Good torch coral gone bad

[MrPNutts]

My showpiece torch coral is now the showpiece for the wrong reasons. Everything was fine Wednesday night. Thursday morning it looked like something had munched about half the heads. By Friday it looked like this. So sad.

[masssnapz]

That stings.

[shaner014]

Brutal. Have you fragged the outlying somewhat healthier looking pieces to try and save some?

[jedimasterben]

Cut and save what you can, but AFTER very carefully siphoning every bit of that bacterial gunk out of the system, be sure not to let it spread! Do an iodine dip (probably multiple every couple of days) on the polyps you can save.

[gulfsurfer101]

Yes I agree with JMB! You need to cut your losses so to say and look to treatment. Could be brown jelly disease or something eles. Whatever it is you want to flush it from your system and rescue what you can. Run some fine carbon and try and find some api antiobotics to dose your entire tank with. Just kill your skimmer because it will go nuts after dosing that stuff.

[MrPNutts]

Thank you all for the good advice! I'll post updates this weekend as time permits. This pic was after a quick siphon last night and now the real work begins...

 

 

[Anden]

Not cool, is it Brown jelly? Or did something hit it or eat it?

[MrPNutts]

Not cool, is it Brown jelly? Or did something hit it or eat it?

Something ate it. FWIW, here's a pic from about a year ago There's been a few additions and removals since then, but this shows the torch before it became a buffet. And yeah, the pineapple...

 

Edit: I promise the picture wasn't sideways until I posted it.

[MrPNutts]

"After" - I was on the verge of a little pruning and rearranging before this happened.

[pewpewkittah]

That's horrible. I'd be heartbroken.

 

That's definitely brown jelly. Weird that it hit almost every head at once though... have you changed anything to make the coral stressed at all? Temperature? Lighting? Salinity? The ones on the tops have no tissue left... You need to just frag off the remaining heads that are still showing tissue and give them a nice iodine dip.

 

Good luck. I hope you can save some...