Sudden Tissue Loss in Hammer Coral

[teddscau]

Okay, so Mr. Hammer has even doing really well for the past two months. Then I noticed he was spitting out some whitish mucous last night. At first I thought he might just be spitting out some waste, but then I realized he was spitting out an unusual amount. Like, even my dendros don't cough up that much waste, and they eat a TON.

Anyways, here's a before and after:





And before you ask, the parameters are all normal. We check them almost weekly. They're always the same. Okay, fine, I'll post them later.

Anyways, the only things that have changed are that we've slowly raised the alkalinity a touch over the past month, added some quarantined corals (acan, new dendro colony, a few mushrooms, button coral), treated with fluconazole for two weeks to treat bryopsis (we put a bit too much of the medication in because we were told our tank was a 90g when it's actually only 75g), added four pajama cardinalfish... I think that's about it. Well, we also got a larger set of LEDs for the tank. Our last pair (Current USA) were a bit too short, so we ordered the next size up. I set the whites and blues lower than on the old fixtures, then raised the intensity slowly over the past few weeks. None of the other corals complained, not even the yuma.

What should we do?

 

[Dsekula]

Looks like brown jelly to me, if it is nothing you can do for that frag but remove it b4 it spreads to other coral in the tank. If it was more than one head you could cut off the effected head and iodine dip the rest in hopes of the bacteria not spreading.
Noone know what causes brown jelly for sure btw.

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[teddscau]

Yeah, figured as much -_-. Removed him from the tank and evacuated the NPS corals to ensure they don’t get sick as well. The acro near the hammer had a couple of brown jelly globs on it (one on a small branch, one on the base), so I clipped one of the branches off and used hydrogen peroxide on the base. I would’ve liked to chop off the part on the base, but it wasn’t feasible so I just burnt the heck out of it with the H2O2. Nearly killed the tuxedo urchin when the peroxide wafted over to it (oops).

One of the branches on the gorgonian near the hammer had a bit of brown jelly festering on it as well, so I chopped the branch off. I can’t believe how quickly this disease spreads. I’m going to be inspecting the corals every couple of hours to lob off infected pieces. I’ll be getting some antibiotics from my vet tomorrow. I read doxycycline and metronidazole can help. So far, nothing else is showing symptoms. I’m really upset because I have a lot of really nice corals in there.

Checked the jelly under my microscope and it’s filled with ciliates. Blech, and it stunk of fish. Hopefully my vet can help us. He has degrees in marine biology and invertebrate medicine.

 

[Dsekula]

Good luck getting ahead of it, as you said the stuff moves fast. If your removing pieces for fraging or bc their gone your best bet is to bag them in the tank so moving them dosent contaminate the water more. If possible I'd consider setting up a qt tank or area in the tank. I've even cut disposal plastic sandwich containers to stop contact/shield between a may be infected piece (fragged off the definitely infected areas but left heads that maybe healthy) and another coral that had no symptoms.

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[teddscau]

Oh, good idea with the disposable cups! I'll have to do that. I was considering not bothering to get the antibiotics tomorrow, but I think I will.

 

[teddscau]

I think we're good! I haven't seen anymore infected areas on the corals, and the corals I chopped infected areas off of don't have any signs of the disease. It all started when we bought some snails and emerald crabs from a store I'd sworn never to buy from. We put them in the frag tank, and after several days our acro frags suffered tissue necrosis, which we attributed to the new lighting we'd put on the frag tank. My dad was worried that the snails and emerald wouldn't have enough to eat, so he put them in our 90g display tank. That night the hammer started vomiting, and by morning most of its tissue had necrotised and two of its neighbours were infected.

 

[Dsekula]

Well good luck, I don't want to burst your bubble but I've read jelly is one of those things that can lie dormant and pop back up unexpectedly months later. If everything is looking good I'd just keep doing what your doing to keep it dormant just in case. I honestly have no clue if that's just a false rumor and people keep contracting the same bacteria etc or if there is really a dormant period.

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