Brown slime on poisoned favites. Update: looks cured!

[Tired]

Long story short: I scraped palys off one of my rocks, covered the patch in superglue gel, covered that in putty, put the rock back in the tank, and poisoned all my corals. I've banished that rock and done a giant water change to resolve things, but I have some corals banished. 

 

While I was dealing with all that, I noticed that some of my LPS had brown, kinda mounded slime on them. A candycane coral, a starlet coral, and a Chemical Warfare favia. It's a small-polyped favia, polyps maybe a quarter-inch across. I took them out of the tank and put them in big cups of clean water, about a pint each. The candycane no longer has any slime, and also no longer has any flesh. The starlet might have thin brown slime? But I only have two pipette, one for my tank and one "contaminated" pipette I'm using on the favia, so I can't blow on it to check. The focus here is the favia. 

 

It still has flesh on it, but keeps getting brown slime on it as well. Is this something that LPS ever do when poisoned, maybe decay-related, or is it definitely BJD? If it's likely to be BJD, what can I do to help it? The flesh that's left on is mostly around the edges, and the slime is in the center. The whole thing's too small to frag the possibly infected parts off. I have Lugol's iodine somewhere, but last time I tried to iodine dip a LPS it was an acan that I made worse with the dip, so I'm a little wary of that. I don't know how much is supposed to be used. I guess I could... cut the frag in half with a Dremel and dip half? But I feel like that'd be a lot of stress this thing doesn't need. 

 

I'm not sure I can clearly photograph this. Would photos be helpful, or does "mounded, semi-transparent brown slime that strongly adheres together" sum it up enough? 

[A.m.P]

Not much can help with BJD, I've heard certain antibiotics and cleansers can help, like Dettol, but it's all speculation. Fragging might help if you can ensure the clean area absolutely doesn't get contaminated, usually you'd try to save intact flesh, which is really hard/impossible with favia...

[Tired]

My question is, how do I tell for certain it's BJD? Should I just assume that, if it continues losing flesh and having brown slime, that's confirmation? 

 

I don't think there are any clean areas, or I'd try to cut one off. 

 

I assume this happened because the poor thing got stressed all to hell by the whole, ya know, poisoning. I'm guessing the pathogen (it is a pathogen, right?) has always been present in the tank, though I've never had it show up on anything else. Given that, how do I tell if it's safe for me to put other LPS in this tank, once things are back to normal? Do I just have to try it with something not super valuable and see what happens? 

[Xj reefing]

I had a Goni that was affected by brown jelly disease and had the same symptoms as you did. I used seachem reef dip to try and save it and it worked. Seachem reef dip is made to heal Protozoa infections. I’ll add the before and after pictures of it.

[Tired]

Welp, Amazon has Seachem reef dip for $10, available to be delivered tomorrow, so I've ordered some. Worth a shot. I'd like for this guy to not die, it's pretty. Plus, I should probably have coral dip on hand in general.  

 

Glad yours recovered. What's that in the left of the second picture, an acan of some brand? 

[Xj reefing]

The coral in the left is actually a favia

[Tired]

Oh, very nice! Looks like one of the large-polyp types. I love those, but I don't think I should put anything with a sting like that in a pico tank. 

 

Okay, I went to check on the favia in its banishment cup. I blew it off with a pipette again, and hardly any slime came off. It still has visible flesh, though, and doesn't seem to have lost any of said flesh. I think whatever's producing that slime is stopping. 

 

So, either: 

1: this isn't BJD. 

2: this is a really weak variant of BJD that seems to be dying off. 

3: putting a coral in a pint of cold water with no filtration or anything else is how you treat BJD. 

 

All I've been doing is squirting the slime off once or twice a day, and I've dumped all the water out of the cup and replaced it a couple times. It's literally just a big cup, that someone shipped an orchid to me in. It's got water and the frag in it. I don't think that's how you fix BJD. 

 

Thoughts, anyone? 

[Xj reefing]

I think maybe constantly keeping the coral clean is working

[Tired]

I mean, if "constantly" is "a couple times a day at most", I guess that could be it? I'll keep doing that, then. Can't hurt. 

[Xj reefing]

I think that with you keeping it clean the infection doesn’t really have time to take hold of the coral

[Tired]

I mean, there was a lot of slime on it a couple days ago. If this is an infection and not some by-product of decay, it had a hold for a bit. 

 

 

That's what we're dealing with at the moment. I do see a few intact mouths, still, and those brighter orange bits at the edges fluoresce under blue lights. We'll see if it gets any worse. 

 

I'm trying to figure out when it'll be safe to put back into the tank. The LPS in the tank (that aren't a skeleton I'm hoping has live cells) are already in pretty lousy shape, so I don't exactly want to be introducing extra disease. Then again, this was in the tank already.

I might be counting my chickens before they hatch, but does anyone know how long I should wait after the slime stops appearing to put it back into the tank? 

[Xj reefing]

9 minutes ago, Tired said:

I mean, there was a lot of slime on it a couple days ago. If this is an infection and not some by-product of decay, it had a hold for a bit. 

 

I might be counting my chickens before they hatch, but does anyone know how long I should wait after the slime stops appearing to put it back into the tank? 

I would maybe wait a day or 2 and monitor it.

[A.m.P]

IIRC Seachem reef dip is just dilute iodine, and I don't actually see any evidence of BJD left on that favia, just looks like tissue. 

[Tired]

Yeah, whatever kind of slime that was is gone now. I've gone and vigorously pipetted it again, and the only thing I dislodged was a sort of weird brownish stuff that I think was leftover decaying flesh. No more slime. 

 

That... can't possibly have been BJD, right? Every time I see anyone with a coral they cured of BJD, it was from one if not multiple dips, generally some heavy pruning, and things like pointing a powerhead at it constantly. Or they lost half their tank. All I did with this was pipette it when I remembered to, and swap out the water in the cup for clean water a couple times. This seems way too easy to have been BJD. 

 

Then again, brown-clear, thick slime in kind of a mounded shape sure seems to be what BJD looks like. I should probably have taken some pictures, but I was a bit distracted with the whole "poisoned my tank" thing. 

 

Edit: it occurs to me that maybe the cold did help. It's in my bedroom, which is pretty decently air conditioned, and is close to the air vent at the moment. Probably mid-low 70s in there. I wonder if that's interfering with whatever pathogen causes BJD? Maybe it can't multiply as fast in colder water. I know a few degrees of temperature increase can crank the metabolism of ich up a notable amount, so maybe a few degrees down slows the metabolism of BJD? 

I'm not too worried about the favia itself being bothered. I've had my reef get relatively cold during really cold days in winter, when the heaters just can't keep up, and everything seems okay with it for a couple days. 

[Tired]

There continues to be no slime on the favia. Can I assume it's safe to put back in my tank? 

[A.m.P]

25 minutes ago, Tired said:

There continues to be no slime on the favia. Can I assume it's safe to put back in my tank? 

My vote would be yes, just keep a close eye on it.

[Tired]

I might give it another day, just in case. I'd hate to put it back in the tank and have the infection come back and kill it off, if the cold water is actually helping. 

 

Any thoughts on using the Reef Dip, since I've got that on hand? Is there a notable risk of it making the coral worse? It says on the bottle it's iodine-based, and to use 5-10ml per gallon of dipping water, for 15-30 minutes. 

[A.m.P]

No clue, in the past I used dilute peroxide (just a few drops in a dixi cup) and enough iodide to just barely change the color of the water, but at the end of the day that adds stress and can finish off a weakened coral. 
My only survivor from BJD was a single Blasto Merletti, none of my euphyllia made it, I beat the jelly on a few of the coral but the animals themselves faded away over the next few months.

I think I'd put it back in and see what happens, the tank is probably a better place for it if the system is no longer actively in a downswing/crisis from palytoxin or ammonia.
 

From what I've read BJD can be a few different organisms which just, for whatever reason, grow out of control in our systems and feed into each other like catalysts "in the right conditions". Not really helpful since, unlike dino's, being present in the system all the time doesn't matter when large clumps of it seem to be self-sustaining and capable of spreading to other corals...

 

High wordcount and barely anything meaningful, concise, or helpful said; I still got it. 

[Tired]

Is it silly to dip half the frag? I assume a favia can tolerate being out of water for 15 minutes, so I could just rig something to hold the disc with the frag halfway in the dip. 

 

I haven't added any LPS anywhere near recently, so this didn't come from a poorly coral being introduced. It was clearly already in there, and took advantage of the corals being weakened by the palytoxin. Like a lot of other infections do. 

At least the strain present in my tank seems to behave itself with healthy corals? I'll just have to... not get any severely stressed LPS, I guess, so it doesn't latch into anything again. 

 

All of the corals still in the tank have at least some polyps open, with most colonies being fully open, plus I've removed the paly rock and done a giant water change. I'm confident the tank itself should be at least acceptable conditions. I don't have any way to judge if it's fine for LPS as opposed to just zoas, as my only remaining LPS is a chunk of blasto flesh from a blasto that was not happy before this began, but that chunk of flesh isn't actively declining. That's probably a good sign. 

[Tired]

Some of its more intact polyps are starting to inflate and extend feeding tentacles! The flesh around the edges isn't inflating at all, but does fluoresce under blue lights. 

 

I assume I should feed it, since it's a LPS. Probably Reef Roids, I doubt it can take anything larger. Should I feed it lightly, or heavily? 

[Xj reefing]

I would start lightly and then build up

[Tired]

I wound up adding the dip to the favia's cup until the water was just slightly tinted, then leaving it for 20 minutes. After that, I put it back in my tank. 

It's showing much more flesh than it was before. Color is good on those outer patches. Not as good on the inner areas, for whatever reason. I think I'm going to take pictures of this every few days and compare them, keep track of if it improves or declines. If it improves steadily, I'll take that as meaning that it's going to be fine. 

 

Obviously this isn't something that I've enjoyed experiencing, but one small positive; look how cool that skeleton is. It's so thin on the outer edges that it's actually translucent! Encrusting coral indeed. 

[Tired]

 

Just after lights on, and somewhere in the middle of the day. It looks strange, puffy flesh mixed with skeleton, but it seems as healthy as can be expected. Let's give it a week and see what happens. 

 

Assuming it recovers, will those individual polyps eventually merge into each other, or do I have a bunch of crammed-together single-polyp frags on my hands? 

 

Interesting to watch its flesh kinda emerge back out of hiding. See that area on the bottom left of the frag, where three polyps meet with a thin barrier of white between them in the first photo? No barrier in the second photo when the flesh surfaces. 

 

(Oh, and I changed the title to be more helpful. Among other things, this is technically a favites.)

[A.m.P]

It'll probably look a little bumpy and odd, but it should regrow into itself.

[Tired]

I'm currently trying to figure out how much of the skeleton still has flesh in it. I'd like to dremel off a bit of one edge and keep some of that really transparent skeleton where I can hold it and look at it up close, but I don't want to actually damage any healthy flesh, of course. I think the left side has a decent bit of bare skeleton without any hidden flesh, but I'll give it a bit longer to check if more flesh surfaces. Maybe I'll try trimming it next week.