Brain coral loosing tissue

[juanmanuelsanchez]

Hello everyone!

Well after a few up and downs in my tank I got it stable and everything is looking beautiful except for this brain coral. I don't know hot to bounce it back even though I have tried everything.

All parameters are in check (see apex dashboard picture)

Phosphates are in 0.04
Nitrates between 5 and 8

I place it in a low current and low light environment a few days ago go see if there is any improvement but I see it worse to be honest.

Any tips are appreciated.

 

[blaxsun]

Aieeee.... I think it's toast (mostly skeleton showing). I would try to increase your salinity a bit - to maybe 34.5 to 35.0.

 

[Reefer/0]

guessing it looks worse because it’s just been moved but I would’ve moved it too. Leave it there and as long as nothing else stresses it out it might bounce back from the dead(if it does, it’ll take a few months). Needs stability. If it makes you feel any better, my first brain coral went through the exact same thing, managed to revive it and it now looks as fluffy and fat as ever.

 

[Reefer/0]

Optional feeding, stick with very fine foods or even liquid foods, and extremely small quantities, let gravity bring the particles to it, 30mins no flow for feeding(or use a container to cover it while), and stability over everything. Not more than 2-3 times a week, and try to stick to the same schedule every week.

Weirdly enough based off of purely my experience on my single brain coral and no one else’s, I found direct feeding mine at that stage always made it more stressed but there were times when I broadcast live baby brine, and the next day it always looked the tiniest bit better. Not sure if that helped its recovery but thought it might be worth mentioning.

But don’t want to bring your hopes up too much because theres a chance it might not make it at this stage.

 

[juanmanuelsanchez]

sadly I dont see any improvement. Its still alive but more and more skeleton is showing. I dont know what it could be... my parameters are stable and all the other corals and doing great.

 

[Chrisv.]

sadly I dont see any improvement. Its still alive but more and more skeleton is showing. I dont know what it could be... my parameters are stable and all the other corals and doing great.

There has been some really interesting discussion about microbial diseases in LPS. The guy who does aquabiomics found a specific strain that leads to brown jelly disease. In that case he advocates for cipro dips. I'm sure this is not the same microbe as causes bjd, but cipro is very broad spectrum. At this point I don't think there is much to lose from trying cipro + iodine dip.

I haven't tried it myself, but I would if I had a coral that looked like it needed some sort of heavy hitting intervention.

 

[Reefer/0]

sadly I dont see any improvement. Its still alive but more and more skeleton is showing. I dont know what it could be... my parameters are stable and all the other corals and doing great.

Unfortunately, if it’s not showing improvement, I’m afraid there’s a pretty high possibility of it not making it. Really sad to hear :.(

There has been some really interesting discussion about microbial diseases in LPS. The guy who does aquabiomics found a specific strain that leads to brown jelly disease. In that case he advocates for cipro dips. I'm sure this is not the same microbe as causes bjd, but cipro is very broad spectrum. At this point I don't think there is much to lose from trying cipro + iodine dip.

I haven't tried it myself, but I would if I had a coral that looked like it needed some sort of heavy hitting intervention.

You could try the stability route and see if it continues to wither away or not. But because it seems to be worsening still, I see no harm in trying this as well, might get rid of whatever seems to be irritating it.

 

[Chrisv.]

Unfortunately, if it’s not showing improvement, I’m afraid there’s a pretty high possibility of it not making it. Really sad to hear :.(

You could try the stability route and see if it continues to wither away or not. But because it seems to be worsening still, I see no harm in trying this as well, might get rid of whatever seems to be irritating it.

My disclaimer (again) is that I've never personally tried it. Seems reasonable to me, but I don't have first hand experience with it.