Coral wars??

christyf5 · #1 03-21-2009, 06:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chaloupa

OH NO! I lost a few mille's when I first started with SPS to the same thing...fine, then a ball of brown jelly. Never was able to save one. Good luck

But was it contagious? Am I going to watch my corals do this one by one? Just the ones that come into contact with it or were near to it? I'm a little freaked out here.

Chaloupa · #2 03-21-2009, 06:05 PM

There were very few corals in my tank then....but all the mille's died....I had 3 colonies and the same thing happened to each, and they were far from each other. It took maybe 24-48 hours....HOWEVER there were a couple of other corals that weren't affected AT ALL (acro's and monti's, maybe 6 or so corals...). And they were between the mille's.....I don't blame you for being freaked......I would be as it seems very odd that suddenly this happened. I'd like to say, don't worry...but I would be...

i have crabs · #3 03-21-2009, 07:22 PM

brown jelly disease maybe?
never actually seen it before but thats what it sounds like to me maybe started by the corals being close enough to fight
http://www.athiel.com/lib/bacterial.html

MitchM · #4 03-21-2009, 10:01 PM

It sounds like brown jelly disease, but I've only experienced it with some LPS in the past. I found it to be totally treatable by suctioning off of the brown jelly-like material, followed with a Lugol's dip, then keep the coral in a good alternating water flow. If the brown jelly reappears, repeat process.
Watch for reinfection at the edges of the receding edge of the coral.

Mitch

MitchM · #5 03-21-2009, 10:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by christyf5

But was it contagious? Am I going to watch my corals do this one by one? Just the ones that come into contact with it or were near to it? I'm a little freaked out here.

I found it NOT to be contagious. It seemed that the brown jelly only took hold in areas of necrosis on the affected coral.

Mitch

GreenSpottedPuffer · #6 03-21-2009, 10:11 PM

I was going to say brown jelly disease too.

I did find it to be infectious or at least it found a way to spread in an old tank of mine. Was just a 33G sps tank but wiped out the whole thing. Sounds exactly like what your describing. I never had any caps, so maybe they are "immune". Caps are pretty hard to kill.

untamed · #7 03-22-2009, 12:23 AM

Sounds very similar to what I've had happen to my hynorphora, and callendrium. So far, I've been unable to save the hyorphora even with repeated fragging and dipping. Three large colonies are now down to two frags. Whatever it was, it certainly moved large distances between the three colonies. It was the first thing that happened that started a nasty bad stretch there for my tank.

MitchM · #8 03-22-2009, 12:33 AM

I found that it was difficult at first to remove all the brown jelly. I repeated with longer and longer dip times, but with the same dip strength.
The infection was sometimes noticeable again the next day. It was a euphyllia that was infected in my tank.
It sounds like I was lucky that no other corals were infected.
It was many years ago that I went through that, so I don't remember if there were other things I may have done, but the coral did survive.

Because the skeleton was so massive, it wasn't possible to frag. Maybe that helped.

Mitch

fishytime · #9 03-22-2009, 03:38 AM

+1 on dipping with one of the available dips.