Possible leather infection? Help

[medic29]

Good morning.

I've got a mystery I need some help with. I've had 2 separate soft corals suffer the same fait that the cause is a mystery currently and I need some help solving it.

It didn't happen to them at the same time either. It happened to one. Then a couple of months later, the other suffered the same, or at least a very similar problem. I'll post some pics showing what happened.

Below are a couple of pics of when my colt coral was doing really well.

Then here is a couple of pics showing what it looked like a couple of months later. Now to be specific, it looked like normal, then within about a day it looked like this:

Yesterday I noticed my nepthelia (sp?) had suffered from the same affliction.

Here is is a couple of months ago:

I had been noticing that it was really happy and extending its polyps and looking really good lately. I was really happy with how it was doing.

Then yesterday I noted it had basically died; under the recommendation of a friend at my LFS I removed it immediately from the system. This is what it looked like after removing it from the system:

It has been suggested this may be a bacterial infection. Both of these corals were sitting down in contact with the sandbed. My other leather and soft corals which are up on the live rock all look good, but all my other soft corals looked good a couple of months ago when my colt coral was affected.

At that time a friend suggested I bring the colt over to his system in case it was something in my system that was attacking it. It continued to decline in his system until he finally pulled it. He told me one of his soft corals (a leather) has suffered a similar problem.

This continues to make a good argument that it could be some sort of infection that affects soft corals.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Any ideas? I've been considering pulling all of the leathers from the tank and putting them in a separate tank by themselves. Could this be some bacteria or something in the sandbed that is affecting these corals? I will be setting up a new larger display tank here soon and was going to bring all of the live sand and live rock from my current display tank and put them in the new display tank, now I'm wondering if this is going to be a good idea or even possible. I don't want to bring some type of infection into the new tank.

Again, I'm open to any ideas??

Thanks!!

 

[medic29]

Sorry, I probably should have put that in the post as well.

pH 8.28
Nitrate 0
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
Ca+ 440
Alk 9.3
Phos 0
Mg 1290
Sp Gr 1.025

 

[ksteiny]

Could be many factors causing the tissue and coral loss. Food,flow, changes in temp, disease ect. When one coral starts to die it can many times cause a chain reaction in a tank, possibly to to a bacterial bloom or release of toxins into the tank. I would cut away all infected tissue and place remaing frags and or colony in a an area with good water flow. Remove any and all pieces that develop symptoms asap and watch you other corals carefully. A large H2O change and media change never hurts. Good luck,

Kevin

 

[medic29]

The problem with that theory is....this 2 incidents happened over 2 months apart from each other. I'm not sure one affected the other with that time span. I believe it is 2 separate incidents, that are very similar, possibly the same cause. The corals were not even by each other, they were separated by over 2 feet. I have a lot of flow in the tank (2 modded Koralia 4's - about 2500gph each, one on each side of the tank, on a alternating times). The tank gets fed daily. All the other softies look awesome. These are select and individual corals affected; nothing else even seems "mad".

 

[ksteiny]

Not sure I gave a threory on cause of death just what can happen if you leave dying corals in you tank trying to "save them" Colt type corals are prone to crashing for no apparent reason, I think most authors atribute this to a slow starvation of these corals over a long period of time. Weakening the corals natural defenses against disease or infection. Think of it like ich infecting the weakest fish. There are also quite a few predators of these corals that can go undetected. Pick which ever theory you like. fact of the matter is if you don't do something the rest of the colony will likely die and could possibly effect other occupants in the tank.
Kevin

 

[saltyunderground]

We had a similar thing happen to a very large colt. We lost the entire coral, or so we thought. A tiny little piece remained on the rock, and it's gone from a spec to a 5 inch coral.

Kevin is exactly right. It can happen for no apparent reason and it can spread. Your best bet is to frag healthy tissue and throw away the sick. Leaving a dying coral in the tank can foul up your water too.

 

[medic29]

I apologize for the "theory"; I thought since I was asking for ideas of what may have happened and you posted your response, which sounded like a plausible theory...one coral dying causing others to die...sounds like a theory to me...that you were posting this as your thoughts as to what happened.

The fact that ANYTHING dying in your system can cause all of the above mentioned issues, basically from decaying tissue, etc.

The best theory we've been able to come up with so far came from the West Coast. Each time one of the leathers suffered from whatever this is, one of my gobbies just happened to be digging near the coral. The first time my diamond goby was digging his den and depositing sand from deep within the sand bed either on or very near the colt coral. Shortly afterwards...probably within a day I noticed the coral's demise.

This last time, my engineer goby was digging and making his den larger and deeper (all the way down to the bottom glass) and he has quite a bit of the base of the nepthelia coral covered. I didn't think a lot of it because it was tall enough that over 2/3'ds of it was sticking out of the sand and had its polyps fully extended. But, again within a short period of time, less than 24hrs, I found the coral in its final state.

This has been a learning process, definitely. The first time had I known what I have learned now, I would have cut a frag or 2 off and placed them in another area of the tank to start growing versus trying to nurse that one back to health. With this last one, I would have tried to find even a small area of what appeared to be health tissue and tried to frag that. As it was, per recommendation from many people I immediately pulled it from the system and got rid of it. I don't know if there was any health tissue on it, but it's too late now.

We are thinking that due to the anaerobic state of the deep sandbed, that sulfur had built up along with some Carbon dioxide and possibly combined to produce a type of sulfuric acid, which was deposited on the corals and since their tissue is so thin and sensitive they were adversely affected. It could also be some sort of anaerobic bacteria that became opportunistic when it came into contact with the coral, but we are pretty sure it came from the sand from deep within the sand bed.

 

[saltyunderground]

I defintinely agree that the problem is from a bacteria. But when it happened to us our substrate was crushed coral, and we only had a few fish. None of which where gobies. But the maroon clown we had at the time, did dig a lot in the crushed coral.

 

[medic29]

yeah, mine is basically all crushed coral and some of the substrate is sugarfine. I say sand interchangably, sorry.

One of the other reefers I have communicated with said that whenever one of his shrimp starts digging in the substrate and sprays some of it on his Kenya tree colony he ends up having the same type of problem.

HTH

 

[ksteiny]

Bacteria levels are definately in higher concentrations on your sand bed. (I have lost cuttings placed in dirty unclean gravel to bacterial infection. I always use new or bleached gravel for cuttings now). Also keep in mind that even with your pumps and alternating flow I would bet that there is very little flow accross the top of your sand bed and especially around the base of your coral giving bacteria an ideal medium to grow in. I don't belive that anything is comming from your sand like CO2 or H2SO4(I think thats hydrogen sulfide) would kill a coral this way. These disapate in a tank very quickly and you would see fish loss as a first sign of these problems. Maybe the stress of having sand dumped on the coral from your gobie or shrimp could have contributed. A build up of unshed mucus or cyano around the base of these corals is also a very common problem and could be greatly increased by placing a coral in the sand close to a source of nutrients and decreased flow. Also placing a coral in the sand like that definately increases the chance of predatation by any number of critters you. The solution is very simple though, No more leathers on the sand for you!

 

[medic29]

Yep, I agree. I plan to try to keep them off the sandbed if possible. I have placed 2 modded Koralia 4's (move around 2500 gph each) in the display tank (1 on each side alternating). The flow out of these is pretty awesome and it is really wide. In my 58 with the powerhead in the middle of the height of the tank I move the top of the water and still blow the GSP on the sandbed around. I'm fairly impressed with the flow and the spread of the flow from these guys.

 

[ksteiny]

Sounds good, I also don't think it will be a problem moving rock and or sand to a new tank. You may want to wash it around in some saltwater first to clean it a bit especiallly the sand.