Brown Jelly Disease Help

Marco S · Jul 2, 2019

I am pretty sure this Frogspawn has Brown Jelly. Here are some pics...

This coral was in a 20 gallon QT Tank with several other coral. I just noticed it about half an hour ago and turned off all the flow and carefully took it out of the QT Tank and now have it in a small container I use for dipping. I inspected all the other coral carefully and do not see any signs of it on them yet.

My questions are, what should I do now? Can I just cut off that head and put the coral back? Should I cut the head off and keep it isolated, (a QT for my QT)? If I do cut the head, how far down do I go? How quickly does this spread? What are the chances of it already spreading and what can I do to try and prevent it?

Here is a pic of the other heads...

I would really love to save this coral, but I have over $1,600 in other coral in my QT and would rather not put it back if there is a chance it will infect others.

Marco S · Jul 2, 2019

I am not sure how long I have to take action on this so if there is a better forum to post this in that is more likely to get a quick response please let me know.

Thanks!

w2inc · Jul 3, 2019

I have tried all kinds of thing to beat brown jelly as well as random STN and RTN. I have always done best to just cut off the effected area.

If you want to try and save it, I have found that Iodine works wonders. I would go with that as a first line. Get some iodine dip and paint it on the effected area and follow the instructions for the dip.

I have had too many issues with bacterial infection spreading from me trying to save a colony. I would put an air bubbler in that tank for circulation and do part water changes until you beat it back. I would not put it back in the QT if it were me.

I have beaten it with a 1:4 hydrogen peroxide to tank water dip for 5 minutes. It made the hammer coral look like a bubbly mess. If I were to do it again, I would only dip, or paint the effected area and not let the peroxide come into contact with the skeleton.

I wish you the best.

Sallstrom · Jul 3, 2019

Nowadays I cut away the infected area, plus some more to be sure I didn't miss anything, then remove it. Try to get all the brown jelly out, otherwise it can attach to another coral and spread quickly. I've seen it go from Euphyllia to Seriatopora and Acropora, and the other way around.

I have never managed to get a polyp to recover once it's been hit by BJD(but I haven't tried everything either

).

Good luck!

Sallstrom · Jul 3, 2019

Double post.

Marco S · Jul 3, 2019

I didn't want to wait too long for a response here so I talked to my LFS owner and he let me borrow some bone cutters and gave me instructions on removing the head. At first glance he agreed it was BJD, but looking further he noticed the Favia next to it was really close and told me it could have stung that head and killed it. He said that BJD would be more jelly like, slimy and dripping or oozing and the picture looked more chalky close up.Either way he said the head was most likely doomed since it looked like the mouth was already destroyed so healing it would probably not be possible.

I immediately removed the head when I got back home and dipped the rest of the coral in Coral RX then Revive while I had it out of the QT already. I also did a short freshwater dip before I removed the head, (read that it helped in one of the forums here). I was just planning on removing the head, but it actually cracked when I cut it and the whole branch had to be removed. I made sure it was cleaned and had no additional signs and put it back in the QT. I will watch it closely over the next week, but hopefully I got it all and in time.

Thank you for those that did reply! For future reference though, would posting this in the coral section have given me a quicker response? I know there is a section in the Fish Forum for disease, (and I have used it with very good results) but I did not see a forum for coral disease and that's why I posted this here.

Tuan’s Reef · Jul 3, 2019

Isn’t much you can do to save your coral from BJD anyways . The steps above which you did is about all you can do

w2inc · Jul 4, 2019

Marco S said:
I didn't want to wait too long for a response here so I talked to my LFS owner and he let me borrow some bone cutters and gave me instructions on removing the head. At first glance he agreed it was BJD, but looking further he noticed the Favia next to it was really close and told me it could have stung that head and killed it. He said that BJD would be more jelly like, slimy and dripping or oozing and the picture looked more chalky close up.Either way he said the head was most likely doomed since it looked like the mouth was already destroyed so healing it would probably not be possible.

I immediately removed the head when I got back home and dipped the rest of the coral in Coral RX then Revive while I had it out of the QT already. I also did a short freshwater dip before I removed the head, (read that it helped in one of the forums here). I was just planning on removing the head, but it actually cracked when I cut it and the whole branch had to be removed. I made sure it was cleaned and had no additional signs and put it back in the QT. I will watch it closely over the next week, but hopefully I got it all and in time.

Thank you for those that did reply! For future reference though, would posting this in the coral section have given me a quicker response? I know there is a section in the Fish Forum for disease, (and I have used it with very good results) but I did not see a forum for coral disease and that's why I posted this here.

I think you posted in the right forum. I wish you the best!

Sallstrom · Jul 4, 2019

Marco S said:
I didn't want to wait too long for a response here so I talked to my LFS owner and he let me borrow some bone cutters and gave me instructions on removing the head. At first glance he agreed it was BJD, but looking further he noticed the Favia next to it was really close and told me it could have stung that head and killed it. He said that BJD would be more jelly like, slimy and dripping or oozing and the picture looked more chalky close up.Either way he said the head was most likely doomed since it looked like the mouth was already destroyed so healing it would probably not be possible.

I immediately removed the head when I got back home and dipped the rest of the coral in Coral RX then Revive while I had it out of the QT already. I also did a short freshwater dip before I removed the head, (read that it helped in one of the forums here). I was just planning on removing the head, but it actually cracked when I cut it and the whole branch had to be removed. I made sure it was cleaned and had no additional signs and put it back in the QT. I will watch it closely over the next week, but hopefully I got it all and in time.

Thank you for those that did reply! For future reference though, would posting this in the coral section have given me a quicker response? I know there is a section in the Fish Forum for disease, (and I have used it with very good results) but I did not see a forum for coral disease and that's why I posted this here.

Freshwater dip for a coral sounds dangerous to me

I've killed a couple of corals that way, looking for flatworms.
Hope your colony will do better!