Insanely Quick Arco Disease: Please Help ID!

[rbraunberger]

Hello all,

I wanted to post about my experience with a nasty bug that recently took out all my large acros. One night I notice a small white area on one of my colonies. I took out a flashlight and when I put light on the colony I noticed a small bug run out of the light. It looked like a small flea. I pulled the colony out of the water, and dipped the coral in CoralRx. The small bug did come off, but continued to swim in the solution. CoralRx did nothing to this guy! A day later half the colony was white. Now a second colony was hit. Last night the colony was perfect, this morning a large area was white (see the attached pictures). Again I dipped the colony and two of these small flea type bugs were in the solution. Let me know what you think? Thanks for the help!!

 

[twilliard]

Red bug?
[HASHTAG]#reefsquad[/HASHTAG]

 

[twilliard]

What is your magnifying X on this bug in your picture?
How quick was the tissue loss in MM per day?

 

[rbraunberger]

What is your magnifying X on this bug in your picture?
How quick was the tissue loss in MM per day?

Hello Twillard,

I took that photo with my iPhone, so no mag. The bugs were about the size of a flea, 1-2 mm. The pictures above are the tissue loss in one night! I went to bed at 11pm and even looked at the tank before bed under the blues and that coral had zero tissue loss. The pictures above were tank less than 12 hours after that.

 

[Greg79]

It might be just amphipod or some kind of pods- not harmless
It looks like rtn and it's pretty common with mariculture pieces

 

[rbraunberger]

What is RTN?

 

[Greg79]

I don't think they able to damage so big area in just one night

 

[Greg79]

Rapid tissue necrosis

 

[rbraunberger]

and a better question yet is how do I treat it!

 

[Greg79]

It's not red bug too big
You won't see it with naked eye

 

[Greg79]

We'll you can't treat it
It just what happend to a lot of people with wild pieces
Btw never put this mari rocks to your tank unless you wanna deal with all kinds of other bad stuff

 

[Greg79]

Cut it off the plug then dip it,put good ammount Of glue on bottom And if you dont quarantine your corals,put it to your tank and keep your fingers crossed,lol

 

[rbraunberger]

is there anyway to treat my tank for RTN/Vibrio?

 

[jasonandsarah]

is there anyway to treat my tank for RTN/Vibrio?

There's really no "treatment" for RTN and the best thing to do is frag the colony as soon as you see it and hope one of the frags makes it. It's normally a 50/50 chance if you'll be able to save one of the frags you cut off.

 

[reefwiser]

Best method is frag and fast. With SPS nothing good happens fast.

 

[ReefMadScientist]

Post up your current parameters. My guess would be an issue with your alkalinity or Calcium. Appears to be RTN. I've had this issue before.

 

[jasonandsarah]

Best method is frag and fast. With SPS nothing good happens fast.

Besides fragging in this instance [emoji4]

 

[ReefMadScientist]

I too would frag a backup but if the issue with Alkalinity or Calcium is not fixed, you will get RTN with the frag also.

 

[reefwiser]

bacterial infection is at the root of RTN The case of the infection can be a nip at the coral tissue that becomes infected. An in a closed environment of a reef tank its off to the races.

 

[Ryan15236]

Definitely RTN and probably an amphipod either cleaning up dead tissue or just walking around. I had RTN on a teal tip acro and lost it overnight and also noticed some amphipods on the frag. Frag and fast is probably the best advice and try to get parameters in acceptable ranges and keep consistent.