Acans looking pretty bad. Help needed.

[burks]

Recently I received some corals in the mail and the only damaged one was this Acan Echinata piece. The box had been dropped and I fear this Acan took the brunt of the force.

What can I do to keep this coral from loosing all tissue and dying completely? Any tips?



Thank you.

[roblack]

I would put it low in the tank with very little flow on it and not too much light. Lugol's dip probably could help, but could hurt if too much.

[burks]

What strength of dip would you recommend, the normal 40 drops per gallon?

[Kristen1013]

I thought it was 20 per gallon

[Underwaterparadise]

IME it needs to be fragged up. I have tried leaving pieces like this whole and 9 out of 10 times the entire colony dies. The ones I frag up have a better chance IME. Cut and dip is my advise

[yellowslayer13]

i agree with underwaterparadise fragit

[burks]

Well I'll certainly give the fragging idea a try. Would hate to see these all die when I never got to see their true color.

Thank you.

[JenDub]

.Try taking it out of the water and directly applying Seachem's coral disinfectant to the white areas at full strenghten. Let it sit for a minute of two and then put it into a tupperware with some tank water for another 5 minutes. You can use lugol's this way also, just try to only get it along the edge of the healthy tissue.

Once it has been treated you can chisel the white stuff off with a hammer and screwdriver and rinse the cut areas with more tank water to remove slime & rock shards.

I usually put damaged colonies in medium-high indirect flow so any toxins released by the dying tissue in the skeleton are quickly carried away and don't feed the recession =)

Good luck! We all do coral surgery from time to time =)

[burks]

Well despite my efforts the piece is gone. Didn't even get a chance to frag it.

Anyways thanks for the help everyone. If this happens again I know what to do right away rather than just hoping mother nature will cure herself.

[JenDub]

The window of opportunity is pretty small on the fragging option. Usually by the time a person realizes it's a problem there is a day or two to start cutting into the good tissue =)