The Dreaded Brown Jelly....

[fazgood]

Foolish nubee picked up a piece of Goniopora that had a small “bruise” on it and now, 3 weeks later it seems to have the dreaded ‘BROWN JELLY”. It is in an early stage and I was looking to get some help in trying to save this piece. I have it isolated in a quarantine tank and have done a little poking around. The jelly spots seem to be infested with little worms of some sort. I have the microscope set on 200 power and I have the following images. You can see where the little buggers are lining up to munch on the tissue. The question is, are they eating dead flesh or live? A sample from the unaffected part do not have any of the worms munching.

http://www.faszl.com/Reef/Images/MVI_6557.AVI

This second link they are slowing down from cooking in the light and drying up under the microscope.

http://www.faszl.com/Reef/Images/MVI_6555.AVI

Stills

http://www.faszl.com/Reef/Images/52L.JPG

http://www.faszl.com/Reef/Images/53L.JPG

http://www.faszl.com/Reef/Images/60L.JPG

I am looking for any advise on a cure. This is what I have in mind so far.

Rinse the brown goo off the affected areas with fresh salt water.

Do a dip in iodine solution (the mix is where I could use some help)

Return it to the Q tank in a stiff flow until morning and assess if I need to frag off the remainder that appears unaffected.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Faz

 

[leveldrummer]

i would check in the lps forum. all i can say is, brown jelly usually spreads really quick. get a small airline and syphon off as much as you can to slow it down, get the worms too, then proceed with what ever dips/medcines/etc

 

[Nanook]

[moved]

 

[Echidna09]

When I dipped my corals when they were all dying, I used 1 quart of water and 15 drops of Lugols as directed by another member. Saved my acan.

 

[elegance coral]

Check out Goniopora. org. He may want to see those pics. I would assume the worms are feeding on the dead tissue. Brown jelly is normally a death sentence for Goniopora though.

 

[John Kelly]

Those are some great images and video.

Experiment a little and drip some iodine on the section that you are photographing (if you can) and see if the "worms" are affected or what their reaction is. From my experience, I would bet that the worms are probably feeding on tissue that was already weakened in some way. If the worms could feed on healthy tissue, and if the worms were the cause of brown jelly, then brown jelly would just pop up out of nowhere all the time, and in different random spots on the coral. There usually has to be a cause for brown jelly to appear; either from torn tissue, smashed tissue, burned tissue, or tissue that dies off from being buried in the sand. Higher organics in the water greatly raises the probability of a coral to contract brown jelly, and feeding a coral when trying to treat brown jelly makes the brown jelly return faster. Also, the brown color of the jelly appears to come from zooxanthellae. When corals that are completely bleached contract brown jelly, the jelly isn't brown, it is more clear/cloudy. The reason it is so difficult to treat brown jelly on Goniopora is that the brown jelly gets down deep into the corallites. This makes the common goniopora species with deep corallites (stokesi, pendulus; the "green" goniopora) very difficult to cure. This is probably the main reason why the species with more shallow corallites rarely contract brown jelly, and when they do it is usually pretty easy to cure with iodine dips.

It could be that the worms take advantage of weakened, torn, or decaying tissue and the "jelly" part is a product from the worms? ..., but that doesn't explain how brown jelly can blow off of an infected coral and onto a healthy coral and infect it. Unless the jelly is made up of some sort of tissue eating enzyme that the worms secrete? We could hypothesize on it all night . Do you think the worms work fast enough to strip an entire coral in 24 hours?

It would be interesting to see if a fairly strong iodine solution kills the worms. It would also be interesting to know if the worms are free-living in the water column or if they are confined to the sandbed/rockwork.

 

[fazgood]

More info...

More info...

John,

My son and I have been trying to save this thing and have collected a lot more data and have some interesting observations. What we lack is someone that can answer some bio questions as that is not our strong point. Would you be interested in taking a call to help us out? We have lots more photos and videos and it would help to better understand what is going on here.

Thanks,


Joe