yuma maybe melting

[eastlake]

I have what I guess is a fancier Yuma, orange center with blue/green edges. Yesterday it started to "puke" brown slime from its mouth and has continued into today. It's near some giant green yumas that are doing great so I'm not terribly concerned about light or flow. I did take it out of the tank and gave it a smell to see if it smelled like it was rotting, it had a slight odor but I also have to admit that I do not smell my corallimorphs as a habit so I don't know what would be considered a normal Yuma mushroom smell. When I put it back in the water the mouth closed up tight so I'm assuming that the infection, if it is indeed there, is still in its infancy and I put it under an overhang with less light and flow. I've been trying to find various remedies to nip this in the butt, if its even possible, and it seems to range from Cipro to cutting in half, flushing the innards to clear the infection, dipping in revive, then placing the two halves back in the tank. Or is it perhaps expelling digested food or zooxathellae because there does not seem to be excess slime anywhere, just the brown slime out of the mouth. Any and all advice welcome as I don't want to lose this neat coral.

 

[eastlake]

For anyone interested I'm going to try to make this a progression thing. So I got home from work last night and concluded that there would be no harm in trying to cut the Yuma to purge the infection. I took the Yuma out of the tank and gave it a smell and there was a slight odor of decay. It took some convincing, "hi honey, I know you had a long day at work but could you smell this coral for me and tell me if you think it smells like death?" but I had my wife confirm the same thing after also smelling a healthy rhodactis mushroom that for all purposes had no smell at all. So, using a razor I cut the Yuma in half then split the rock in two pieces. Next I gently rinsed the guts with a turkey baster in clean tank water followed by a 15 minute soak in revive. After the soak one more dip and swish in a cup of clean tank water then I placed them in another cup with holes in the side and placed under a rock ledge with low light and low flow to let the two halves recover. After turning the tank lights on this morning there wasn't any brown slime or anything else to indicate that the infection was still present but only time will tell. I'll keep this going throughout the process and if its effective then maybe I'll try another fancy Yuma or two. But no need in counting my corals before they grow so fingers crossed.

 

[eastlake]

also, anyone with experience fragging yumas in general. do you guysd put them in low light/shade for the recovery process or do you put them on the bottom of the tank back into direct lighting

 

[jayball]

also, anyone with experience fragging yumas in general. do you guysd put them in low light/shade for the recovery process or do you put them on the bottom of the tank back into direct lighting

Hmm, I thought Yuma's had poor recovery rates when fragged and you had to wait for them to drop pieces of their foot, no? Please let us know how it goes, pics would be appreciated too.

Thanks and good luck.

 

[eastlake]

I'll work on getting some pictures up when I get home tonight, though I don't have any of the process I could get some of the frags as they, hopefully, come along. I did manage to find a couple of forum entries elsewhere that stated and had pictures of someone splitting them down the middle through the mouth and having the two halves completely recover and form new mushrooms but it took much longer than the Florida variety. His Yuma also wasn't sick.

 

[eastlake]

Here is a picture of the orange and blue/green Yuma before I cut it. Sorry for the bit of algae on the glass right in front of it making it blurry. It doesn't look terrible there but it began to shrink over the course of ten days and you can see how happy those green yumas are so that's why I began to suspect that the new one was sick, then the brown slime began to spew out and faint odor of decay made led me to my decision.

 

[eastlake]

update: took a couple pictures last night that I'll upload in a second here. The two pieces have not melted or detached from the rock and I can no longer smell decay. They don't really look any better or worse but I'm sure its going to take a while for them to recover and fully heal since they were/are sick.

 

[eastlake]

I don't have any pictures to load up today but when I turned the lights on this morning at least one of them went from looking like a half moon shape to a pac-man shape, the other one is at a weird angle that made it difficult for me to observe the shape. En route to healing? I sure hope so.

 

[eastlake]

Over the course of the weekend it looks like they've shown continued healing as the both of them are almost completely circular again. However, it looks like they're starting to bleach so I moved them to a spot near a chalice that I have that is recovering from some rtn so hopefully that low light will help them recover from that as well.

 

[eastlake]

Been a while since I updated but the two halves are no more, they have ceased to be. Well, chalk it up to a learning experience.

 

[jayball]

Been a while since I updated but the two halves are no more, they have ceased to be. Well, chalk it up to a learning experience.

That sucks, I was rooting for you. Did they subcumb to infection or was it a fast melt?

 

[eastlake]

They actually seemed to be healing up and re-created the full circle look of a "healthy" Yuma. However, it seemed as though the bleaching didn't stop and I couldn't find a spot to make them happy. So maybe the infection was purged and they just never recovered from the over all stress of being sick and fragged.