Duncan killing slime :(

[chelskisw6]

Has anyone else experienced a brown slime covering and killing their duncans?

I have had this happen to two colonies, one ORA and one RMW, and it eventually killed both. Luckily i have more duncans, but im looking for more information on this slime, and its causes and prevention.

All my params are normal, and absolutely everything else in the tank is as healthy as can be. Sorry, no pics, i just tossed my second affected colony...

[basser1]

First of all I don't have a clue. But I do have 2 frags of duncans from RMWs'.

I wonder though if it is anything like the brown jelly disease that affects frogspawns?

I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

[ct_vol]

I had one of my ORA Duncans develop a brown slime after it sustained an injury from one of my other corals being knocked on top of it by a hermit... I've lost heads of Frogspawn to this same brown slime... I think its a type of LPS RTN... The way I saved my ORA Duncan was to blow off all the brown slime with a power head and then cover the injured area with Superglue Gel... It may take a little while, but your Duncans should make a full recovery... Make sure if you have one that has developed the brown slime to remove it from the proximity of the others, or it will likely spread... HTH!!!!!!!

[chrisstie]

ct_vol has a great technique of stopping this slime.

it's basically called "brown jelly infection" if its what I think it is based on what you describe.

Brown jelly can affect most LPS I think... I had a sting occur to a chalice and it had some brown slimey stuff peeling away with the flesh- but i blew it off\sucked it up with a turkey baster and kept the wounded part clean and open free of algae and its doing better now.

It *can* spread if it land somewhere or hurts another coral so its a good idea to get it out. I let mine go down into the overflow and get filtered about away from my coral or remove it completely if i can (really hard to do that though its weird stuff)

[tee1172]

Wow. My duncans where pushed off a rock and they just didn't come out for almost a week, I thought they died but now they are doing very well.

[chelskisw6]

I guess it could be similar to this brown jelly stuff. I have done my best to remove it all.

Those of you who have had this on other LPS, have you ever noticed it affecting different species, or just the infected species?

[RandyO]

My single polyp frag of Duncan quickly turned into a large colony after a year. I had only glued the Duncan on a small piece of rubble rock. After a year, most of the rock was covered with live flesh.

A couple months ago I had my colony sitting on the bare bottom of one of my nano tanks. Part of it was not getting much flow, and it started to die off, getting brown jelly on it. I ended up cutting the infected area off the main colony. Both the frag and the colony recovered after an Iodine bath, and increased flow.

Unfortunately, two days ago I noticed something different, and much worse affecting a few of my corals. The flesh was just peeling off the skeleton. No jelly at all. The Duncan colony was one of the infected corals. I chopped it up tonight, but it looks like I may loose it all. I also lost most of my Micromussa colonies to the same fate. Wish I knew why.

[chrisstie]

Randy I've had that happen to a few specific species under my care.. trachyphyllia geoffry (can't spell) and whats been labelled as scolymia but isn't quite the volcano shaped one but more like another kind of brain...

In a matter of hours to days the flesh would just come right off. In my case I think it was due to a kind of acclimation error. I picked one of them up at my LFS and it was gaping and my better judgement should have said "pay for it, leave it here, get it later when its ready" but doh doh doh I'll never make that mistake again.

If they have been in your tank for a while though I'd start looking at contaminants, parameters, etc to see if anything is off and make sure your test kits are good.

I had a small issue with STN while I had finals week going on because I wasn't staying on top of my alk levels - it stopped as soon as I got done with my tests and had time to dose properly. LPS sometimes seem more finicky than SPS to me but it really depends on each tank

[isjg]

A problem I've had with a number of colonies. Mostly caused by either physical damage or stinging by another coral of the membrane on the branches. Once it starts to recede there's usually no stopping it. I have it now on one of mine after a Ric stretched out and brushed it. Only touched the tip of one polyp but the whole branch is now receding. I'm going to try cutting the branch off to try and save it. It's a 50 head colony and I don't want to lose it.

[wawruck]

beware if its brown jelly, I lost my frogspawn and the then my torch to it. Mine started getting the "jelly" and they pulled themselves into there skeleton, until they were just gone. I suctioned off all the jelly and that didn't even help save them.

[All Delight]

Randy -

I've had that happen to a few of my micros. To me it happened so quickly. In a matter of a couple days. Bam the colony was gone. It was like peeling off a sticker. They were established pieces that I've had for nearly a year. And it wasn't happening in a particular part of the tank. It just dumb founded me. Thankfully it stopped, but I lost about 4 different ones. I just don't know. I've asked other people too and no one had a clue.

I hope your situation gets better.

What are your trying to do to fix it?

[RandyO]

Originally posted by All Delight
Randy -

I've had that happen to a few of my micros. To me it happened so quickly. In a matter of a couple days. Bam the colony was gone. It was like peeling off a sticker. They were established pieces that I've had for nearly a year. And it wasn't happening in a particular part of the tank. It just dumb founded me. Thankfully it stopped, but I lost about 4 different ones. I just don't know. I've asked other people too and no one had a clue.

I hope your situation gets better.

What are your trying to do to fix it?

I only noticed one Micro starting to peel. It was on it's side on the egg crate, so I thought it was just irritation from sitting on live flesh. I put it in a cup with some Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure and I started to blast it with a turkey baster. The flesh kept peeling away. I started to think I would lose the whole piece, so I cut it up. I threw out the worst piece and kept the two better pieces. Neither made it.
The next day, I noticed 5 more colonies infected. The flesh was very loose. With a strong blow of the baster, I probably could have blown the flesh right off the skeleton. So this time I skipped the dip and just moved them to a new system, putting them in low flow.

So far, 2 more have been cleaned of flesh. A couple others still have flesh, but it might just be a slow death.

I've encountered flesh bail out on LPS before. In almost every case, the lps didn't make it when it stayed in the same water.

A few years ago a friend brought me a pink Echinophyllia that was showing signs of flesh bail out. The flesh was only connected at the very ends of the coral. The whole body of the coral was just flapping in the flow.
I put it in low flow in my 55 gallon tank, under some VHO's. I left it alone for a few months. It slowly started to recover and reattach to the skeleton.
I gave it back to him after 3-4 months and he still has it today.

He never knew why this coral started to do this, and was the only one out of 100's of corals in his system.



With my water parameters seeming OK(Mag was at 1100, a little low) I have to assume there is some other chemical factor affecting my corals. The thing that has me scratching my head is that the older, established corals were affected. None of the newer introduced corals seem stressed.

After typing this, a light bulb went off in my head. I read an article today about Caribbean Staghorn. It said these corals were one of the fastest growing coral, and also were the fastest to die when something goes wrong.

I have many Duncanopsammia in the system, and the only one that took a hit was my home grown Duncan.
I'm starting to think that it's fast growth and increased metabolic rate contributed to it's fall, and maybe was a warning sign of other things to come.


Time for a big water change.



On another note, I have the privilege of talking to Anthony Calfo a few weeks back, and he was talking about monoculture.(growing only one specific type of coral in a system) and how the animals do much better. For mixed reefs, he recommend one type/piece of coral per 10 gallons of water because of the competition and chemical warfare that takes place in our tanks.

The large variety in my tanks could be my downfall.

So I'll add that to the 100's of things it could be.

[All Delight]

Randy -

Do you test for Strontium? Just wondering.........

[All Delight]

chelskisw6

can you get a picture?

[RandyO]

Originally posted by All Delight
Randy -

Do you test for Strontium? Just wondering.........

No.

Should I?

[zooqi]

Randy those Duncanopsammia that I got from you are doing great and I have them with other sps in a tank that barely has any flow. This 180 gal tank with 75 gal fuge and sump running only on 1200 gal mag that is split to fuge and the tank. I have good growth of sps and LPS in that tank. Since everything was growing well I decided to keep it that way and not add any more stuff to it.

[RandyO]

That's great Mo. Corals I got from you are also doing well.

I tend to see my sps grow very open and thin in low flow. I try to give them higher flow to keep them developing dead flow area around their base. I've seen some sps RTN from the base up from too little flow.

I like to give my Duncans more flow. I get better extension from the polyps.