy liquid). After they do, do a 100% water change. Keep the tank as clean as possible.

You can try to double up the Cipro to 500mg. I've done this without any ill affects. Since it's in such bad shape, you don't have much to lose at this point.

Lighting doesn't really matter at this point. Your goal is to get it to re-inflate so it can have some fresh salt water running though its internal structure, even if its not fully inflated.

Cross your fingers and toes and hope for the best. I am QTing two gigs right now and both looked pretty bad, so there's always a chance that this one might come back. GOOD LUCK!
 
Best of luck. I am out of town so get on internet Is sporadic at best. What ever you do let us know what and how it turn out
 
I've hit him with Cipro the first 3 days. Then amoxicillin for 24 hours to see if he would respond at all. Then did both amox and Cipro. A friend of mine brought me some good Septra DS...hit him with that and amox before I came to work at 630pm. Just went home for lunch and he was on his back. The flow was just a tad too high and he's so sick that it flipped him over. I turned it down and gently flipped him back over mouth up. His mouth was wide open. He feels so soft like about to fall apart soft, but still alive. If he can make it through the night and let the Septra work, I'll be impressed. I'm expected a $300 loss when I get home at 7am. I tried!
 
Well..just want to post a pic when he was doing well..


1st time he got sick:










He responded to the antibiotic therapy and got better:



Then:





So yeah...now he's nearly dead.
 
So sorry to hear your loss. But maybe it's not dead yet. I know when anemone decay, it would decompose real fast and stink up the water. Has that happened yet?
 
sc50964 said:
So sorry to hear your loss. But maybe it's not dead yet. I know when anemone decay, it would decompose real fast and stink up the water. Has that happened yet?
Click to expand...

Not yet...he's got about 24 hrs to bounce back with the septra, if he doesn't....he's done.

It's ok, I have 5 mags taking away the pain. :-)

One has went down twice and the other got sick from him the second time because they were by each other. Either that or it was the PE Mysis from petco. After I feed the Nems, they all looked like they got sick, but the next day 3 bounced back. Then the bigger one on LT (I'm fixing to post in the pic below) needed to be put in the tx tank. 2 days later, the small one on the RT finally deflated and I went ahead and stuck him in there with the other mag since I was assuming that they both had the same infection and the one on the LT was responding really well to Cipro.

This is the one on the LT before Tx:


After
 
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