Soft corals with spots

[aab3rd]

I had a soft coral very close to a bubble anemone and it started looking bad. I thought it was due to some interaction with the anemone. I moved it and it still continues to look bad. It appears to have sections that appear to be "rotten" and turning dark brown. I still thought this was due to the anemone, but now I am starting to see some beginnings of this on two more soft corals.

Can anyone shed some light on the problem and what I can do?

Thanks,

Austin

[bshumake]

It sounds like some brown slime infection has hit your softies. Are they slimey? If this is the case you'll have to frag off the bad spots and try dipping it to keep the rest healthy. Get us some pictures and we can get a better idea of how to help. I'm sure Dave will chime in when he reads this with wisdom down from mountain.

[Codeman00]

Barrett, can you explain the dipping process a bit more? Freshwater I assume? For how long?

[bshumake]

Oops. Sorry bout that.
OK. Dipping can be done a coupe of ways. There is the commercially prepared dips that can be bought as-is and diluted with tank water; theres the "whole compound" type dips (as I call them) like Lugol's or mercaptoethanol, and freshwater. The commercial and whole compound dips are prepared via directions found on the bottles (i.e. commercial) or from making a dilution from the whole compound concentrate (4 drops Lugol's per 1L of tank water). Those are pretty straight forward and can work for corals and fish alike. I'm pretty fond of the Lugol's myself because the Iodine that gets carried over into your tank wouldn't do much if any damage. For the more toxic of the other whole compounds I believe that a wrinse in fresh tank water is necessary to keep the dip from getting into the main tank in a concentration that might hurt anything else.
Freshwater dipping is interesting to say the least. I have done this a couple of times and it still makes me nervous. Basically you just use dechlorinated water with the pH and temp adjusted to marine norms. I used dechlorinated and i've used RO/DI... its up to you. Once the pH and temp are acceptable net the specimen and put them in the water. I cannot stress enough how you should watch the specimen for signs of stress. 5 min is the longest it should go. It can be done in a series of treatments in the spance of a few hours with treatment 5 min and 1 hour rest. Do dispose of the dip water after use in all cases! Dispose inbetween each coral or fish! To use the same water for successive dips would be to rish reinfecting a specimen or infecting a previously uninfected specimen in the process. In all cases of diping there is more information available online and I recommend checking a couple of places. I looked up a couple to get a nice knowledge base before I tried these out and its nice to have tips and suggestions from other sources... in the event something goes amis.
B

[Codeman00]

Great info...I appreciate the explanation.

[aab3rd]

Thanks for the replies.

Now I have an Ich infected tang and coral beauty as well:mad2:
I have started treating the tank with an ich treatment.
Will a UV steralizer help with this or is that all hype?

Isn't this hoby fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bshumake]

Originally posted by aab3rd
Thanks for the replies.

Now I have an Ich infected tang and coral beauty as well:mad2:
I have started treating the tank with an ich treatment.
Will a UV steralizer help with this or is that all hype?

Isn't this hoby fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
From personal experience the "Reef Safe" ich treatments are snake oil. For the amount of treatment per gallon of tank water you wind up having to buy 2 or more bottles and that still might not get it. Maby Dave can chime in with his own experience here but I just don't bother with those treatments. The best way I know of is to quarentine the fish and treat with copper in a hospital tank in hyposlanity, with a slightly elevated temperature. The copper and hyposalinity will kill off the parasites and the increased temp will force the parasites to metamorphasize (go through their life cycle) faster. Treat the quarentined fish for at least a month returning to normal tank conditions the last week of quarentine. During this treatment time let your tank go fallow. You might could turn the temp up a little in the main but its not that necessary. That should return the ich to their dormant stage and your back in business. Something to remember here is ich takes hold in stressed or injured fish and its omnipresent in aquatic environments. You'll never clear your tank of this and all of us have the cysts in our tanks, but a healthy environment and healthy fish is why we never see them. Also add garlic to your fishes diet, it promotes a healthy immunity and helps them fight off disease and recover faster. After my last bout with Ich (some years ago) I added garlic and my fish have really looked healthier.
P.S. Can you tell i'm on maternity leave? I'm getting pretty wordy here!

[bshumake]

Oops... forgot the UV. I had one and can't confirm or deny their effectiveness. They would kill the free swimming phase of the parasite but its kind of like shooting a swarm of bees with a shotgun. You'll get some but its not worth the effort. One place where it might be helpful would be with your skimmer. Its supposed to help your skimmer work better, and given its function is to denature proteins i can see where it would help.

[Reefdiver77]

I had an ich outbreak a couple of months ago. I used a spare 29 gallon as a quarentine tank. Used it barebottom with pcv pipes for hiding place. I used a copper solution. Got a hang on back filter, heater, etc and made sure I kept all equipment, etc away from my display tank. I used a clip on light for lighting a few hours a day. I lost a clown fish, but the other clown and the royal gramma did great. I left them in for a month. My blue spotted watchman goby never got the ich. Good Luck. The ick nearly freaked me out because I had the outbreak the day before leaving for a 2 week vacation in FL. Had to get in high gear. Thank goodness, the guy coming to my home daily to care for my tank was help to help me set things up.