Does cold water hinder BJD?

Tired

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Aug 29, 2020
Messages
4,016
Reaction score
4,104
Location
Central Texas
Rating - 100%
1   0   0
Long story short: I scraped palys off one of my rocks, covered the patch in superglue gel, covered that in putty, put the rock back in the tank, and poisoned all my corals. Killed a couple encrusting montis and some other things (including my Holy Grail micromussa, ouch), and seriously ticked off my Chemical Warfare favites. It's the same species as a Fascination favites.

While trying to deal with the poisoning via giant water changes and removing the poisoning rock, I saw that my favites had a brown slime on it. Semi-transparent brown slime in rounded shapes. Yikes. Immediately took it out of the tank, dumped about a quart of fresh-mixed saltwater into a cup, put the favites in that, and forgot about it for a day.

When it didn't look completely dead a day later, I decided to give it a shot. I blew the slime off and sucked it all out with a pipette. The slime stayed together in one unit, like I hear brown jelly does. I didn't photograph it at that point, still just expecting it to die.

A couple days later, I had this.
Not /good/, but also not dead. And, after being blown off once a day, the slime had mostly stopped recurring.

I kept it in that cup of water for a week. A couple of times, I poured out half of the water and replaced it. I had no filtration, and only indirect lighting from a planted-tank light. It was on the floor near an air vent, so was in the mid-low 60s F at the most.
At that point, I had this. The slime had completely stopped recurring. I added enough iodine dip to a cup of water to tint the water slightly, put the coral in that for 20 minutes, and put the coral back in my tank.

3 days after that. Look how thin the skeleton is! You can see the patterns on the plug through that bare skeleton there.

About a month later.

Two days ago.

I should have photographed the slime, but I was a bit distracted at the time. Looked exactly like brown jelly in pictures, though, and I don't know what else would produce rounded brown slime areas that stay in one piece when blown off.

So. I got BJD on a favites, I put the favites in a cup of unfiltered cold water, and I ignored it for a bit. Then I blew the slime off once or twice a day for a week, and it was cured. The only treatment used at any point was the light iodine dip, that I don't think was strictly needed.
Why is this favites not dead?
My theory is that either, 1, that was a really weak strain of BJD, or 2, the cold water slowed its multiplication enough for the coral and the vigorous pipetting to overcome it. Because BJD doesn't seem to be something that just... goes away.

(Edit: don't know why those pictures aren't loading properly. Sorry about that.)
 
OP
OP
Tired

Tired

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Aug 29, 2020
Messages
4,016
Reaction score
4,104
Location
Central Texas
Rating - 100%
1   0   0
I didn't sacrifice any goats or any pure white bulls that came running up out of the surf, no. Not unless I'm doing some very concerning things while sleepwalking.

This is weird, right? I keep coming back to how cold the water must have been in the cup as the only thing I can think of that seems unusual. And the lack of flow, but I doubt that did anything helpful. I read somewhere (don't recall where) that BJD may spread faster in warm water, so... is the inverse also true?
 

mdb_talon

2500 Club Member
View Badges
Joined
Dec 6, 2010
Messages
4,938
Reaction score
7,753
Location
Illinois
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Definetely a good hypothesis, but I hope I dont have a chance to tet it. Also was this coral not under your tank lighting and is it possible that can play a role?
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

  • I currently have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 73 37.6%
  • Not currently, but I have had feather dusters in my tank in the past.

    Votes: 66 34.0%
  • I have not had feather dusters, but I hope to in the future.

    Votes: 25 12.9%
  • I have no plans to have feather dusters in my tank.

    Votes: 28 14.4%
  • Other.

    Votes: 2 1.0%
Back
Top