Greetings All !
Quote:
Originally posted by ironman2
... One thing I have always seen but cant explain is there is usually a small mucus that wraps around the coral right where the tissue meets the dead skeloten. it will blow off easily with a turkey baster. I finally took a serenge today and sucked some up and looked at it under my microscope. I was surprised to see just how many critters were living in it. It looked like the mucus was holding eggs. and all over the place were little critters swimming around. these by the way cant be seen with the naked eye. ...
|
As more folks begin to examine the outer surfaces of their corals, and the environment immediately adjacent to their corals (the holobiont) with microscope toys, I suspect that what you're reporting will become a lot less surprising. It's certainly in line with what I see when I go coral mucus exploring.
The "little critters swimming around" are possibly comprised of a variety of ciliates ... this would be entirely normal. Coral mucus is typically rich in micro-beasties. This is because the mucus is rich in saccarides ("sugars"), bacteria colonies, and readily entangles whatever particulates happen to be present in the tank. In other words, coral mucus has the potential to be a rich growth medium for a wide variety of microorganisms.
Quote:
Originally posted by ironman2
... Is it possible that this a pest eating my corals, or is this a opportunistic feeder that just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. ...
|
Possible, but given the information you've presented in other threads. I doubt it. While it's true that abnormal high densities of ciliates can, either directly or indirectly, exert a negative influence on coral health, such abnormal densities are typically a secondary consequence of something else that's going on. As far as the literature goes, the "something else" stuff includes anthropogenic disturbances (disturbances resulting from Human activities), and algal invasion into a reef zone.
If you haven't sampled high densities of micro-beasties from a place on one of your LPS where tissue recession/necrosis is occuring, then I suspect that micro-organism infestation isn't the core problem. Also, I notice in your descriptions that the recession starts from the outer edge and works its way inward. One would expect that a "pest infestation" wouldn't be quite so region-specific ... you would expect to see "damage areas" scattered throughout the surface of the impacted specimen. You would also expect it to "pick up speed" as the pathogen population increased.
JMO ... HTH
