Please Help! Rapid Death on my largest colony!

[Brandon McHenry]

Hi all,

My 150gallon SPS reef that I've had up and running for about 4 years stays at my parents house since I'm up at school. Yesterday I get a call saying my largest acropora, about 14 or so inches across is rapidly losing tissue and dying. No major changes have been made to the tank.

Cal-440
Alk-9
pH-8.2
Temp-78
NO3-0.25
PO4-0.07

There were no power outages, stray current, chemicals sprayed or anything to fall on the coral. I have absolutely no idea what is causing this. I am going to try to make an emergency visit tonight to try to look at it and probably frag what I can. I need suggestions on how best to fix this as well as what might have caused it. Any little piece of information might help!

This is the most recent picture of the tank. The coral of concern is the large purple on in the upper right in front of the green stag. I've had it for probably 3 years or so at this point.

This picture was sent to me this morning at 8am. The death has progressed over night. Has anyone ever seen this before?

Please help! I don't want to lose this coral!

 

[tcampbell23]

Not an SPS expert of any kind so I won't pretend to know what exactly you should do. That is a beautiful piece and I would recommend that you maybe frag as large a piece that you can in the event all does go south.

Good luck!

 

[Tahoe61]

That looks like brown jelly disease, why it's occurring I have no clue. The pieces looks like a Valida. Unfortunately brown jelly kills fast and spreads fast. I would remove that piece and dip it, and frag healthy tissue, do a water change and put in some new charcoal and hope you caught it in time.

Beautiful tank btw.

Could growth corals be impeding flow?

 

[Brandon McHenry]

That looks like brown jelly disease, why it's occurring I have no clue. The pieces looks like a Valida. Unfortunately brown jelly kills fast and spreads fast. I would remove that piece and dip it, and frag healthy tissue, do a water change and put in some new charcoal and hope you caught it in time.

Beautiful tank btw.

Could growth corals be impeding flow?

Well that's a new one. I've heard the name but never looked too much into it. I'm seeing that it is associated with a bacterial infection? This evening I'm going to try to frag what I can but I'm not even sure I can remove the whole colony without causing some major destruction.

Thank you for the compliment I appreciate it.

As for flow nothing should be impeding this piece, one of my MP40s is a few inches away from it and it always gets good flow.

 

[Mattrg02]

I'd run some GFO in case something nasty got in there.

 

[Velcro]

I'd run some GFO in case something nasty got in there.

I think you mean GAC

 

[Mattrg02]

I think you mean GAC

Whoops. Yea that's what I meant.

 

[Brandon McHenry]

Well just to update I had to remove 70% of the affected coral (approximately 10 inches across was removed). I did replace the GAC and double checked all parameters. I think I cut it off before it spread too far. I still don't know what it was or what caused it.