toadstool coral disease?

[mantapants]

This is my first posting and I apologize in advance for any ignorance in my language.

I had a toadstool coral that flourished for 3 years in my 100 gal tank. It was about 11 inches tall and 8 inches wide at its head. Then it closed up for weeks - it got shiny like it was going to slough, but white spots showed up all over its surface and it never opened. It didn't completely collapse, but after 2 months I figured it was doomed, so I cut it off the rock at its base. It since has produced 20 buds that are various sizes, the largest being about 3 inches. And now again the whole group has closed up and the white spots are back, 2 weeks have passed with no change.

Has anyone ever seen white spots on soft coral and tell me what the cause may be? The spots are not uniform in size or distribution, they look similar to how a splatter of paint may be or a little like how coralline algae forms.

thanks for any help

 

[tinyreef]

could be a fungus or bacteria that is triggered from some event or depression in the coral's natural immune system (if it even has one ), kinda like how we succumb to colds and such.

i've seen this many times on sarcos. mostly on the "true toadstool" shaped ones ime though.

what i do is scrape and siphon out the white spots (do they look like scabs?). i figure/guess they're some sort of fungus/bacteria and completely removing them aids the system and coral in not having to deal with the possible pathogens even in residual forms.

i tend to treat the tank with lugol's and carbon after such scrapings or similar coral manipulations. the lugol's are more antiseptic in intention for me in that case though. the carbon is used to deal with the coral "farts". sarcos tend to get very p!ssy and emissive if you even touch them slightly, let alone doing a skin scraping! hth

 

[mantapants]

yes, they do look a bit like scabs, I will try scraping and lugol's and carbon- thanks much for the infohttp://reefcentral.com/forums/images/icons/icon7.gif
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