Help? White fuzz on torch corals

Shadows Reef · Aug 13, 2020

Did you ever find a solution to this?
I’m having the same problem https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/please-help-my-torches-are-dying-and-im-not-sure-why.748266/page-2

Cell · Aug 13, 2020

My hammer seems to be recovering slowly. I've done a few iodine dips since the initial H202 bath. It's still not completely happy but the fuzz has not returned.

Shadows Reef · Aug 13, 2020

Cell said:
My hammer seems to be recovering slowly. I've done a few iodine dips since the initial H202 bath. It's still not completely happy but the fuzz has not returned.

did it look how it did on my post?

Cell · Aug 13, 2020

It looked pretty similar. Can't say if it's exactly the same or not, but I'd probably hit any sort of unidentified and unwanted plant-like growth on coral with peroxide as a primary treatment.

ramona · Sep 2, 2020

I wonder if the Sochting Oxydator (uses H2O2) would help the problem?

Cell · Sep 2, 2020

This stuff just keeps coming back over time. What a pain. Last round I set the frag in a little cup and immersed the entire thing in H202 up to the top edge of the skeleton almost touching the tentacles for a few minutes. This was a couple days ago. We will see how long that lasts.

Devin6871 · Sep 26, 2020

I know this is an old thread but I combatted this recently. After losing two hellfires to it initially I was at the point where I was swabbing it off the bases of my torches every few days and content to just live with it.

And then it vanished.

I don't know exactly what did it but I had a few things occur at once.

I had added another, extremely healthy, torch to the system. Polyp extending much further down the skeleton than the other two that were already present and the two I had lost.

This showed no signs of picking up the fuzz after being in the tank for two weeks.

I then picked up a large number of SPS from both TCK Corals and A Reef Creation on a road trip to Buffalo. Thanks live sales.

To acclimate them to my tank i went down to minimum output on my kessil a360we lighting setup. Only blue, no white. I ran this for three days.

I had also added a second mp40 to my tank right before acclimating the coral. The flow more than doubled where my torches are and admittedly still too high for them to be as happy and extended as they were before.

After having my lights returned to normal spectrum I've noticed the area on the skeleton where the fuzz grew is almost bleach white now but no fuzz is present.

It has been 4 days since returning to normal lighting which would be the point where I would normally have been due for another swabbing.

It should be noted that the last peroxide swab I performed was done moments before starting the low light period.

Cell · Sep 26, 2020

Last round of treatment I set the frag upright in a little cup and soaked in 3% H202 right up to the edge of the flesh/polyps. I followed up with an iodine dip and I haven't seen any regrowth for several weeks now. The frag is still not super happy, but it's not declining so I consider that a win.

MrKlumZ · Nov 20, 2020

I’m dealing with this same issue as well. It seems this came originally from an infected torch which was most likely injured from head cutting. So far 2 torches and my hg hammer is infected. It starts with tissue degeneration and slowly skeleton of the coral appears. Then it slowly degenerates and reduced polyps begin. The original coral I pulled out and smelled foul. I turkey blaster it in a cup and brown substance blasted out. Now my Todd’s torch and HG hammer are showing symptoms with white fuzz and tissue degeneration. When I pulled my HG Hammer out it had a slight foul smell. I found a remedy online and it goes like this:

The chances of saving this coral is 50/50 and increases in odds if you catch the symptoms early. The later you catch it, the lower the odds. At this point I feel my HG Hammer has 10%.

What is suggested is to separate the corals to a quarantine tank. Pull infected corals out and separate to individual cups to begin dips. Begin with a cup of tank water and turkey blaster all dead tissue off of the euphyllia. Be very generous with blasting as all infected tissue must be removed.

“Any tissue that easy falls off is considered infected tissue. Since living healthy tissue shouldn’t fall off.”

Once the infected tissue is removed. Remove from cup and dip into new cup with H2O2. I’m currently using minimal strength at 2 caps of 3% to 1 Gal of tank water. Dip for 15 mins and end with turkey blaster. (For longer dips in the beginning stages, you can dip 15 mins, turkey blaster, remove, redip into new tank water and h2o2. So water temp doesn’t change. I dipped as many as 3 times in 1 day in the beginning) Then into new cup with Amino Acid. 1 drop to 250ml of tank water. 15 mins then back to quarantine tank. I did this 5 days straight every 24 hours to remove as much “rotting” “infected” tissue as possible. After 5 days....

I changed the dipping method to. Chemiclean, Iodine, and amino acid. Continue until regeneration of tissue begins.

Hope this can help some people as it did for me. Catch it early and do the necessary steps. If you checked your water parameters, reduced flows, and lower lighting. Nothing helps? Then it’s time to begin dipping......

KaneMN · Jan 27, 2021

MrKlumZ said:
I’m dealing with this same issue as well. It seems this came originally from an infected torch which was most likely injured from head cutting. So far 2 torches and my hg hammer is infected. It starts with tissue degeneration and slowly skeleton of the coral appears. Then it slowly degenerates and reduced polyps begin. The original coral I pulled out and smelled foul. I turkey blaster it in a cup and brown substance blasted out. Now my Todd’s torch and HG hammer are showing symptoms with white fuzz and tissue degeneration. When I pulled my HG Hammer out it had a slight foul smell. I found a remedy online and it goes like this:

The chances of saving this coral is 50/50 and increases in odds if you catch the symptoms early. The later you catch it, the lower the odds. At this point I feel my HG Hammer has 10%.

What is suggested is to separate the corals to a quarantine tank. Pull infected corals out and separate to individual cups to begin dips. Begin with a cup of tank water and turkey blaster all dead tissue off of the euphyllia. Be very generous with blasting as all infected tissue must be removed.

“Any tissue that easy falls off is considered infected tissue. Since living healthy tissue shouldn’t fall off.”

Once the infected tissue is removed. Remove from cup and dip into new cup with H2O2. I’m currently using minimal strength at 2 caps of 3% to 1 Gal of tank water. Dip for 15 mins and end with turkey blaster. (For longer dips in the beginning stages, you can dip 15 mins, turkey blaster, remove, redip into new tank water and h2o2. So water temp doesn’t change. I dipped as many as 3 times in 1 day in the beginning) Then into new cup with Amino Acid. 1 drop to 250ml of tank water. 15 mins then back to quarantine tank. I did this 5 days straight every 24 hours to remove as much “rotting” “infected” tissue as possible. After 5 days....

I changed the dipping method to. Chemiclean, Iodine, and amino acid. Continue until regeneration of tissue begins.

Hope this can help some people as it did for me. Catch it early and do the necessary steps. If you checked your water parameters, reduced flows, and lower lighting. Nothing helps? Then it’s time to begin dipping......

It has been a few days ago that my torch is rotting. I’m not sure if this due to rtn that happened with my montipora that killed it within 24 hours. The torch is the closest coral to the montipora. A week later my torch didn’t look happy, I thought it was just by chance, two days later, it shriveled more. I quickly checked my water parameters and everything is spot on, so I let it be. Next day, I saw a brown stuff on it, I quickly took it out and did iodine dip for 30 min. I put it back in, yesterday morning I left to work and came home to see tha most of the flesh turned brown. Luckily I found this thread and thanks to @MrKlumZ who posted this. I took the torch out right away last night. The torch smelled really bad, I follow @MrKlumZ every step in hope to save the last clump of flesh that I have left, even though the flesh is completely detached from the skeleton. I did 15 min dip in peroxide dip followed by another 15 min new peroxide dip with a drop of amino acid. Then return the torch to the tank (I don’t have a hospital tank set up). I thought I’d wake up to see the coral is completely gone, this morning the coral still there, I did another 15 min peroxide dip with a drop of amino acid. I left to work, came home with a surprise that it’s still there, looking better than this morning. I’m just about to do another dip this evening with a drop of amino acid. Hope it revived and started to encrust, but if it’s not, I did my best to safe this coral. Here is the picture of it. Thanks again @MrKlumZ.

Drizzle36 · Feb 28, 2021

Hi everyone if anyone is still searching for the cure to this I believe I may have found it. So for along time I was removing every torch/hammer and dipping in h202 and that worked for about 2 weeks till the fuzz came back. I did this for over a year and so I tried something else a last ditch effort that seems to have rid the fuzz for good. I believe this is a fungus and treated it as such. I started a 20 gallon tank to test this out put all my lps in it as every lps was now affected. Started with melafix at full recommended strength for 7 days turned off skimmer and removed carbon. The corals did not look happy and lost a few sps I had in there so don't recommend this in a full reef tank. Lps, softies, worms, snails, hermits and fish were all fine. After 7 days did 25% water change waited a day and started pimafix for 7 days. Then did another 25% water change and turned on skimmer and carbon reactor . So far its been 3-1/2 weeks and I have not seen any fuzz return and after over a year seeing some growth and happy looking torches. if I don't see it come back after two months I'm going to treat my whole reef as I believe it can still live without lps in the tank. I'll post any problems I have with treating a full reef, think this finally killed the fuzz!

Elitecorals · Mar 2, 2021

Drizzle36 said:
Hi everyone if anyone is still searching for the cure to this I believe I may have found it. So for along time I was removing every torch/hammer and dipping in h202 and that worked for about 2 weeks till the fuzz came back. I did this for over a year and so I tried something else a last ditch effort that seems to have rid the fuzz for good. I believe this is a fungus and treated it as such. I started a 20 gallon tank to test this out put all my lps in it as every lps was now affected. Started with melafix at full recommended strength for 7 days turned off skimmer and removed carbon. The corals did not look happy and lost a few sps I had in there so don't recommend this in a full reef tank. Lps, softies, worms, snails, hermits and fish were all fine. After 7 days did 25% water change waited a day and started pimafix for 7 days. Then did another 25% water change and turned on skimmer and carbon reactor . So far its been 3-1/2 weeks and I have not seen any fuzz return and after over a year seeing some growth and happy looking torches. if I don't see it come back after two months I'm going to treat my whole reef as I believe it can still live without lps in the tank. I'll post any problems I have with treating a full reef, think this finally killed the fuzz!

Any results treating the whole tank? I got infected with white fuzzy fungus and it wiped out half of my torch colonies, later found out that the white fuzz also appeared on mp40 and gyre, so I'm go ahead and replaced those ...months later I saw the white fuzzy fungus appeared again on the mp40 wetside but none of the torches got effected yet...just want to see if I can dose the tank with melafix as a preventative fix

Drizzle36 · Mar 3, 2021

Reef4life112 said:
Any results treating the whole tank? I got infected with white fuzzy fungus and it wiped out half of my torch colonies, later found out that the white fuzz also appeared on mp40 and gyre, so I'm go ahead and replaced those ...months later I saw the white fuzzy fungus appeared again on the mp40 wetside but none of the torches got effected yet...just want to see if I can dose the tank with melafix as a preventative fix

Reef4life112 said:
Any results treating the whole tank? I got infected with white fuzzy fungus and it wiped out half of my torch colonies, later found out that the white fuzz also appeared on mp40 and gyre, so I'm go ahead and replaced those ...months later I saw the white fuzzy fungus appeared again on the mp40 wetside but none of the torches got effected yet...just want to see if I can dose the tank with melafix as a preventative f

So haven't treated the whole tank yet but in my 20 I have sps, lps, softies, a urchin, snails, hermits, amphipods, bristleworms and fish. It didn't kill anything except a couple sps that were not doing good. Pods and snails were not happy with the melafix but all survived. Only thing different in my reef would be anemones and some nps coral which I don't know how those will do, but I think they will be fine I would do one at a time though first melafix then pimafix don't overwhelm the tank with both.

jtone_philthy_aquatics · Sep 4, 2021

kyley said:
Hey Drizzle,
No fun, huh? I'm still battling it, but losing the war. My 3 head torch died, my single Indo gold torch died (the two I posted pics of), and my 2 head Cristata died. :-( It didn't help that I had a week+ vacation and they got worse when I couldn't treat them for 10 days or so. I have 3 torches left, all showing some symptoms / irritation. The one that was the healthiest now looks the worst, so this isn't going well. I also have a hammer that looks like it isn't going to make it. My frogspawn has seemed a little irritated, but it's the only euphyllia that's doing well overall. I'm afraid that nothing is going to save them, but I'm still trying.

I've been doing dips with PolypLab Reef Primer (which is just potassium salts - and overpriced IMO) for 5 minutes, then Iodine + Coral RX for 10 minutes. I do them about every 4 days, going from the first dip directly to the next.

I had wondered if the lack of NO3 and PO4 (both at 0 in my tank) were an issue, so I've been trying to raise them and started dosing nitrate and phosphate (Brightwell NeoNitro and NeoPhos) as well as Brightwell amino acids and Pohl's Coral Vitalizer. Started all of them several weeks ago. No luck so far.

Did you see anything positive from the melafix? I haven't tried that yet.

Feels like I'm throwing everything at this problem (what else can you do when nobody seems to understand the issue/fix?), but nothing seems to work. :-(

BTW, all other corals (SPS, zoas and other softies, plate, scoly, acans, blasts, lots of chalices, etc) seem to be unaffected. Good luck. Keep me posted if you find something that shows some positive results and I'll do the same. Thanks,
--Kyle

Did you ever find a solution to this issue? I know this is an old thread but I’m dealing with this same issue right now on a wall hammer and a cotton candy torch. This sucks so bad I seriously can’t find a way to beat this stuff. The torch still fully extends and looks good it just has that white fuzz all around the base of the head where it meets the stalk. The wall hammer has the center tentacles extending but all around the edge is fully retracted it looks super weird. I have been continuously dipping in iodine based reef dip and the two little fishies dip as well. I think I’m going to remove them from the tank they are in because it’s all lps and sps so it would be devastating if it spread any more than it already has. Super bummed out tho and the shop that sent me the cotton candy torch is called aquarium wholesale they are in Kansas City and do a lot of live auctions online (Facebook) they totally got ticked and argued with me and now just won’t even reply because I told them that they really ripped me off and now it’s affecting other corals!
Watch out for those guys!! I would NOT recommend doing any business with them

Devin6871 · Sep 4, 2021

After not having a torch in my tank for almost 8 months I now keep a single cotton candy and it has no white fuzz

Elitecorals · Sep 4, 2021

I never got a solution to combat that, I removed the infected torch to quarantine as the fungus/bacteria can spread quickly,also found the fungus/bacteria can stick to your power head, but in the end none of the infected survived. Eventually I upgraded to different tank with larger uv and haven't see any since (knock on wood).

Drizzle36 · Sep 6, 2021

After the last treatment i restarted a 75 with all new rock and equipment plus tank. Took all the lps i treated put it back in the new tank didn't see the fuzz at all. Two months later it reappeared on one torch and on my rock too. It didn't kill the torch or even cause tissue recession. I did a tank treatment of mela and pima which did nothing but also a few weeks after that i closed off a heater vent the was blowing on the tank and started using puritt carbon and it disappeared. So another theory i have is its caused by vocs i really don't know and it's all guessing but that vent was blowing on both tanks and the fuzz didn't start till i moved it into the basement under that vent , also have two other tanks near but not under the vent with lps and neither have the fuzz in it either way it's gone for now.