A recently discovered parasitic bacterium causes disease and impaired growth in corals

[AquaBiomics]

Some red slime removers are erythromycin but according to the company that makes Chemi clean it is not.
They claim it is not a antibiotic at all..

And what do they claim it is? I am fundamentally suspicious of any manufacturer that says "put this in your tank but I wont tell you what it is". Hiding ingredients is dishonest; if they won't say what IS in it I see no logical reason to take their word for it when they say what ISN'T in it. But I don't have a position on its chemical identity, only that I wish I knew what it was.

--

My latest:

Doxycycline passed safety tests on SPS frags at high doses. Cipro causes some problems, I'm gonna reduce dosage and try again. I'll sample coral microbiomes today... I should be able to get these samples in the upcoming sequencing run. There would still be lot of questions about how to best deliver it... but if we can show that a high dose of Doxycycline kills A. rohweri, the community can probably optimize treatment details (duration, dose, etc). Fingers crossed!

 

[drawman]

There is an embarrassing scarcity of "clinical" literature for corals, due to structural flaws in the funding agencies.. I'll spare you all that rant

In forums and a 2012 paper by Sweet and coauthors I can find anecdotal reports of doxycycline use by hobbyists, and I don't see any reports of safety issues. Administering antibiotics to corals comes with its own challenges (this paper does a good job of summarizing them) but can certainly be done.

I currently have corals, doxycyclin, 2 other antibiotics, and a bunch of swabs in hand I'll run an experiment over the next 2 days and analyze the effects on the coral microbiome in my next sequencing run. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and one of my imported colonies will have this bug...

Sweet, M., Jones, R., & Bythell, J. (2012). Coral diseases in aquaria and in nature. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, 92(4), 791-801.

I'm curious on your methods for sequencing just because I enjoy this

 

[Graffiti Spot]

A normal part of nature. There are probablly hundreds of different types bacteria in coral and under the right circumstances can become pathogenic. Sounds very similar to mycobacterium which most of us likely have in their tanks which under the right circumstance can infect you and wipe out your fish in time. I personally believe there is a balance of all these bacteria and they play an important role but when something gets out of whack a system can crash. For all we know this bacteria could actively feed on vibrio and myco and without it we could have levels in our tank that can cause disease in both us and our finned friends.

Either way active research and tests on this subject are going to be nothing but positive for us. I don’t think we should let the slim chance of us or our tanks getting sick stop us from going any further. Not that that’s what you were saying we should do.

Love the way this thread is going! Anyone doing actual tests please keep us updated.

 

[lexinverts]

My latest:

Doxycycline passed safety tests on SPS frags at high doses. Cipro causes some problems, I'm gonna reduce dosage and try again. I'll sample coral microbiomes today... I should be able to get these samples in the upcoming sequencing run. There would still be lot of questions about how to best deliver it... but if we can show that a high dose of Doxycycline kills A. rohweri, the community can probably optimize treatment details (duration, dose, etc). Fingers crossed!

This paper identified Doxycycline and Rifampin as the two most effective antibiotics for treating a related bacterial species (Wolbachia pipientis) out of 13 assayed.

Wolbachia pipientis Growth Kinetics and Susceptibilities to 13 Antibiotics Determined by Immunofluorescence Staining and Real-Time PCR

Wolbachia spp. are strict intracellular bacteria that infect a wide range of arthropods and filarial nematodes. Filarial nematodes are important causes of human diseases. There is increasing evidence that Wolbachia spp. influence important functions in the biology of the hosts, specifically...

aac.asm.org

 

[AquaBiomics]

This paper identified Doxycycline and Rifampin as the two most effective antibiotics for treating a related bacterial species (Wolbachia pipientis) out of 13 assayed.

Wolbachia pipientis Growth Kinetics and Susceptibilities to 13 Antibiotics Determined by Immunofluorescence Staining and Real-Time PCR

Wolbachia spp. are strict intracellular bacteria that infect a wide range of arthropods and filarial nematodes. Filarial nematodes are important causes of human diseases. There is increasing evidence that Wolbachia spp. influence important functions in the biology of the hosts, specifically...

aac.asm.org

Thanks so much Andy, this looks like a great reference. I appreciate having another person digging through the literature on this!

I've got the doxy and control samples ready to go now. I made fresh frags from two acros and a Pocillopora, exposed half of them to Doxycyclin, and sampled the mucus + tissue after 48 hours for microbiome analysis. All frags have survived well after both exposure and sampling. Now if only one of them had A. rohweri, we'll have some data on whether the readily-available Doxycyclin affects this parasite...

The rifampin (rifampicin) is taking longer to arrive, so it'll have to go in the next batch.

 

[KenO]

I have been struggling with 2 tanks both plumbed together to the same sump. I can’t keep SPS alive in either tank. Some of my other corals, Duncan’s, candy canes, Ricordeas are struggling also. Water test came back looking ok. Same water is used in 2 other tanks and the corals are growing in those tanks. Different lights on the 2 main tanks. Tanks have been wet for 13 months. Coralline growth is heavy in both tanks. I used a product by ARC reef to seed tanks with both red and purple coralline. Worked well. I did not use the product in my other tanks. If you need another sample of bacteria, I would be happy to send you some. Let me know.

 

[PhreeByrd]

Some red slime removers are erythromycin but according to the company that makes Chemi clean it is not.
They claim it is not a antibiotic at all..

That's very interesting. Quite a few years ago I was considering using ChemiClean, but first I wanted to know what was actually in it. I found only a lot of speculation in the forums, but the erythromycin speculation was strong. A broad-spectrum antibiotic was not something I wanted to dose my tank with. I contacted Boyd and through the course of several emails, asked pointedly if it contained erythromycin or another antibiotic, and advised them that if this was the case, I did not want to use it. Boyd steadfastly refused to answer the question, and definitely did not deny that it contained an antibiotic. They did state that it contained an oxidizing agent.

I took this whole exchange as validation that ChemiClean did contain an antibiotic; if it did not, it was clearly to Boyd's advantage to come out and state as fact that it did not.

But as I said, this was quite a few years ago. Something may have changed since then.

 

[AquaBiomics]

One way these questions could be answered is by a chemist with access to the right equipment to try to identify it directly. I am not a chemist so I can't help in that regard.

From another perspective, the reason we care whats in it is because of the effects on the microbial community. And those are something we can measure, and share with the community.

If anyone wants to run the experiment in your own tank (before and after Chemiclean or any other product like this with unknown ingredients, that claims to affect the microbiome)... send me a message and we can discuss.

 

[Cnidoblast]

Thanks so much Andy, this looks like a great reference. I appreciate having another person digging through the literature on this!

I've got the doxy and control samples ready to go now. I made fresh frags from two acros and a Pocillopora, exposed half of them to Doxycyclin, and sampled the mucus + tissue after 48 hours for microbiome analysis. All frags have survived well after both exposure and sampling. Now if only one of them had A. rohweri, we'll have some data on whether the readily-available Doxycyclin affects this parasite...

The rifampin (rifampicin) is taking longer to arrive, so it'll have to go in the next batch.

Would it be possible for you to test a theroy me and Bob Stark had - can you take an STN-ing acro and dose it with cipro or baytril? This will make short work of any vibrio and pseudomonas present

Also doxy likes to bind calcium so maybe not a good reef antibiotic? I'd put money on rifampin being the panacea however!!!

 

[Breadman03]

If I recall, this aligns with something I read from @PSXerholic.