Possible Brown Jelly Disease on Hammer Coral?

[Tobin VP]

A few days ago I got this Green Tip Branching Hammer and it is currently in a Coral/Invert QT with 6 other coral and some snails/crabs. After dipping it he opened up nicely (see photo). Yesterday afternoon (a couple of days later) I noticed a portion of his head was retracting. Upon closer inspection it appears that there are some brown areas at the skeleton/tentacle interface. I have several photos below. This morning he is still in a half retracted state.

Is this brown jelly? If so what recommendations would you have for possible treatment.

 

[Auto-pilot]

Dang that's going downhill quick. Alot of tissue is gone and you night not be able to save it. For sure some kind of bacteria is killing it. My go-to is peroxide is a 50-50 bath with half tank water. You really have to swoosh it and clear out the infected area of dead tissue and bacteria. I used a pipette but honestly if you don't do something and fast it's going to be gone before you know it

 

[Tobin VP]

Yeah. It was just purchased online 5 days ago. Shocking it went from completely full to looking like this in less than 24 hours. I will treat with peroxide. Once done can I place back in my QT tank? I have other coral in that tank but do not have a place to put it while I continue to observe. Is there large risk or infecting other corals?

 

[zoomonster]

I bought a bunch of euphyllia and had it happen on a couple. The most common recommendation is Iodine. I generally use 3 drops of Lugols 2% in a little over a cup of saltwater for 8 minutes. I would not recommend peroxide on Euphyllia. I don't use peroxide on anything but zoas. That all said I had zero success. I'm not convinced brown jelly is always the case but rather the coral just dying from shipment.

 

[Auto-pilot]

There can be if there's a lot of brown jelly on the coral that blows off to other corals. It was probably weakend due to shipment and became infected in your tank. You might have to do a couple of dips to ensure the infection is gone.

 

[Bucs20fan]

Ciprofloxacin and an iodine dip are your only hopes now. Do a 10 minute dip in an iodine based coral dip. Get your hands on either 500mg or 250mg tablets of Cipro. Dissolve 500mg worth of tablets into 50ml of rodi water. Dose 1ml of solution per 10 gallons of water. This will NOT harm your biofilter to any noticable degree. It is safe in a DT ive done it dozens of time in my own 90g. Refrigerate the remaining solution.

 

[Auto-pilot]

I bought a bunch of euphyllia and had it happen on a couple. The most common recommendation is Iodine. I generally use 3 drops of Lugols 2% in a little over a cup of saltwater. I would not recommend peroxide on Euphyllia. I don't use peroxide on anything but zoas. That all said I had zero success. I'm not convinced brown jelly is always the case but rather the coral just dying from shipment.

Lugols has never worked for me in the past with an active Brown jelly infection. I've dipped euphillia in peroxide many many times with no problems. Some coral suppliers recommend peroxide dips on LPS corals as a treatment for brown jelly

 

[Auto-pilot]

Ciprofloxacin and an iodine dip are your only hopes now. Do a 10 minute dip in an iodine based coral dip. Get your hands on either 500mg or 250mg tablets of Cipro. Dissolve 500mg worth of tablets into 50ml of rodi water. Dose 1ml of solution per 10 gallons of water. This will NOT harm your biofilter to any noticable degree. It is safe in a DT ive done it dozens of time in my own 90g. Refrigerate the remaining solution.

Cipro, amoxicillin iodine and brightwell restorer works great as a 12 hr bath, there's been alot of controversy on how we are damaging the environment on R2R and I don't recommend it anymore. I do a peroxide dio before I put in antibiotics because it's good at cleaning the dead tissue and bacteria off to stop the spread as antibiotics can take a moment to kick in

 

[Bucs20fan]

Cipro, amoxicillin iodine and brightwell restorer works great as a 12 hr bath, there's been alot of controversy on how we are damaging the environment on R2R and I don't recommend it anymore. I do a peroxide dio before I put in antibiotics because it's good at cleaning the dead tissue and bacteria off to stop the spread as antibiotics can take a moment to kick in

I agree with you completely. Ive never been comfortable using peroxide on anything other than zoas and other softies. In a 24hr turnaround dosing cipro ive seen night and day differences personally. But 12hr baths would also suffice and achieve the desire goal.

 

[Tobin VP]

Thanks for all of your comments. I'm looking into all of these treatments. But it appears that time is of the essence and I'm not sure how quickly I can get the meds/iodine etc here.

My other concern is the rest of the coral in the QT. How easily does it spread? Should I be keeping this hammer out of my tank until I'm sure it is healed? If so, I do not have great options on where to put it.

I do have a fish QT setup and cycled that is currently waiting fish in the future. Should I make that my hospital tank for the time being? Do I risk introducing anything bad to it? Would I need to go fallow with it before adding fish later?

 

[Bucs20fan]

Thanks for all of your comments. I'm looking into all of these treatments. But it appears that time is of the essence and I'm not sure how quickly I can get the meds/iodine etc here.

My other concern is the rest of the coral in the QT. How easily does it spread? Should I be keeping this hammer out of my tank until I'm sure it is healed? If so, I do not have great options on where to put it.

I do have a fish QT setup and cycled that is currently waiting fish in the future. Should I make that my hospital tank for the time being? Do I risk introducing anything bad to it? Would I need to go fallow with it before adding fish later?

It will spread to any other euphyllia much faster than others. This cannot spread to fish just other corals. Which is why i recommend dosing the entire tank. It will eliminate this possibility. You can make a diy iodine dip, all drugstores carry iodine over the counter, theres youtube videos how to make it. You will have to stick with dipping affected corals until you can manage to get some antibiotics, but preferably cipro or amoxicillin. You can buy them online though.

 

[Auto-pilot]

Thanks for all of your comments. I'm looking into all of these treatments. But it appears that time is of the essence and I'm not sure how quickly I can get the meds/iodine etc here.

My other concern is the rest of the coral in the QT. How easily does it spread? Should I be keeping this hammer out of my tank until I'm sure it is healed? If so, I do not have great options on where to put it.

I do have a fish QT setup and cycled that is currently waiting fish in the future. Should I make that my hospital tank for the time being? Do I risk introducing anything bad to it? Would I need to go fallow with it before adding fish later?

Once treated with peroxide and the infection is cleaned I've seen little chance if spread.

 

[Auto-pilot]

It will spread to any other euphyllia much faster than others. This cannot spread to fish just other corals. Which is why i recommend dosing the entire tank. It will eliminate this possibility. You can make a diy iodine dip, all drugstores carry iodine over the counter, theres youtube videos how to make it. You will have to stick with dipping affected corals until you can manage to get some antibiotics, but preferably cipro or amoxicillin. You can buy them online though.

If you do want to use antibiotics I would be very cautious with treatment if an entire tank. Most of the time there are no issues but I've seen some horrible results. I also would recommend proper disposal of a bath solution, being you add bleach to the solution and let it sit in the sun for an hour before dumping it.

KFC corals has a great procedure to treat using antibiotics

 

[Tobin VP]

Update: I removed the Hammer and treated with iodine. Because I wanted to move fast and did not have any Lugols Iodine on hand I purchased some Providone Iodine (CVS brand). I saw that Lugols (at 2% iodine) called for 1.2 ml per gallon. Because my CVS iodine was 1% active I used 2.4 ml per gallon for the dip. So effectively I was trying to copy the concentration that Lugols recommends. I used a syringe (in a side container) to remove dead tissue and jelly and then dipped for 15 mins. I then rinsed and put in a small hospital tank.

First, there was a noticeable odor and I was shocked at how much dead tissue there was (see pics below). Note: This 75% loss of the head occurred in about 36 hours. Does this seem particularly fast?

I'm monitoring the Hammer in the hospital tank ... but it seems quite unlikely that it will make it. But more concerning, I seem to be noticing brown jelly on the edge of my new Dragon Soul Favia frag (see photo below). Also my Bizarro Cyphastrea appears to have started loosing some tentacles. See picture below and note the tallest head. In just 12 hours the tentacles on that tallest head have deteriorated. Should I be removing the Favia and Cyphastrea and putting them in an iodine or hydrogen peroxide dip? Do others agree that this is the onset of Brown Jelly there too?

I'm concerned that I have a problem in my entire QT. These are the very first corals ever placed in this tank (6 days ago). Is it typical that Brown Jelly would act this fast? I have ordered some Cipro ... should I be treating my entire QT tank with Cipro?

Thanks everyone for all of your help here. This is my first ever order of corals. They looked AMAZING for a few days ... unfortunately things are going downhill fast. The online supplier is responding and working with me thus far.

Hammer after Iodine Dip:

Favia and note left and right edges that appear to have Brown Jelly starting (please ignore the Aiptasia that I just noticed ... first things first):

Cyphastrea (note deterioration of highest head in about 12 hours):

 

[Stupidkitty84]

I've lost torches in 24 hours to bjd. It's that fast. Lost an entire lot of torches and hammers to bjd in 1 week. You have to treat your tank no matter what. That bacteria will stay in the tank and when you get a new torch/hammer (like I did), it will be reinfected. I treated the tank with cipro after losing a 2nd lot of euphyllia. Tried a 3rd time (after treating tank) with a single torch and hammer and both are healthy with no bjd. Chemiclean is also a great option. Just be sure to aerate during treatment with either option and add good bacteria once treatment is done.

 

[Tobin VP]

Just to provide an update for future readers:

After another couple of days it was obvious to me that my Bizzaro Cyphastrea was indeed infected as it continued to loose about 2-3 heads per day. This was much slower deterioration than the hammer experienced. So I went ahead and procured Cipro and treated using this protocol as a guideline from @AquaBiomics.

This is the exact treatment regiment that I used:

1. I had removed the Hammer completely from the QT and after an attempt at dipping with iodine and keeping away from the rest of the tank it was completely lost within hours.

2. I dipped the cyphastrea and the favia in iodine to clean them up and then treated them with a triple dose for 24 hours (cipro at .375mg/L) in a seperate 1 gallon hospital tank with aeration. After 24 hours I reintroduced them to the QT.

3. I treated the QT on a normal dose (cipro at .125mg/L) every 48 hours for a total of 3 doses.

Results after 2 weeks:

1. Favia appears to be in good shape with little to no further necrosis or appearance of jelly.

2. Cyphastrea lost about 2 dozen heads on top but now has stabilized and has not deteriorated any further. Hoping that the effected area will repair itself.

3. During the treatment a hermit crab and pom pom crab both molted - coincidence?

4. Within 24 hours of the start of treatment I lost my Emerald Crab. I noticed a day prior that he had developed a long whitish stringy mucous around his face and another area on his body and he was very sluggish. It appeared to be lighter than the brown jelly but appeared consistent with an infection to my untrained eye. So I'm not clear if 1) the brown jelly could infect an invert as well (I could find no reports of BJD on inverts) or 2) if this was an unrelated infection or 3) if the treatment itself killed him. Cause of death: inconclusive.

I also have now installed an 8 watt UV sterilizer on the QT running at a very aggressive low flow rate (high contact time) setting but still achieving high system turn over. More info here. My approach is that this could help to buy time in the future if any problems arise during QT and that I would attempt to only medicate the affected coral in a separate hospital tank with cipro. The assumption being that UV will do nothing for the bacteria already in a given coral but that the likelihood of further transmission would be highly reduced (albeit probably not completely eliminated) with the presence of the aggressive UV sterilization. In this way I will not (hopefully) have to treat the entire QT upon any future occurrences.

Cyphastrea after 2 weeks:

 

[Auto-pilot]

Just to provide an update for future readers:

After another couple of days it was obvious to me that my Bizzaro Cyphastrea was indeed infected as it continued to loose about 2-3 heads per day. This was much slower deterioration than the hammer experienced. So I went ahead and procured Cipro and treated using this protocol as a guideline from @AquaBiomics.

This is the exact treatment regiment that I used:

1. I had removed the Hammer completely from the QT and after an attempt at dipping with iodine and keeping away from the rest of the tank it was completely lost within hours.

2. I dipped the cyphastrea and the favia in iodine to clean them up and then treated them with a triple dose for 24 hours (cipro at .375mg/L) in a seperate 1 gallon hospital tank with aeration. After 24 hours I reintroduced them to the QT.

3. I treated the QT on a normal dose (cipro at .125mg/L) every 48 hours for a total of 3 doses.

Results after 2 weeks:

1. Favia appears to be in good shape with little to no further necrosis or appearance of jelly.

2. Cyphastrea lost about 2 dozen heads on top but now has stabilized and has not deteriorated any further. Hoping that the effected area will repair itself.

3. During the treatment a hermit crab and pom pom crab both molted - coincidence?

4. Within 24 hours of the start of treatment I lost my Emerald Crab. I noticed a day prior that he had developed a long whitish stringy mucous around his face and another area on his body and he was very sluggish. It appeared to be lighter than the brown jelly but appeared consistent with an infection to my untrained eye. So I'm not clear if 1) the brown jelly could infect an invert as well (I could find no reports of BJD on inverts) or 2) if this was an unrelated infection or 3) if the treatment itself killed him. Cause of death: inconclusive.

I also have now installed an 8 watt UV sterilizer on the QT running at a very aggressive low flow rate (high contact time) setting but still achieving high system turn over. More info here. My approach is that this could help to buy time in the future if any problems arise during QT and that I would attempt to only medicate the affected coral in a separate hospital tank with cipro. The assumption being that UV will do nothing for the bacteria already in a given coral but that the likelihood of further transmission would be highly reduced (albeit probably not completely eliminated) with the presence of the aggressive UV sterilization. In this way I will not (hopefully) have to treat the entire QT upon any future occurrences.

Cyphastrea after 2 weeks:

Yeah that can happen I didn't see your last message sorry about that. In the future iodine doesn't work for Euphyllia or any active coral infections. It's great for helping corals after fragging them and good at prevention but peroxide is the way to go. I've saved corals like your hammer simply by cleaning them up with peroxide and doing an antibiotic dip. If you Google KFC dip this is my go to for saving infected corals. I keep Al of those supply's on hand just in case. Hopefully those other corals will bounce back. If you use antibiotics I would be careful and dump it responsibly.

 

[SirenBethany]

Lugols has never worked for me in the past with an active Brown jelly infection. I've dipped euphillia in peroxide many many times with no problems. Some coral suppliers recommend peroxide dips on LPS corals as a treatment for brown jelly

50/50 peroxide? Just got an order yesterday and the neon green hammer was mostly dead already with brown jelly. I couldn't really clear the gunk on it and even tried very gently with a soft tipped toothbrush. I did a 25 min dip in reef deep which has iodine. Then tried to clean it while rinsing with fresh water. I put it back into QT with two QT fish from that same shipment. The two other Corals from this company are in my display after just 5 min freshwater dips. The Duncan are Blasto are opening up and appear healthy. Please advise? Did the other person save theirs using peroxide and tank water 50/50. First pic is yesterday afternoon (shipment arrived 3/27/24) once drip acclimated then 5 min freshwater dip, but it looked bad upon arrival. 2nd pic is next day (3/28/24) before treating, and 3rd pic is after treatment and in 5g QT with 2.5 g and a bubbler. It's looking grim. I see a tiny bit of live tissue in there I wish I could save this poor Hammer.

 

[Naso180!]

Thanks for the documentation of what worked and what didn't. Wish more ppl would post complete events, not just 100 percent success. I've found that peroxide is usually the best way to treat corals coming in that way. I mix it with Coral Rx. It seems to work more that 2/3 of the time. Curious on where you are ordering from that they're arriving that way.