Dealing with setbacks and frustration

burningmime

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Swearing, gin, and screamo music haven't let me down yet.

For BJD in particular, start chopping off the good heads and dipping them in iodine. Then keep them in a frag tank for a couple weeks. I lost about $2000 worth of Scolys in my old tank from it, but managed to save a couple torches by isolating the good heads. It's a bacterial disease; nothing to do with water quality.
 
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Lavey29

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Swearing, gin, and screamo music haven't let me down yet.

For BJD in particular, start chopping off the good heads and dipping them in iodine. Then keep them in a frag tank for a couple weeks. I lost about $2000 worth of Scolys in my old tank from it, but managed to save a couple torches by isolating the good heads. It's a bacterial disease; nothing to do with water quality.

Yes, its bacterial but doesn't it move from coral to coral via the water column?
 

anthonygf

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Here are a few pics
Your corals look pretty good, but your water is cloudy means your reef is not mature yet. You don't have the bacteria to deal with this issue, I think. You just went too fast adding all the livestock if you started with dry rock. Dry rock takes longer to mature than live. Grab a piece of live rock and add it if you can if you started with dry rock. I started with Petco live rock and fish, I knew the girl there has several reef tanks at home and was very smart. Clowns are still alive today.
 
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Lavey29

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Your corals look pretty good, but your water is cloudy means your reef is not mature yet. You don't have the bacteria to deal with this issue, I think. You just went too fast adding all the livestock if you started with dry rock. Dry rock takes longer to mature than live. Grab a piece of live rock and add it if you can if you started with dry rock. I started with Petco live rock and fish, I knew the girl there has several reef tanks at home and was very smart. Clowns are still alive today.

I had just put Red Sea AB coral food in the tank and my glass hasn't been cleaned in 2 days. But yes my tank is far from mature I agree.
 

burningmime

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Yes, its bacterial but doesn't it move from coral to coral via the water column?
Yup. But it doesn't matter your filtration or water quality; it's gonna spread. The best thing you can do is get the healthy corals out, cut off infected tissue, do iodine dips and put them back into a known-safe frag tank (sound like you have a QT setup you can repurpose for that).

Really, though, pick your head up and read some other threads about beating BJD; don't take advice from me. I'm basically the blind leading the blind; I lost a **** ton of coral from it. Find someone who was more successful than me.

It's not going to completely kill your tank like a sea apple explosion or velvet outbreak or slowly destroy your sanity like aiptasia. It's frustrating but solvable.
 
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Lavey29

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So I'm sure this new challenge will not end good for me but I figure I'll try and think outside the box holistically. I'm adding extra phytoplankton to aid the corals strength hopefully in battling the bacteria. I also blasted my corals with 60ml of microbacter clean. Just wondering if one bacteria may outcompete another. I know these may be futile but who knows. I thought about dosing the tank with Peroxide too.
 

burningmime

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So I'm sure this new challenge will not end good for me but I figure I'll try and think outside the box holistically. I'm adding extra phytoplankton to aid the corals strength hopefully in battling the bacteria. I also blasted my corals with 60ml of microbacter clean. Just wondering if one bacteria may outcompete another. I know these may be futile but who knows. I thought about dosing the tank with Peroxide too.
If you have another tank ready, at least take any healthy-looking LPS out. Use your QT tank or something. Use a bucket with a powerhead and heater. Even if you lose a few of the sick ones, you're giving the others a fighting chance. BJD only really hits "fleshy" LPS.
 
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Lavey29

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If you have another tank ready, at least take any healthy-looking LPS out. Use your QT tank or something. Use a bucket with a powerhead and heater. Even if you lose a few of the sick ones, you're giving the others a fighting chance. BJD only really hits "fleshy" LPS.

In reading up on it there is some evidence that healthy corals can fight it off. Stressed or weak succumb. I cant find anything to indicate what defense mechanism corals have against this stuff. Do they just let a head or two die off and hope the remaining coral heads don't get infected? I cant believe mother nature didn't give corals some method of fighting this bacteria.
 

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So I'm sure this new challenge will not end good for me but I figure I'll try and think outside the box holistically. I'm adding extra phytoplankton to aid the corals strength hopefully in battling the bacteria. I also blasted my corals with 60ml of microbacter clean. Just wondering if one bacteria may outcompete another. I know these may be futile but who knows. I thought about dosing the tank with Peroxide too.
Do not dose the tank with peroxide. That's risky even for more experienced reefers than yourself. Dip the corals themselves as I mentioned earlier. You're not going to outcompete the BJD. Even if you eventually could with something, it wouldn't happen in the time frame you'd need. And as far as "may be futile but who knows" It is futile and alot of experienced reefers who've delt with BJD directly know. Some of us are here telling you what you need to do to get ahead of it. Cut, dip, isolate if possible, etc. You can try the iodine method as someone else mentioned if you haven't already because it's less harsh than peroxide. If it doesn't work than you can try peroxide. Period.
 
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Pistondog

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Hi Everyone, I am still new to the reefing hobby but totally fascinated and in love (I thought) with this beautiful hobby. My tank has been up and running 6 months so it is far from mature and I have been taking my time trying to learn the ins and outs and adding fish and corals slowly. Basic easy care fish and good easy starter corals also. I routinely check my water and keep up diligently on my tank maintenance. Several months back I had a brook outbreak in the tank which was surprising because I paid a premium for extensive QT fish. This wiped out pretty much everything. Now recently, I appear to have a major BJD outbreak among my corals. I only buy from well established vendors here and always dip prior to adding them in so not sure how this disease got into the tank.

Anyways, I am so bummed out now and am wondering how you deal with the frustration of this hobby and the setbacks you encounter? I see a gazillion posts where people are having troubles such as algae, corals dying, fish disease, etc... Doesn't it just really bother you and make you want to give up sometimes? I see people who tear down their tanks and start over. How do you know it will be better the second time around? At what point do the setbacks just outweigh the positives? I am so bummed now as corals are withering away. Yes, I have pulled some because they were to far gone and have tried the various BJD dips that are listed on here to see if some can be saved. Everything about my water is in perfect parameter range now and with the exception of some minor patches of hair algae, the tank is perfectly clear and functioning properly yet I am about to have another big setback. I don't have a lot of corals so it is not like my wallet is getting wiped out to to it is so frustrating. I just can't seem to catch a break.

Any recommendations are appreciated.
I've lost 3 euphyllia to bjd over the years. Each time there was some mechanical damage to tentacles thru mishandling or other. There are 9 other euphyllia in the tank, happy and thriving. I think bjd is an opportunistic infection that healthy, stress-free corals can shrug off. Dipping is a stress event which I don't believe helps.
 

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I'd stop the ab until bjd stops. Broadcast feeding helps everyone, even the bad guys.
 

Isopod80

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I've lost 3 euphyllia to bjd over the years. Each time there was some mechanical damage to tentacles thru mishandling or other. There are 9 other euphyllia in the tank, happy and thriving. I think bjd is an opportunistic infection that healthy, stress-free corals can shrug off. Dipping is a stress event which I don't believe helps.
This person has it spreading quickly through their entire tank. I've had the dip method work several times. Many others have as well. If it was a mild case on a single injured coral I'd probably agree but I'd still isolate it. This situation is not one where they can guickly make all the corals stress free to fight it themselves. At least not the way they've been describing it. It may be an opportunistic infection but it's still an infection and dipping is known to kill infections. Sure it's stressful but so is being quickly eaten alive as these are apparently experiencing.
 
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@Lavey29, if you’re near Riverside, hit me up. I’ll give you a piece of green slimer SPS. Grows like a weed, indestructible. Soon after you will be addicted to sticks and leave the softie issues in the dirt.
 

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In reading up on it there is some evidence that healthy corals can fight it off. Stressed or weak succumb. I cant find anything to indicate what defense mechanism corals have against this stuff. Do they just let a head or two die off and hope the remaining coral heads don't get infected? I cant believe mother nature didn't give corals some method of fighting this bacteria.
Yes, mother nature gave coral ways to fight but your corals aren't in mother nature. They're in an artificial, partial ecosystem in a box. We have no idea as reefers half the stuff our corals could be lacking that mother nature intended. As you can see, your corals aren't successfully fighting this at this point. Instead it's quickly spreading from one to another. Mother nature gave you a system to fight infection as well but obviously if you were to contract certain infections or a severe enough case of any infection, you would die without outside intervention. What you need to understand is that BJD is not believed to be an infection itself but rather a symptom of an infection being present. It's believed to have multiple causes, some of which are not completely understood. This includes protozoans as a potential cause as well.
 
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Lavey29

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@Lavey29, if you’re near Riverside, hit me up. I’ll give you a piece of green slimer SPS. Grows like a weed, indestructible. Soon after you will be addicted to sticks and leave the softie issues in the dirt.
I started with softies because I thought they were more beginner friendly but thanks for the offer I'm in rancho cucamonga.
 
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Lavey29

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Do you guys think this matters. I just switched from doing weekly water changes to biweekly. I wanted to dirty the tank up a little to keep my nitrate and phosphate numbers above zero. My duncan which has been perfectly healthy for 3 months was the first to show jelly infection.

Do you think the clean water from weekly changes was keeping the jelly bacteria dormant?
 

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As I mentioned earlier, there doesn't appear to be such a thing as "jelly bacteria". The potential causes are multiple. BJD is merely a symptom. The weekly water changes, while not keeping anything dormant, quite possibly removed a larger volume of whatever is causing YOUR case. Regardless of the cause, the treatment at this point is the same.
 

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I started with softies because I thought they were more beginner friendly but thanks for the offer I'm in rancho cucamonga.
It’s a good gauge for water quality. If a slimer lives and you continue with BJD on others, there may be a bacterial infection of sort in there. Your parameters should support a robust SPS. Don’t freak. I killed dang near everything the first year.
 
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Lavey29

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It’s a good gauge for water quality. If a slimer lives and you continue with BJD on others, there may be a bacterial infection of sort in there. Your parameters should support a robust SPS. Don’t freak. I killed dang near everything the first year.
I'm on a path to kill everything also fish and corals but surprisingly my inverts are thriving. My banded shrimp is huge, my cleaner and fire shrimp are over 3 inches long. I think I have the best looking snail collection on the site. I haven't lost a snail or hermit.
 

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