Parasite?

[eagleONE]

Hey guys

I'm pretty new to sps and I have a question. I just picked up 2 frags from a LFS , placed them in my sump (still in the bags) and today as I was going to water acclimate them, I saw the frag was cover with white stringy stuff. Like dandruff on a piece of coral. I've never seen a thing like this so I was hoping someone can help me. I'll try to get a picture later.. but for safety I still have it bagged in my sump. Thanks


Jay

 

[MrMikeB]

Jay,

I will take a stab at what you are experiencing:

It is common for SPS to slime up when agitated, handled, or otherwise just being disturbed. When they do slime, they will capture just about any free floating particle coming their way and you will see this nasty hair-like gunk covering the coral. In good flow it will come off easily enough and is simply the corals' mechanism for dealing with change. Most of the time you are better off doing only a temp acclimation (floating the bags) for SPS rather than water acclimation (drip, etc.). Not suggesting it would hurt anything, I just find the less time I am playing with them the better they seem to be.

Now light and flow acclimation is something you want to pay particular attention to. I always start my SPS low in the tank (typically along the bottom) and in indirect flow and then over a 4-6 week period move them up until they are at the place I intend them to grow. A little research on flow and light requirements can go a long way. Light shock is very real and can be rather costly. Ask me how I know...

 

[mpoletti]

Jay, don't forget that SPS like flow. I had one doing something similar when I put it in my sump a while back. My sump is about 7-8x turnover and that is not enough. I will look out for your pictures.

 

[kevin95695]

Of the 5 SPS frags I've placed in our tank, 3 slimed up nasty snot wavers shortly after introduction.

 

[eagleONE]

Thanks guys.

So I just got home and decided to open the bags and put them in a bucket and do a little inspection. So far I don't see the white spots like I did earlier.

Heres my thought. If they were from the same tank and both frags should demonstrate similiar attributes if they were "infect" right? But only one of them looked like it had a bad case of dandruff.

The thing is there was really no real flow when I put them in the sump. Literally, I just placed the bags in the sump and left them there.

so perhaps the frag was just picking up particles from all slime.

I don't see anything really on them. In any case I will dip with interceptor. Thanks for your help guys

 

[eagleONE]

anyways, I decided to give it a go and put them in. Sounded like what mike described... but

if anything...

It looked like this..
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1178343

 

[H20Sidhe]

Please tell me you have a quarantine tank . . .