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How do I treat brown jelly disease with iodine?


Fishgirl2393

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Fishgirl2393

Hi all. I recently (in the past few months) lost a duncan and candycane coral to brown jelly disease (classic symptoms) and thought that I was done with it since I had no other LPS in the tank. However, some of my soft corals (mushrooms/ricordea) are now getting it. I have done some reading and yes, these corals can indeed get it (less common but it does happen). I have read that iodine helps. I went and got the normal iodine (2%) from a drug store. How much should I put in a dip for the affected corals and how long should I put the corals in the dip for? Any other hints?

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gulfsurfer101

I believe it is a protazen and can only be cured by use of antiobics. That 2% iodine won't really help either. Should've got lugols instead.

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Fishgirl2393
I believe it is a protazen and can only be cured by use of antiobics. That 2% iodine won't really help either. Should've got lugols instead.

I got what I could (my LFS was out of iodine). I've heard (and read online) that iodine can work which is why I got it.

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Fishgirl2393

How much iodine in a dip? I looked under a microscope (I'm a biology major after all) and it is indeed brown jelly disease (caused by the protozoan).

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:) gulf you crack me up

 

 

Don't use iodine its lethal. I know what you read, but don't. Iodide if anything but none of them. Like all tank diagnostic threads, you must post tank full shot and details of the damaged heads in pic

 

From this we will deduce systemic health looking for areas of accumulation, low flow lack of calcification or excellent calcification considering how old your tank is now.

 

If you have low growing corals, unfed pretty much, not much biomass added in 3 mos then they could have been dying for alt reasons and colonized by various infestations as a secondary result of tankwide issues we can see from pics

 

You would siphon off the bad areas, do large water changes for 6 weeks and then it go back to normal and at no time would you dip in antiseptic iodine. Post pics

 

Damaged LPS can regrow from the center corallite out, over the old skeleton

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jedimasterben

Tincture of iodine that you can get at drug stores is not what you want, you need Lugol's solution of iodine. They are in no way similar for what we need and you should NOT use what you have just because you have it and think it should be the same.

 

 

In addition, only LPS coral can be infected with 'brown jelly'

 

 

(edit, derp, had it backwards, it is a ciliate protozoan)

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Fishgirl2393

This stuff is coral safe (the stuff I got). I know because other people have used it before for this exact same problem and it did no harm and fixed the problems (I did not go and buy it without researching it first). As for brown jelly only affecting LPS, that is what I thought too but according to a couple of websites and data from research I found (google it), it can affect almost any coral (it is an opportunistic pathogen). http://www.reefaquarium.com/2012/coral-diseases/

(that says it can affect almost any coral and LPS are frequently affected)

I do not think that the Phosguard is working very well in my tank because of my algae that still persists even with Phosguard in the filters so I may be looking into other ways of phosphate control, but my other parameters are spot on (alk 9, calcium 465-475, nitrate ~5ppm, ammonia and nitrite are 0, temp is 78-79, pH is always 8.1-8.3). The fish (and corals) get fed with frozen food (rinsed in distilled water) and occasionally with liquid foods (not often). Water is changed each week. It makes sense that this would be brown jelly because of the fact that the LPS had it first (it was positively identified as brown jelly by multiple people).

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jedimasterben

If it is iodine tincture, it is iodine dissolved in ethanol and water. Lugol's solution is the same minus the ethanol. You need to use Lugol's solution and NOT iodine tincture.

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Tincture of iodine that you can get at drug stores is not what you want, you need Lugol's solution of iodine. They are in no way similar for what we need and you should NOT use what you have just because you have it and think it should be the same.

 

 

In addition, only LPS coral can be infected with 'brown jelly'

 

 

(edit, derp, had it backwards, it is a ciliate protozoan)

Either should work, actually.

 

Lugol's and Iodine Tincture are both elemental iodine solutions (tincture can be with sodium or potassium iodide; Lugol's is always potassium iodide). I would actually venture to say that the tincture may be even better because the solution is solubilized in ethanol and not just water, like Lugol's is. Lugol's also has less elemental iodine (with the exception of the 5% iodine mixture). That being said, tincture is typically a 2% iodine. If you can find 5% Lugol's go for it, if you can find 7% Strong Tincture, use that.

 

While both are antiseptic, tincture is most often used as a pre-surgical antiseptic. Even in protozoan staining protocols, tincture can be used in place of lugols.

 

I don't see a reason why the tincture should be problematic? The ethanol won't hurt the corals much at all - maybe some irritation, but nothing more.

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jedimasterben

I don't see a reason why the tincture should be problematic? The ethanol won't hurt the corals much at all - maybe some irritation, but nothing more.

Is it a good idea to irritate damaged corals? ;)

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Is it a good idea to irritate damaged corals? ;)

It's no different than putting ethanol on damaged skin - gets into the tissue and helps get rid of the infection. The ciliates are all over. Get'em any way you can.

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is this going to be like other posts where you don't post a pic for a while

 

 

if you are sure its safe, then use the dosage your reference sites.

 

coral stress from care conditions could easily be your problem, not bjd. Post pics

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Fishgirl2393

I will try to post pictures sometime tomorrow but the corals that were most affected are gone. It looks exactly like the brown jelly issues I had with the duncan. The iodine dip was done and the corals are not even upset. Other than suspected phosphate (but not much) issues, I do not have any other water related issues (I've had my water tested by other reef hobbyists and I've tested it myself with multiple kits). I have caulerpa (that is the only real algae issue I have) and a very small patch of GHA that is slowly going away. It was on a coral frag and has not gotten worse so I don't think that my phosphate is a major problem at all. And as I said, I do weekly water changes with distilled water (with Salinity sea salt). This was a very sudden thing, not an ongoing problem. These corals have been reproducing (I have more mushrooms than I did a few months ago) so again, not a care issue I don't think. I've had some of these corals for about a year (a few even longer).

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So I have a question - why do you only buy stuff from your LFS? Do you ever order online where you can have your pick of what you want and when? I know you've said you are sort of out of the way but you can still get packages, right?

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Fishgirl2393

I do order some stuff online but shipping is a pain and is expensive if done all the time. My LFS will order whatever I want, it just sometimes takes a week or two to get there and I did not have time for that obviously. But the corals look a bit better this morning (lights are still off right now) so hopefully things will work out. I'm positive that it is brown jelly disease (I found the critters under a microscope and saw them swarming exactly like pictures you can find online of the protozoan that causes it).

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Why don't you get amazon prime? 100 bucks a year (yes I know it seems like a lot but it's less than 9 bucks a month) and you could order pretty much anything you want and get free 2-day shipping. You also get instant video, music, access to kindle books...

 

You'd save a lot of time and money and headache. If you are a student (and I think you are), you also get Prime for half the cost. It'd be 50 bucks a year for you...

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Fishgirl2393

I sometimes use prime. My sister (who lives close by but not the same house) has it and will order things using hers. Again though, I didn't have time to get anything since I was losing corals really fast. But like I said, it should stop now (hopefully).

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Fishgirl2393

That was uncalled for. I have verified this with other people (it is brown jelly). I know what is going on in that way (I actually assumed something about the tank first but tested and found it not to be true). That was never what this thread was about. This was about how to use the iodine (which is safe). I am a biology major (not a lower-level either) and know what I see both in the tank and under the microscope. As for ordering stuff, I occasionally do but I like to support my local store (which will order stuff for me if I ask) since they are good people. You have an idea that my tank is a mess (which it is not, it has some caulerpa but anyone who has ever had that knows it is hard to get rid of) and that my corals are not doing will from something I'm doing (or not doing), but I'm telling you that the soft corals that are affected have been growing and reproducing (something that doesn't happen if they are super unhappy). I read a LOT before going and getting anything. I have been trying to figure this out for a few days and finally confirmed my fears last night using a scope. And later (once I get home from classes) I will post pics of the affected corals (though I doubt you will be able to tell anything because the corals I treated were less affected than the corals that had it before and are now gone after a couple of days).

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Fishgirl2393

Here are some pics. The bleached shrooms HAD brown jelly on them last night (as did the ric) before I dipped them. They still don't look great, but they look somewhat better today. And the shrooms were bleached before the dip FYI.

post-50769-0-65890100-1412796523_thumb.jpg

post-50769-0-67689700-1412796554_thumb.jpg

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Im not doubting it can be used, my angle is this

 

dont use it, ever.

 

we need full tank shot not coral shot

 

in tank, to show why your corals are stressed and therefore easy to overtake, whereas they would be resistant to BJD if you w deal with algae correctly.

 

When we get a simple, full tank shot showing good tank detail, I wont be looking at your BJD corals because they are secondary.

 

I can reef another 25 years and never get BJD. if you put a coral that has it into my tank, it goes away and the coral lives.

 

All of your problem threads FG are tied to the same thing, all of them. THis is just like the nitrite problem, and your solution is the same only Im guesing we may not have been following it. Soon you will see, your full tank shots will show all your coral issues or non issues

 

everything challenge in your threads is assessed only with a full tank shot and nothing else. now we have a timeline as to what to expect. In a strong tank in a year, we get coralline, frags that spread, lps that added heads. When your FTS shows that we can truly work with BJD. Im betting it doesnt. Im betting it looks the same as if it were a 3 mo old tank from being kept too sterile, only pics will tell.

 

 

You are trying to starve algae that isnt working we can see. In that, the corals are suffering and we can tell they aren't being fed enough due to no actual frags becoming colonies, just staying frags, the LPS. softs tend to grow anyway but Im watching your lps for a year to read this tank. Ill look for calcification details on the rocks that show you've been feeding and changing water correctly. if its barren live rock after a year, no lps growth, not much coralline anywhere, no tubeworms abutting the rocks, we can see your tank isn't cared for correctly, its just on life support with bright lights.

 

You should lower your photoperiod and intensity during this assessment period, especially if its another week until we get detailed multiple FTS shots of the aquarium, not the coral heads. :)

 

Truly Im helping ya, post full tank shot and never use iodine. Ill never need it, keeping any coral I want to for as long as I want to because I dont phosphate strip so things are sooooo much easier.

 

it is most likely your attempt to deal with algae through water parameter maintenance has stressed your corals and any number of maladies can step in to claim the vital space///the coral skeleton where a polyp once stood.

 

*I agreed BJD can come about in otherwise normal tanks. its the specific history of this tank that warrants skepticism about all nonstandard practices, hence we need full tank shots up close, clear as day, yesterday heh

 

Merely having that much algae abutting a polyp alters every bit of its normal activity, chemically and physically. Your pic above, though not a fts, directly shows a cause of BJD in your corals. BJD can be opportunistic, and I think thats just whats its doing. you can even get it in one coral due to poor algae maintenance technique where that was preventable, then farm that to the rest of the tank as it capitalizes on the fact those others corals are not laying down mass, they are using energy to just survive and not add mass in the last 12 mos if the pics show that. We will compare the nitrite threads pics to this one for a one year chart most people dont get in a troubleshooting post.

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BJD is a secondary bacterial infection.

 

I can reef another 25 years and never get BJD. if you put a coral that has it into my tank, it goes away and the coral lives.

But it is highly contagious..

 

I don't even bother to treat if I see it. I just toss it now. Previously I've had it and tried to frag healthy heads, iodine dip, to no avail. I got it once early on in my 180, a torch coral, and I assume it's tissue had ripped. Was questionable as to how much flow it was getting, probably too much.



I will say that due to the placement, I wasn't able to completely remove all of the BJD. Some sloughed off and fell into the rocks..but only that torch had issues though.

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