The white Plague?

[Speckled Grouper]

I'm at my wits end, not only am I battling nudis in one tank (sucked out a dozen just today), aptaisia in the other, now this:

This is what it used to look like (the colony on the right)

This is not the only colony affected, the white pimples are showing up on many other colonies.

I already dipped them in RO/Lugols, does anybody have any other suggestions or methods to get rid of this?

I have a newly set up tank, should I move the colonies that are not affected yet, over? I am afraid of transferring this desease, it is obviously contageous.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

[msman825]

I think i would try something different. this has been a problem for a while now showing up. maybe some one will help; I wonder some times myself I wonder if it contagious are spreadabe

 

[jessiesgrrl]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=691978

Wish I could be more help- best I have heard yet for this is a deidcated QT tank with good light and awesome flow blowing them off...



Laurie

 

[Speckled Grouper]

I have had this colony for 6 months, so a QT tank would not have saved them. As a matter of fact I haven't put anything new in this tank in about 3 month. So, was it dormant in there?

 

[geoxman]

From my experience this is a bacteria that infects the skin of the polyps. I have battled it numerous times and I have seen it spread/infect only when temps in the aquarium are high.
JMHO but I had great luck fighting it when I lowered my temp to 71-72 and did numerous water changes.
Our tanks are different from the ocean and the bacteria is trapped in our systems and if the conditions are right they will multiply and continue to infect other colonies. In the wild there is always a new tide of water to sweep away the bacteria.
Through trial and error I have had luck stopping it with drastically lowering the temp, doing big water changes, and running a UV. Do the temp lowering slow-but it seems that this bacteria does not like low temps and will go away.
You will lose most of the colony but you might be able to save some. It will take time, but I have had success by doing this. Good luck

 

[Speckled Grouper]

71 - 72, I can' t get there in the dead of winter!

As far as water changes, the tank in question is a 29g and I do weekly changes of 10 gallons.

I was thinking of a UV, I was trying to read the 12 pages of the sticky, as far as I gather, noone has commented on a positive or negative experience on that.

If it is bacterial (I do believe it is), then my next step is antibiotics.

 

[Reef Junkie]

Do yourself a favor, read the last page.

 

[Jon in SW Ohio]

Been there unfortunately. I read a lot on here about it, and after two weeks of daily 10% water changes it was gone along with a few of my favorite morphs.

Good Luck!

Jon

 

[jessiesgrrl]

Ouch! Sorry to hear that

Laurie

 

[Speckled Grouper]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8297975#post8297975 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Jon in SW Ohio
Been there unfortunately. I read a lot on here about it, and after two weeks of daily 10% water changes it was gone along with a few of my favorite morphs.

Good Luck!

Jon

Jon, were you able to save some that actually had the white bumps or did you loose all of them or just the real bad ones?
I just looked in my tank and most of my colonies have signs of it, some very mild, others more severe.

 

[mecold]

Waterchanges, good flow, and I even brushed off some with a toothbrush too. I have seen no bumps is a couple weeks. Other info: the bumps appear to prefer high light. In my tank I had one colony affected that was partially shaded. The polyps in direct light are gone while the one that were partialy shaded have survived. Also, only my zoanthids were affected. No palys ever showed signes of the bumps. Good luck with your plague!

Paul

 

[Speckled Grouper]

I agree, palys seem to be immune. I cannot brush any of this stuff off, as a matter of fact, I can't even scrape it off, it is embedded into the polyp as if it's eating away on it.

Well, I picked up some medicine yesterday that someone I highly respect uses agains bacterial infections in his entire livestock system. I set up a QT tank and transferred the loose colonies that had mild symptoms into it. Too early to tell, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.....

 

[Jon in SW Ohio]

Most of the colonies affected didn't die off completely. My problem was that I had a lot of 3-10 polyp frags and just about all my frags under 5 polyps got wiped out. If a polyp only has one white spot on it, it has a much better chance of making it than a polyp with 5 spots on it obviously. I was growing under PC lighting, and not much, so I'm not convinced light has much to do with it.

One big tip: DO NOT SCRAPE THE BUMPS OFF!
Some of my infected polyps that I did not touch didn't die. They stayed closed for a week or two but still made it. But EVERY polyp I decided to lightly scrape off the spot from died.

You will feel very helpless and the only thing you can really do is waterchanges...so do them a lot! To be honest, I now shy away from small polyped zoanthids and only buy palys or large polyped zoas since only the small polyped ones seemed affected.

Jon