What's wrong with this Scolymia?

[reverendmaynard]

I've had this scolemia for about 9 months now, and have seen somewhat of a steady decline. The first symptom I think I noticed was a gaping of the mouth, accompanied by mesanterial filaments indside the mouth, starting about 6 months ago. There's also some deterioration of the tissue surrounding the mouth. About 2 months ago or so, I saw what I thought was a small rock lodged inside the mouth. I got some tweezers and tried to pull the rock out, but before I applied much pressure at all, the "rock" broke open revealing what appeared to be sand and other debris inside. I kind of waved the loose material around, but didn't go digging around in there to get it all out (remember, I thought I was pulling out a pebble, not performing exploratory surgery ). So, for the past 2 weeks or so, I started seeing what kind of looked like a black pebble in the mouth. A couple of days ago, I got out the trusty tweezers again and poked at the "rock". It was actually more like a sack of tissue, enclosing who knows what, so I stopped before piercing the sack. Today the sack had ruptured, exposing what again looks to be a pile of sand and debris.

This first picture is with the black sack intact (apologies for the dirty glass and actinic lighting )

And this one after the sack had burst...

Any ideas what the problem is, or what I can do about it?

Thanks for all the help.

 

[chrisstie]

Dang thats pretty weird. Hows your alk\CA\Magnesium doing?

 

[reverendmaynard]

Last I tested they were:
Alk: 3.5meq/l
Calc: 420ppm
Mag: 1250ppm

I dose kalk and adjust with Randy's 2 part.

I have other stony corals that do fine, such as torch, frogspawn, elegance, even some sps like millipora, hydnophora, etc.

 

[RandyO]

I had typed out a long response to this thread the other night but by the time I submitted it, RC was offline for nightly backups. I'll give it another shot.

I had a Cynarina that had the same thing happen. I had the coral for about 4 years. It started gapping it's mouth open like yours for about 2 months. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. Then I noticed a black ball in the mouth. I thought maybe it had swallowed something and it couldn't get it out, or it was fouling inside the coral. So I grabbed the tweezers and started to pull. To my surprise, it was not as hard as I thought, and started to break apart when I pulled at it. It also seemed to be attached, or maybe the coral was holding it. I think I did more damage than good because the coral slowly died over the next month.

After inspecting the chunk I took out, it looked like it was encapsulated in thin flesh. It could have been mucus, but it looked like flesh.

 

[reverendmaynard]

You might be right about killing it by taking it out. Responses to this same question by several "experts" indicated that it was not a good idea to go fishing around in there.

Anthony Calfo advised me that he felt the coral was not begin fed enough and the daily energy deficit causes this type of gradual decline. The growth inside he felt was normal waste. You just don't normally see it if the mouth is not gaping.

 

[jessp]

i have a lobophyllia that i recently fragged doing the same thing. I just basted it to make sure it was not detritus and left it. i did remove it from one of the frags and the frag did poorly and died.

this is just my experience, seems like the spit up was from stress due to fragging.

just my experience.
jess