Brown spots on Sun Coral

[Strawberry]

I posted this in General Disscusion and got no replies----does anyone have ANY ideas?????

 

I've had my sun coral for about 3 weeks, it's half orange and half pink. The pink side is doing great, the polyps even come out in the daytime. The orange side is a little slower coming out, but is venturing out at dinner time. The problem is that I noticed brown spots on 3 of the orange cups last night. I had a problem with brown algae recently, but my turbo's and a water change

took care of that...is it algae growing on the coral? And if so what should I do?? Oh, and my water parameters are perfect- 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, Ph 8.2, nitrates .5, salinity 1.23, temp 78.

[Aiptasia]

It's either that or a brown jelly infection, which all corals are subject to. If it's diatom algae, the coral should contract and secrete a waxy substance to get rid of it, then re-expand the next day. If it's not doing that, it could be brown jelly disease, which is usually caused by a bacterial infection.

 

If you can spot treat the coral with a little lugol's solution, that usually helps. If not, look into supplimenting the tank with iodide/lugol's every week at a very low dose. DO NOT USE IODINE! Iodine is toxic to corals. Use iodide, which isn't toxic to most corals (except maybe GSP). If the spots are jelly-like and slimy, take a cotton swab and wipe the gunk off as best you can before treating the water with iodide.

 

Skimming is famous for removing iodide from seawater, and if you're not performing regular (and big volume) water changes, it's quickly depleted.