Brown Jelly on E. Divisa (Frogspawn) - Must save this coral!

[ajmckay]

Bought this uber sweet wall style frogspawn on Saturday. Sunday I noticed a small blemish but something is pissing it off royally today... My guess is a small bump during transport, though I was honestly as careful as I could have been.

 

I'm super super pissed off. It's got brown jelly... :tears: I didn't snap a pic (should have) but it was obvious.

 

It's on the sand bed, fairly low flow, just enough to get the tentacles swaying back and forth.

 

Water is testing fine so I know Nitrates aren't the issue (admittedly it's API - but still reading 0). I don't have much else in the tank except some GSP. SG is 1.025, temp 79f.

 

I first spotted the jellied area around 7pm tonight (+48 hours since purchase). That area looked super pissed and the tentacles were all scrunched up. At 10pm the surrounding area started to puff up - a little bit. At 11pm I used a huge syringe and sucked up the brown jelly area (about the size of a dime). I sucked up some tentacles surrounding it also - but was careful to not scrape it or anything. Note to self - brown jelly water smells like putrid ass. Seriously disgusting smell.

 

Tomorrow I'm going to see if I can rustle up some coral revive or iodine and I plan to do a dip first thing after work tomorrow. Any other suggestions or good websites I should read on the subject? I'd appreciate it. All I can think about right now is finding the best course of action to treat this beautiful coral. Seems like iodine dips and flow are the most widely used but I want to at least know what other treatment methods people have used or had success with.

[NorthGaHillbilly]

Iodine has worked a few times for me. I've rarely had heard of good success rates with wall euphillia, ive heard several theories on why, but one way or the other, there tough.

[ajmckay]

Iodine has worked a few times for me. I've rarely had heard of good success rates with wall euphillia, ive heard several theories on why, but one way or the other, there tough.

 

Yeah this is my first wall... Not that branching aren't cool, but the wall is badass. I'm really freaking out. Still searching for a good narrative showing how someone saved their coral... Wetweb is awesome, but going through that stuff is brutal after midnight... Think I'll have to pick it up again tomorrow.

 

If there's any more in the morning I'll plan to suck that out too.

[clownfitch]

I agree with NorthGaHillbilly

My success rate on wall euphyllia that has started to decline is very low. Try the iodine dip and good luck.

[ajmckay]

Good news, this morning I went at it with a turkey baster and didn't get much. Still stunk though so I know I got some.

 

Holy crap there's a ton of conflicting information out there on this stuff...

 

"Standard plan" - Seems to be what people have done and recommend, but not considered a cure or even an effective treatment in most cases. It appears that this standard plan is more an attempt to be proactive and do something rather than nothing - but apparently it's still a hit or miss whether it can actually save a coral.

1) Increase flow to keep stuff from settling and things stagnating (but not so much to create tears by rubbing against the sharp underlying structure.

2) Iodine baths (I'll be picking up some Decolored Iodine tincture at the pharmacy: Active Ingredients: Alcohol (45%), Ammonium and, Potassium Iodides (6.7 - 7.1%). Inactive Ingredient: Purified Water. Apparently all the iodine has an alcohol or ethanol base vs. water.

3) Run carbon and do frequent water changes.

4) Frag off affected heads asap (siphon first), don't swish it around in the tank. Tough for wall form euphyllia but I might have to try it.

 

More experimental, but some people claim it helps.

1) Antibiotic baths with chloramphenicol, cipro, doxycyclene, and a few mentions of metronidazole (flagyl).

2) FW dips (one WWM comment by Mr. Anthony Calfo even suggests a 60 second "shower" under cold TAP water!). Apparently FW kills the underlying protozoas/bacteria/etc...

3) Sealing the wounded edges with superglue

4) Vitamin C dosing (as recommended by Albert Thiel)

 

Will be posting more info as I find it and I'm going to do my best to document the steps I take and rationale for taking them. I'm not going to turn my coral into a test subject though... !

[ajmckay]

Update. Went to pharmacy and the only iodine they had listed ammonium as a primary ingredient!!! I almost passed out when I opened it up to sniff . Definitely don't want to dose ammonia into my coral bath .

 

The LFS I got it from was the only store in the area that had Lugols iodine in stock but they wouldn't stay open an extra 5 minutes for me to stop by. Kinda pissed about that - since I bought the coral from them and it wasn't cheap - right after I hung up I regretted not making more of a fuss.

 

Anyways, the good news is that after 24 hours the area I siphoned is still white, the tentacles around the area are definitely irritated but they aren't mush and they have color, and I'm going to suck around the area again tonight. I'm trying to not let myself get complacent or lazy on this one... I'm decidedly going to be over cautious. Tonight after lights out my plan is to rotate it so the bad spot is more easily viewed and re-arrange the power heads to get a more ideal laminar flow pattern.

 

Pics:

[Thomas898]

That looks like it's recovering really nicely, that is a huge improvement. Would just say keep doing what you're doing, siphon off the affected areas and try and get an iodine dip, but that does look like it's on it's way to recovering.

I had a small goni that had BJD, I siphoned out what parts I could, kept it in quite strong flow and had an army of pods that ate the dead flesh, it got it healthy within a month before I traded it, and that thing looked so bad my LFS sold it for $2 originally.

[ajmckay]

Update: Noticed a little bit more slime this morning siphoned it out. Spent lunch looking for iodine, found a bottle of Kent Lugol's iodine (11+% free iodine)!

 

This evening there was yet a bit more bsj I filled two 5g bucket with 1 gallon each fresh mixed SW and added 40 drops to one of them. Sucked up the jelly and then placed it into the iodine bucket. Used the baster to sort of blow it off and the syringe to suck up what I could. I ended up using a squirt/suck method and I think this loosened up some slime that was a bit deeper than I had been sucking earlier - plus I had better access in the bucket. After 20 minutes or so I rinsed it off in the other 5g bucket with just fresh SW and placed it back into the tank with the lights on low.

 

Before pic - see the brown jelly forming. This isn't in the iodine, I just used my flash.

 

Crud left in the iodine bucket:

 

After the dip:

 

Close up after the dip (notice the 2 mouths?)

 

So right now it's looking like 2x per day sucking any new brown jelly off and 1x per day iodine dip. This is going to get old pretty quick. If I don't notice a significant slowing in the formation of new jelly I am going to stop by a vet and see if I can pick up some Chloramphenicol, a powerful antibiotic which supposedly cures this stuff. Good thing is I pass 3 vet clinics on my way to work so I'm sure 1 of them can sell me some.

[righttirefire]

Sorry about your troubles aj. That is a beautiful coral. Could fragging off the "effected" area and QT'ing that area be a possible solution? Continue treatment of effected part but save coral

[ajmckay]

Sorry about your troubles aj. That is a beautiful coral. Could fragging off the "effected" area and QT'ing that area be a possible solution? Continue treatment of effected part but save coral

 

Yeah I have thought about it - just not prepared to hack it just yet. If it starts progressing faster even after treating with the antibiotic (assuming I can even get it) though I'll do it.

 

I've never fragged a wall type before and apparently it's not as easy as with branching. If I do it I would use an angle grinder with a masonry disc, quick and precise, more so than a hack saw or something. Also I would probably toss the bad part completely and use the QT for healing since if there's still some of the protozoa in the display tank it could get infected again.

[Jellyingabout]

I know your feels man, I've just lost the gorgeous lobo in my profile pic to this. i have one mouth fragged off it, but the poor thing has been so stressed i dunno if it'll make it.

[ajmckay]

I know your feels man, I've just lost the gorgeous lobo in my profile pic to this. i have one mouth fragged off it, but the poor thing has been so stressed i dunno if it'll make it.

Did you lose it to brown jelly? Did you attempt treatment? I'm just wondering if you found any treatment to be ineffective or if you wished you had treated if you didn't...

 

I'm really hoping this thing pulls through. Besides being the most badass coral I've purchased it was the most $$. I don't have a very big reefing budget so I put quite a few of my eggs in this one basket if you know what I mean! I feel I got a good deal on it though. Basically I paid the same for this as I would have for two branching type frogspawn frags with 2 heads each (so 4 total) and so far I've spotted like 6 or 7 mouths on this one.

[Jellyingabout]

The rot happened after i moved it from one tank to another. At first I mistaken it for bleaching (there was some white rot mixed in with the brown) and put it down to stress due to changing tanks. When I realized I cleared the rot away with a knife and sucked away any brown jelly. Sadly it cam back within a couple of hours. i figured I will not recover the area of coral with the jelly and rot on it due to the high stress the tank is already under so I took quick drastic action and fragged the good bits. We'll find out if it worked in the next few days.

[clownfitch]

Save fragging any wall euphyllia as the very last resort. With my experience you end up with multiple frags that all end up doing the same thing. Thank you for the documenting you are doing and my fingers are crossed for you!

[ajmckay]

Oh I totally agree... Fragging will be a last ditch effort. To avoid this, today I called 5 or 6 different veterinary clinics (including 2 that treated "exotics") looking for chloramphenicol - which is supposed to deal serious deadness to the protozoan cause of BJD. I found one place that had it, but wasn't comfortable dispensing it to me since he wasn't familiar with the usage. I posted a thread at a local reef forum asking if there are any doctors/vets that can help. Here are some links about this drug.

 

Links showing Chloramphenicol is effective treatment for BSJ
Brn Jelly DisF (Bob Fenner gives referral to the below link)
Brown Jelly Syndrome (BJS) & Brown Band Disease (BrB) - Aquarium Coral Diseases
Corals - Bacterial
http://www.reefs.org/library/talklog...an_040697.html
Marine Aquariums South Africa - View Single Post - Brown Jelly & CAM Antibiotic
http://reefdreams.de/lang_eng/info_13_eng.html

 

Continuing, unfortunately the brown Jelly persists. Tonight I did my second iodine dip procedure (suck goo, iodine dip, SW rinse). Also, possibly against my better judgement I decided to do a FW "shower". That is, I put the affected area under very gently cold running TAP water for 60 seconds. Very low flow. Sounds weird I know but it is not a random action, it was actually recommended by Anthony Calfo at WWM here (just search the word "tap"). Now normally I'm very methodical about reefing things. I give whatever I'm doing time to work and I wait until I see significant negative results (or at least not the results I want) before making major changes to what I'm doing. The reason I did the FW "shower" is because I got a glimpse of just how quickly this can spread. Please see the following pictures.

 

Here's a pic of the coral as it was when I got home at 7:00 pm tonight (so about 72 hours since I first noticed the Brown Jelly). There was only a little bit of brown jelly present so I wasn't happy, but I was glad the coral wasn't a mess of brown goo.

 

 

 

 

So I decided to go to the gym and do some other things and when I got back at 10:00pm (+3 hrs) here's what it looked like! The little isolated clump toward the left side turned completely to goo in only 3 hours! I saw more jelly form in 3 hours than in the previous 24! This stuff is fast and unpredictable. I honestly don't know why it took off all of a sudden.

 

 

Here's the after shot. The coral is obviously pissed off... In hindsight doing sucking up the brown slime, then the iodine bath (along with more basting) and then the FW "shower" was probably a bit too much. I've noted this and I'm hoping I don't regret the decision too bad tomorrow.

[Thomas898]

Man I really hope this improves for you, that is such a beautiful coral, would be a shame to see it lost. Hopefully you won't have to resort to fragging it! Best of luck.

[Pinner Reef]

yeesh looks pretty bad Aj. Good luck bro. Wall Euphyllia are on the do not buy list for me because when I worked at the LFS we had maaaybe a 10% survival rate with them.

[Weasel Baron]

We used to run into this every once in a while when I worked wholesale; chopping the colony, super gluing the cut site, and putting it in QT was the only way of saving it, but it was never more than a 50% chance

 

so are you running any chemical filtration? UV? A lot of people think its an infection; if thats the case you need to remove it from your water column or all your dips will be in vain.

 

There was also some evidence that this was an issue w/ the coral tissue going apoptotic from some internal signal, and the jelly is just there as a opportunist; this would give a bit more credence to the chop/frag strategy, especially if the internal signalling cue is acting in some concentration gradient and not present further away from the infection site

[ajmckay]

yeesh looks pretty bad Aj. Good luck bro. Wall Euphyllia are on the do not buy list for me because when I worked at the LFS we had maaaybe a 10% survival rate with them.

Yeah I'm really wishing I had learned that tidbit before deciding to get it...

 

Secretly I was hoping that it wasn't there anymore so that the temptation to buy it would be gone when I went back to the LFS a week later. But it was, and I had to have it.

[ajmckay]

We used to run into this every once in a while when I worked wholesale; chopping the colony, super gluing the cut site, and putting it in QT was the only way of saving it, but it was never more than a 50% chance

 

so are you running any chemical filtration? UV? A lot of people think its an infection; if thats the case you need to remove it from your water column or all your dips will be in vain.

 

There was also some evidence that this was an issue w/ the coral tissue going apoptotic from some internal signal, and the jelly is just there as a opportunist; this would give a bit more credence to the chop/frag strategy, especially if the internal signalling cue is acting in some concentration gradient and not present further away from the infection site

 

Took me a minute to think about this. The unfortunate truth to the so called BJD/BJS is that not enough it really known about it. I've read several sources that identify the cause as a protozoa, however, others claim that they are found in the jelly simply as opportunistic feeders. My guess as to why there isn't much of a knowledge base on this is that when someone gets it they are quick to either lose the coral or frag it immediately (especially in the wholesale/LFS - where it poses a significant risk). The only reason I'm not doing this is because other than a bit of GSP it's the only coral I have in my tank and I'm willing to put in the time to research this and try to beat it. Note that I've spent 3+ hours every day since Monday either researching or treating this.

 

Regarding the placement of the coral in the tank, I suppose my research seems to indicate that the infectious material is indeed really bad to have in the tank, but that by siphoning it off frequently the risk to other corals is minimal. Of course this is just my thought and I do have a QT ready should I need to move it for some sort of treatment - such as the anti-biotic.

 

Finally, what you say about tissue signals is something I've never read before. Do you by chance have any material on this? If so I would really appreciate a link as I want to read it. This theory or whatever sounds really interesting and if that's indeed the case makes this ailment quite scary indeed! I've heard enough about BJS exploding and decimating an entire tank of corals in a matter of hours/days. How this disease progresses I have yet to wrap my head around. I am vigilantly monitoring all areas of the coral, and so far only that one spot has been an issue.

 

In conclusion my thought is to assign the symptoms to an infection of sorts - at least I hope (assuming I can even get the medication). Because at the rate this is progressing I might run out of steam before too long. I just don't have the time to spend on this every day.

 

Thanks everyone for your encouragement though - it keeps me motivated to move along and update this thread which hopefully can help someone else.

[Weasel Baron]

 

Finally, what you say about tissue signals is something I've never read before. Do you by chance have any material on this? If so I would really appreciate a link as I want to read it. This theory or whatever sounds really interesting and if that's indeed the case makes this ailment quite scary indeed! I've heard enough about BJS exploding and decimating an entire tank of corals in a matter of hours/days. How this disease progresses I have yet to wrap my head around. I am vigilantly monitoring all areas of the coral, and so far only that one spot has been an issue.

 

 

nothing specific to BJD, but signalling cascades and particularly TNF induced apoptosis is something that is massively conserved in the animal kingdom. If the assumption is the brown jelly is just an opportunist, it would point to some sort of (auto)immune issue sparking an apoptotic cascade which then allows the jelly to congregate and consume the dying coral tissue. here's a paper on human TNFa being similar enough to induce apoptosis in coral cell cultures

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4084427/

 

 

how it spreads to other corals? no idea. maybe its a viral issue; theres evidence that viral infections can induce TNF cascades. that would certainly explain why its so damn hard to beat. antibiotics wouldnt do anything, but maybe they give the coral enough time to overcome the infection on its own without being consumed by opportunists/bacteria

 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11581385

 

maybe your coral has the herp, bro

 

 

whatever the case, best of luck, and keep posting your results

[Jellyingabout]

In my experience it does behave like an autoimmune disease. Its like the coral rots itself from the edges.

[ajmckay]

maybe your coral has the herp, bro

 

LOL !!! Check the sig

[righttirefire]

Maybe too soon. But my LFS has a beautiful frog/octospawn walling coral. They'll frag me a little piece and it'll fill out my trifecta...

[Weasel Baron]

 

LOL !!! Check the sig

 

honored