Experimenting with in-tank antibiotic treatments for Brown Jelly Disease

alimac122

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Brown Jelly Disease (BJD) is an issue many reefers have run into. Like most coral diseases, the pathogen causing BJD has not been conclusively determined. Here I will share some observations and test results supporting the idea that its caused by a bacterial pathogen, and so may be treatable with antibiotics.

I'm sure this is not the first time someone's tried antibiotics against BJD, but I havent previously come across a DNA based study of the results. This is a preliminary investigation based on observations made on my home tanks spanning a few months. It is not conclusive, and is not intended to put the discussion to rest; far from it. It's just another piece of the puzzle as we figure out how to deal with this disease.

Overall my finding suggest that:
  • Infection with a specific bacterium in the genus Arcobacter contributes to BJD.
  • This infection can be safely treated in the aquarium with low doses of a commonly used aquarium antibiotic.
  • This treatment doesn't appear to damage the microbial community, but may actually improve it.
Here is the story, including the single case study so far of a tank treated in this way.

A Specific Bacterium Associated with Brown Jelly Disease
Over the last 6 months I've seen several cases where newly imported Euphyllia developed Brown Jelly Disease shortly after I received them. It had all the signs of an infectious disease. A newly imported colony would dissolve in BJD, and several other frags Euphyllia in the tank would also develop BJD if I didn't remove the affected corals quickly enough.

These corals aren't cheap, so my instinct was initially to try to save them (with no success) rather than conduct experiments. But after losing a few Euphyllia from different orders and suppliers my curiosity got the better of me. So the next two corals that developed early signs of BJD (a Hammer Coral E. ancora, and a Grape Coral E. cristata), I let it develop. Once they were in full-blown BJD, I sacrificed and sampled them.

Both of these samples were dominated by a single type, an unclassified bacterium in the genus Arcobacter. To clarify what I mean by that: this is a type that has been seen before, it's a perfect match to a sequence record in public DNA sequence databases. But, like so many microbes found in environmental samples, the species has not been formally described and named.

BJD pies.jpg


Identifying it to the genus can be pretty useful, though. The genus Arcobacter includes several known pathogens of humans and other animals, including A. butzleri, which is a food-borne pathogen that presents a serious risk to human health. When you sequence samples of two different diseased corals, and find them both dominated by a genus known to contain pathogens, it's worth noting.

It also gives us a good guess at the likely physical description and lifestyle. These are rod-shaped to helical, non-spore forming, and swim in a corkscrew motion using their single flagellum. These occur in association with animals, and also free living in waste water, seawater, and other aquatic habitats.

This information can also be useful in developing treatment strategies, since the members of a Bacterial genus often share characteristic sensitivities to the same antibiotics. We'll get to that.

Infecting a Euphyllia Garden with BJD
Who would intentionally do such a thing?? Not me.

What happened was this. I continued to buy Euphyllia, a fraction of them continued to develop BJD, and I was experimenting with short antibiotic dips. (This approach never yielded much success for me, but there is more work to be done on that front. )

Then one batch of especially nice corals started to BJD within 24 hours after arrival, and I panicked. I decided my Frag Tank must have the BJD pathogen, and I needed to get them out of it. I triaged the new corals, sacrificing the worst cases and transferring a couple that I thought were clean into a different tank... my Euphyllia Display Tank.

This was not my smartest move ever. They were so pretty, I acted irrationally :(

Next thing you know, both of the new Euphyllia and 4 of my existing Euphyllia in the tank were showing early signs of stress. They all showed oddly deflated tentacles that were not fully extended, and I could the beginnings of some of the characteristic Brown Jelly stuff on the two new corals. I removed these plaguebearers, pretty though they were, from the tank.

So I sampled the water at this point... after introducing the new corals, at the earliest signs of stress. What I found: exactly the same bug (Acrobacter sp., sv1103) at unusually high levels. I found 92 sequences matching this perfectly, representing >1% of the total community. (These were never found in biofilm samples, this analysis is based only on water samples)
1607381633378.png

Treating BJD with antibiotics, in the aquarium
What to do? I could remove all the Euphyllia and try a dip, but I hadn't been having much success with dips. So I looked at the tank and realized, the only corals I cared about in this tank were the Euphyllia. Fish are easy to move to another tank if something goes wrong, I have plenty of tanks running with room for a fish or two.

So I decided to take the plunge and treat my whole tank with the antibiotic. Although it's often repeated on the internet that adding antibiotics to your tank will kill the good bacteria, I hadn't seen any evidence of that.

Meanwhile I had evidence an Arcobacter species was associated with BJD, published reports of the antibiotic sensitivity of these bugs, and a tank full of Euphyllia on the verge of succumbing to BJD. So I dosed the tank.

I chose Ciprofloxacin because it is effective at the lowest doses, reasoning that in this way, I could minimize collateral damage. I based this decision on this study because it had a nice comparison of dosage trials for a wide range of antibiotic; I saw several other studies that also supported the use of Ciprofloxacin to treat Arcobacter infections.

I used Ciprofloxacin at 0.125 mg / L. To achieve this I dissolved a 500 mg pill in 50 ml of RODI water, producing a 10 mg / ml solution (which I subsequently stored in the fridge). The aquarium system has 70 gal volume altogether (~265 L), so I added 3.3 ml of this solution to achieve 0.125 mg / L. I repeated this dose every 2 days for 3 doses altogether.

Within 24 hours of the first dose, all of the affected corals showed signs of improvement. Their tentacles inflated again, although the remained not full extended. Within 48 hours they were fully extended and looked perfectly healthy again.

A few days after the final dose, I sampled the aquarium again. Like samples taken from the same aquarium a month prior to introducing the diseased Euphyllia, Arcobacter sp. (sv1103) was again not detected. Introducing the diseased animals introduced the bacterium, and the antibiotic treatment appears to have knocked their populations down substantially.
1607384512881.png

I should emphasize that since there are no controls, or photographs, for the effects of this treatment on the corals it's entirely possible they simply got better on their own. We can have a little more confidence in the effects of the treatment on the Arcobacter themselves, though. Here we have a measurement of the effect, although not replicated in multiple tanks.

In a future experiment I will address both issues -- this was an experimental trial born of desperation.

But doesn't that kill the good bacteria too?
This is of course a reasonable concern. There's a wide range of views on how to achieve the right microbial community, and how much the various parts of the community even matter. But I think few experienced reefers would say the bacterial community doesnt matter at all. So it makes sense to be cautious about adding antibiotics to the tank and potentially killing off whatever parts of the community you think are important.

But of course the dose makes the poison, and remember that I chose this antibiotic specifically because it was effective against this genus at the lowest dosage of any antibiotics tested.

The system has a moderate bioload with 4 fish in a 40 gallon DT with 30 gallons of sump volume, along with a bunch of corals. There is no algal refugium or macroalgae. So if the nitrifying community were to die, I would expect to see an explosion in nutrients and algal growth. This didnt happen. (I confess, I didnt measure nutrients this time around. I base this conclusion on the lack of algal growth that would be fueled by a rise in nutrients)

More directly, I compared the aquarium microbiome before and after the treatment. Here's a table summarizing the major stats we look at in comparing aquarium microbial communities:
T-1 month
(before BJD)
T+1 day
(during BJD)
T+10 days
(after treatment)
Diversity Score (percentile)552 (91st)438 (69th)532 (87th)
Balance Score (percentile)0.5 (76th)0.18 (50th)0.51 (83rd)
Ammonia-oxidizing microbes (%)Present (5.5%)Present (2.3%)Present (0.9%)
Nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (%)Present (0.08%)Not detectedPresent (0.05%)

Did the treatment damage the microbial community? Not at all. If it had any effect at all, it was to restore the community to its previous state by selectively knocking out a few susceptible bacteria.

If all a person cares about is the nitrifying community, that was not removed. There was a slight decrease in AOM while NOB were restored from undetectable to a more typical level.

If a person is interested in the microbial functions of the community more broadly, the summary statistics of Diversity and Balance scores were also improved by the treatment rather than harmed. The introduction of diseased corals lowered both scores, and the antibiotic treatment increased both scores.

This point about the broader microbial community can be illustrated most easily with a barplot showing the community over time. In these plots, each color represents a different microbial family.

cipro community barplot.jpg

The figure shows that the microbial community was fairly typical before BJD, became atypical during BJD, and was restored to something like its previous state following the antibiotic treatment.

A skeptical reader may point out that since there are no replicates here, we can't be confident attributing the changes to the treatment. It could be coincidence. Perhaps the corals recovered on their own and the microbial community resumed its previous structure after a transient disturbance caused by adding diseased corals. Based on my previous efforts to save Euphyllia with BJD I find this a little unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

Ultimately that objection would be correct and in the future I will do a properly replicated experiment to test this. What I've shown here is a just hypothesis with some preliminary evidence supporting it.

How Common is this Bacterium in Saltwater Aquaria?
In a set of 148 aquariums I've sampled (this is not the entire database, its the "high quality" database made up of normal, healthy tanks with good sequencing coverage), Arcobacter sp. sv1103 is not detectable in a majority of tanks.
1607389031773.png

We can express this same idea a few different ways. For the majority oftanks, this sequence was not detected at all (80%). For nearly all tanks (95%), this bacterium was absent or extremely rare (<0.00006%).

This context makes the comparison with my BJD infected tank even more stark. That 1.2% is huge in comparison with the typical levels observed across a large number of aquaria.


Summary

Based on what I've reported here, I hypothesize that infections with Arcobacter sp. (sv 1103) contribute to Brown Jelly Disease in LPS corals, and that these infections can be safely and effectively treated in the aquarium with low doses of Ciprofloxacin. Depending on the results of further tests, this could be a useful tool for the hobbyist community in the fight against BJD.

Important disclaimer: if anyone reading this feels inspired to treat their own tank, I specifically take no responsibility for the results. This is an experimental treatment, and if you run experiments on your own tank you take all the responsibility for the results.

But I know some of you, like me, enjoy running experiments on your own tanks. Many of us have a bottle of Cipro sitting around. And anybody who keeps Euphyllia is likely to encounter BJD at some point. Anybody want to test this? I'll throw in the microbiome testing before and after if so...

Thanks for reading and may your tanks stay free of Brown Jelly!


[unless you're the kind of person inclined to run experiments with antibiotics on your tanks, so you can help me duplicate this :) ]

Is this BJD or RTN????
256D3751-2B49-4EFF-8236-9EB69801CE4C.jpeg
 

KrisReef

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Is this BJD or RTN????
256D3751-2B49-4EFF-8236-9EB69801CE4C.jpeg
Brown jelly is a syndrome that impacts large polyp Stoney corals, and is not typically applied to acropora corals. It might be the same microbial pest that causes both but I don’t know that has been shown to be the case?!
 

Eagleman991

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@Coralqueendom (somebody else check my math)

500mg + 500mg/1000 l = 1mg/ml
for 100 gallons ~=380 liters
380 liters x 0.125 mg/l =47.5 mg

47.5 mg x 1mg/ml = 47.5ml of your 1 liter soln with (2 x 500mg cipro)

Your 1 liter bottle can treat your tank about 20 + times.
So I'm looking to treat a 75 gallon tank. I have the 250mg tablets. With my math to get to the solution I would double the tablet to 500mg(250mgx2)
For 75 gallons = 283.91ish liters
283.91 x 0.125 mg/l = 35.49mg
35.49/10 = 3.55 as my EOD dosage?)
 

KrisReef

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So I'm looking to treat a 75 gallon tank. I have the 250mg tablets. With my math to get to the solution I would double the tablet to 500mg(250mgx2)
For 75 gallons = 283.91ish liters
283.91 x 0.125 mg/l = 35.49mg
35.49/10 = 3.55 as my EOD dosage?)
If you put 1 tablet in 25ml of water you will end up with 250mg/25ml = 10mg/ml solution.

and again use ~3.6ml

"repeat this dose every 2 days for 3 doses altogether."
 

Pharmasqueek

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Brown Jelly Disease (BJD) is an issue many reefers have run into. Like most coral diseases, the pathogen causing BJD has not been conclusively determined. Here I will share some observations and test results supporting the idea that its caused by a bacterial pathogen, and so may be treatable with antibiotics.

I'm sure this is not the first time someone's tried antibiotics against BJD, but I havent previously come across a DNA based study of the results. This is a preliminary investigation based on observations made on my home tanks spanning a few months. It is not conclusive, and is not intended to put the discussion to rest; far from it. It's just another piece of the puzzle as we figure out how to deal with this disease.

Overall my finding suggest that:
  • Infection with a specific bacterium in the genus Arcobacter contributes to BJD.
  • This infection can be safely treated in the aquarium with low doses of a commonly used aquarium antibiotic.
  • This treatment doesn't appear to damage the microbial community, but may actually improve it.
Here is the story, including the single case study so far of a tank treated in this way.

A Specific Bacterium Associated with Brown Jelly Disease
Over the last 6 months I've seen several cases where newly imported Euphyllia developed Brown Jelly Disease shortly after I received them. It had all the signs of an infectious disease. A newly imported colony would dissolve in BJD, and several other frags Euphyllia in the tank would also develop BJD if I didn't remove the affected corals quickly enough.

These corals aren't cheap, so my instinct was initially to try to save them (with no success) rather than conduct experiments. But after losing a few Euphyllia from different orders and suppliers my curiosity got the better of me. So the next two corals that developed early signs of BJD (a Hammer Coral E. ancora, and a Grape Coral E. cristata), I let it develop. Once they were in full-blown BJD, I sacrificed and sampled them.

Both of these samples were dominated by a single type, an unclassified bacterium in the genus Arcobacter. To clarify what I mean by that: this is a type that has been seen before, it's a perfect match to a sequence record in public DNA sequence databases. But, like so many microbes found in environmental samples, the species has not been formally described and named.

BJD pies.jpg


Identifying it to the genus can be pretty useful, though. The genus Arcobacter includes several known pathogens of humans and other animals, including A. butzleri, which is a food-borne pathogen that presents a serious risk to human health. When you sequence samples of two different diseased corals, and find them both dominated by a genus known to contain pathogens, it's worth noting.

It also gives us a good guess at the likely physical description and lifestyle. These are rod-shaped to helical, non-spore forming, and swim in a corkscrew motion using their single flagellum. These occur in association with animals, and also free living in waste water, seawater, and other aquatic habitats.

This information can also be useful in developing treatment strategies, since the members of a Bacterial genus often share characteristic sensitivities to the same antibiotics. We'll get to that.

Infecting a Euphyllia Garden with BJD
Who would intentionally do such a thing?? Not me.

What happened was this. I continued to buy Euphyllia, a fraction of them continued to develop BJD, and I was experimenting with short antibiotic dips. (This approach never yielded much success for me, but there is more work to be done on that front. )

Then one batch of especially nice corals started to BJD within 24 hours after arrival, and I panicked. I decided my Frag Tank must have the BJD pathogen, and I needed to get them out of it. I triaged the new corals, sacrificing the worst cases and transferring a couple that I thought were clean into a different tank... my Euphyllia Display Tank.

This was not my smartest move ever. They were so pretty, I acted irrationally :(

Next thing you know, both of the new Euphyllia and 4 of my existing Euphyllia in the tank were showing early signs of stress. They all showed oddly deflated tentacles that were not fully extended, and I could the beginnings of some of the characteristic Brown Jelly stuff on the two new corals. I removed these plaguebearers, pretty though they were, from the tank.

So I sampled the water at this point... after introducing the new corals, at the earliest signs of stress. What I found: exactly the same bug (Acrobacter sp., sv1103) at unusually high levels. I found 92 sequences matching this perfectly, representing >1% of the total community. (These were never found in biofilm samples, this analysis is based only on water samples)
1607381633378.png

Treating BJD with antibiotics, in the aquarium
What to do? I could remove all the Euphyllia and try a dip, but I hadn't been having much success with dips. So I looked at the tank and realized, the only corals I cared about in this tank were the Euphyllia. Fish are easy to move to another tank if something goes wrong, I have plenty of tanks running with room for a fish or two.

So I decided to take the plunge and treat my whole tank with the antibiotic. Although it's often repeated on the internet that adding antibiotics to your tank will kill the good bacteria, I hadn't seen any evidence of that.

Meanwhile I had evidence an Arcobacter species was associated with BJD, published reports of the antibiotic sensitivity of these bugs, and a tank full of Euphyllia on the verge of succumbing to BJD. So I dosed the tank.

I chose Ciprofloxacin because it is effective at the lowest doses, reasoning that in this way, I could minimize collateral damage. I based this decision on this study because it had a nice comparison of dosage trials for a wide range of antibiotic; I saw several other studies that also supported the use of Ciprofloxacin to treat Arcobacter infections.

I used Ciprofloxacin at 0.125 mg / L. To achieve this I dissolved a 500 mg pill in 50 ml of RODI water, producing a 10 mg / ml solution (which I subsequently stored in the fridge). The aquarium system has 70 gal volume altogether (~265 L), so I added 3.3 ml of this solution to achieve 0.125 mg / L. I repeated this dose every 2 days for 3 doses altogether.

Within 24 hours of the first dose, all of the affected corals showed signs of improvement. Their tentacles inflated again, although the remained not full extended. Within 48 hours they were fully extended and looked perfectly healthy again.

A few days after the final dose, I sampled the aquarium again. Like samples taken from the same aquarium a month prior to introducing the diseased Euphyllia, Arcobacter sp. (sv1103) was again not detected. Introducing the diseased animals introduced the bacterium, and the antibiotic treatment appears to have knocked their populations down substantially.
1607384512881.png

I should emphasize that since there are no controls, or photographs, for the effects of this treatment on the corals it's entirely possible they simply got better on their own. We can have a little more confidence in the effects of the treatment on the Arcobacter themselves, though. Here we have a measurement of the effect, although not replicated in multiple tanks.

In a future experiment I will address both issues -- this was an experimental trial born of desperation.

But doesn't that kill the good bacteria too?
This is of course a reasonable concern. There's a wide range of views on how to achieve the right microbial community, and how much the various parts of the community even matter. But I think few experienced reefers would say the bacterial community doesnt matter at all. So it makes sense to be cautious about adding antibiotics to the tank and potentially killing off whatever parts of the community you think are important.

But of course the dose makes the poison, and remember that I chose this antibiotic specifically because it was effective against this genus at the lowest dosage of any antibiotics tested.

The system has a moderate bioload with 4 fish in a 40 gallon DT with 30 gallons of sump volume, along with a bunch of corals. There is no algal refugium or macroalgae. So if the nitrifying community were to die, I would expect to see an explosion in nutrients and algal growth. This didnt happen. (I confess, I didnt measure nutrients this time around. I base this conclusion on the lack of algal growth that would be fueled by a rise in nutrients)

More directly, I compared the aquarium microbiome before and after the treatment. Here's a table summarizing the major stats we look at in comparing aquarium microbial communities:
T-1 month
(before BJD)
T+1 day
(during BJD)
T+10 days
(after treatment)
Diversity Score (percentile)552 (91st)438 (69th)532 (87th)
Balance Score (percentile)0.5 (76th)0.18 (50th)0.51 (83rd)
Ammonia-oxidizing microbes (%)Present (5.5%)Present (2.3%)Present (0.9%)
Nitrite-oxidizing bacteria (%)Present (0.08%)Not detectedPresent (0.05%)

Did the treatment damage the microbial community? Not at all. If it had any effect at all, it was to restore the community to its previous state by selectively knocking out a few susceptible bacteria.

If all a person cares about is the nitrifying community, that was not removed. There was a slight decrease in AOM while NOB were restored from undetectable to a more typical level.

If a person is interested in the microbial functions of the community more broadly, the summary statistics of Diversity and Balance scores were also improved by the treatment rather than harmed. The introduction of diseased corals lowered both scores, and the antibiotic treatment increased both scores.

This point about the broader microbial community can be illustrated most easily with a barplot showing the community over time. In these plots, each color represents a different microbial family.

cipro community barplot.jpg

The figure shows that the microbial community was fairly typical before BJD, became atypical during BJD, and was restored to something like its previous state following the antibiotic treatment.

A skeptical reader may point out that since there are no replicates here, we can't be confident attributing the changes to the treatment. It could be coincidence. Perhaps the corals recovered on their own and the microbial community resumed its previous structure after a transient disturbance caused by adding diseased corals. Based on my previous efforts to save Euphyllia with BJD I find this a little unlikely, but certainly not impossible.

Ultimately that objection would be correct and in the future I will do a properly replicated experiment to test this. What I've shown here is a just hypothesis with some preliminary evidence supporting it.

How Common is this Bacterium in Saltwater Aquaria?
In a set of 148 aquariums I've sampled (this is not the entire database, its the "high quality" database made up of normal, healthy tanks with good sequencing coverage), Arcobacter sp. sv1103 is not detectable in a majority of tanks.
1607389031773.png

We can express this same idea a few different ways. For the majority oftanks, this sequence was not detected at all (80%). For nearly all tanks (95%), this bacterium was absent or extremely rare (<0.00006%).

This context makes the comparison with my BJD infected tank even more stark. That 1.2% is huge in comparison with the typical levels observed across a large number of aquaria.


Summary

Based on what I've reported here, I hypothesize that infections with Arcobacter sp. (sv 1103) contribute to Brown Jelly Disease in LPS corals, and that these infections can be safely and effectively treated in the aquarium with low doses of Ciprofloxacin. Depending on the results of further tests, this could be a useful tool for the hobbyist community in the fight against BJD.

Important disclaimer: if anyone reading this feels inspired to treat their own tank, I specifically take no responsibility for the results. This is an experimental treatment, and if you run experiments on your own tank you take all the responsibility for the results.

But I know some of you, like me, enjoy running experiments on your own tanks. Many of us have a bottle of Cipro sitting around. And anybody who keeps Euphyllia is likely to encounter BJD at some point. Anybody want to test this? I'll throw in the microbiome testing before and after if so...

Thanks for reading and may your tanks stay free of Brown Jelly!


[unless you're the kind of person inclined to run experiments with antibiotics on your tanks, so you can help me duplicate this :) ]
As a scientist and 2 years off of being a pharmacist, as well as a reefer who loves her euphyllia and has and is struggling with loss due to BJD, I greatly appreciate this write-up and plan to test this out myself. Granted I do not have the ability to test my water column for the acrobacter present as you did, but I will still post my visible results. I am hoping that I can get ahold of cipro at the local feed store, and if not I'll call my vet.
 

Pharmasqueek

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Is there a way to order Cipro without needing a script from a vet.
Google fish cipro. I got 60 of the aqua-cipro 250mg tablets from valley very supply. I paid $22 for overnight shipping and the meds were under $30. No prescription needed for fish ciprofloxacin.
 

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Google fish cipro. I got 60 of the aqua-cipro 250mg tablets from valley very supply. I paid $22 for overnight shipping and the meds were under $30. No prescription needed for fish ciprofloxacin.
I am starting my cipro treatment tonight on my display tank and hospital tank. Hoping to save a pink wall handset and 1 of 2 heads of plain green torch. Can't save my purple torch in time. Also want to rid my water column of the offending strain of bacteria before my holy moly torch and bliwtorch torch arrive tomorrow (Friday). I will post my findings.
 

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I meant a pink wall hammer and blowtorch torch, dang autocorrect. I have a 180 gallon display tank and a 10 gallon hospital tank that I'm treating. I dissolved 2x 250mg ciprofloxacin tablets in 1 Liter of RODI water (0.5 mg/mL). This led me to dose 170.25 mL into my display tank and 9.46 mL in my hospital tank at the recommended 0.125 mg/mL dosage. I will post how everything looks tomorrow morning and then how everything goes for the next 2 doses every other day. Unfortunately I can not test the levels of arcobacter before and after in my water, but there is 100% a brown jelly disease infection in my tank.
 

SirShmyra

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So has anyone tried the cipro treatment and chemiclean in the tank at the same time?
 

Mywifeisgunnakillme

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So has anyone tried the cipro treatment and chemiclean in the tank at the same time?
So this nice torch lost 50% of its mass in less than 36 hours before i noticed it going on. No other corals are impacted in my 50 gallon and i have a healthy number in there now. I've been stocking the 50 gallon heavy for a 200 gallon on the cusp of getting water in it...

To answer your question, using both certainly sid did not hurt, but i employed several techniques.

1. Remove and qt coral with brown jelly.
2. Dip in iodine solution and used turkey baster to remove dying flesh, get iodine into wound.
3. Used eye dropper and applied hydrogen peroxide directly, 100% strength, to wound. Avoided healthy tissue except on margins.
4. Dipped in hydrogen peroxide/salt water bath. Turkey basted.
5. Added one scoop of chemiclean to one gallon of saltwater in qt tank. Put wound in direct, but light flow. 4 hours later, added cypro. Half tablet to one gallon of saltwater.
6. Five hours later:

20210728_225000.jpg


No more brown jelly! Coral open and remarkably happy.

Will report back if things go sour or well from here. But I'll continue to run cypro for a few days.

I wasnt sure if chemiclean would kill cypro so i added chemiclean first. Let it have some time work on its own was my logic. Ive heard short dips of it help. Then i just added so much cypro that i doubted chemiclean would kill it... anyway, not scientific, but since i wanted to try as many possible cures and pray one would work... instead of guessing on one possible solution.... this is what i did .... it seems to have stopped what was sure death in less than a day had i not done anything...
 

Mywifeisgunnakillme

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This hammer was late in arriving on shipping. It was melting hard. I thought it was a certain gonner.

I employed a similar regime on it in qt. It's now in the display and hopefully on it's way to recovery...

So yeah, cypro and chemiclean, are winners for brown jelly in my book. Iodine and hydrogen peroxide too!
20210728_230701.jpg
 

KrisReef

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This hammer was late in arriving on shipping. It was melting hard. I thought it was a certain gonner.

I employed a similar regime on it in qt. It's now in the display and hopefully on it's way to recovery...

So yeah, cypro and chemiclean, are winners for brown jelly in my book. Iodine and hydrogen peroxide too!
20210728_230701.jpg
Nice report, glad the jelly lost.

I do think your additional steps may confuse the OPs findings for people who are reading this thread and trying to figure out how to treat their melting lps.

Your extra steps (rinsing, ChemiClean, and Iodine) perhaps make the Cipro antibiotic treatment more complicated than needed?

The premise of antibiotics treatment is to add an antibiotic that stops the infection. Cipro alone had been demonstrated to be all that is necessary to stop brown jelly.

our reef family frantically trying to save a sick lps will have enough difficulty doing the dosage calculations (ime) and adding extra steps could lead to extra stress and mistakes.

Hydrogen peroxide comes in many different concentrations, “full strength” is a potentially hazardous term that could easily kill a particular coral during a dip or washing step.

I hope this is helpful, Cipro alone stopped bjd in my tank:)
 

trmiv

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Well crap. I’ve had three torches that have deflated rapidly over the past few days. Woke up today and one was covered in BJD. I pulled it and tossed it but I want to save the other two, plus prevent another that is so far unaffected from getting it. Luckily I have some of the 500mg Cipro on hand I bought for just such an occasion.

My tank is a Reefer 350 (92g) , but I usually dose at 80g (302l).

So 302 x .125 = 37.75 /10 = 3.775 ml

sound right?
 

Herby’s reef

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I recently sent one of the aquabiomics tests and he reported back that my tank had Arcobacter in it. This is the bacteria believed to be responsible for bjd. Anyways, I have had trouble with bjd losing a head here and there, and I currently had a colony experiencing this, so I did the cipro treatment. This is on a 180 gallon system and 50 gallons is pure sps. Also have clams. Nothing died and the brown jelly seem to have stopped! Nothing bad at all happened. My gonioporas did not open as much during treatment, but they all look fine now.

one question, does anyone know where you see the Arcobacter on the results. If he had not sent me an email telling me it was in there, I would not have known. I don’t see this bacteria listed anywhere in the result pages. I want to send another sample to make sure it is gone, but I’m not sure I will know how to determine jt and I find these guys to be a bit difficult to reach, although I am beyond impressed and excited with the info I received. @AquaBiomics ? Any input?
Thanks!!
 

beesnreefs

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I recently sent one of the aquabiomics tests and he reported back that my tank had Arcobacter in it. This is the bacteria believed to be responsible for bjd. Anyways, I have had trouble with bjd losing a head here and there, and I currently had a colony experiencing this, so I did the cipro treatment. This is on a 180 gallon system and 50 gallons is pure sps. Also have clams. Nothing died and the brown jelly seem to have stopped! Nothing bad at all happened. My gonioporas did not open as much during treatment, but they all look fine now.

one question, does anyone know where you see the Arcobacter on the results. If he had not sent me an email telling me it was in there, I would not have known. I don’t see this bacteria listed anywhere in the result pages. I want to send another sample to make sure it is gone, but I’m not sure I will know how to determine jt and I find these guys to be a bit difficult to reach, although I am beyond impressed and excited with the info I received. @AquaBiomics ? Any input?
Thanks!!
Congrats on the treatment working for you! It's gotta be a relief to feel like you've eliminated this issue. I know I felt relieved.

Eli explained to me that they don't include Arcobacter in their reports because, in his words, "it is not formally considered a pathogen yet." I think he specifically tests for it "on the side".
 

Herby’s reef

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Congrats on the treatment working for you! It's gotta be a relief to feel like you've eliminated this issue. I know I felt relieved.

Eli explained to me that they don't include Arcobacter in their reports because, in his words, "it is not formally considered a pathogen yet." I think he specifically tests for it "on the side".
Does he always write up the report that mentions it? I would like to make sure I have eliminated it!
 

Mywifeisgunnakillme

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I have another LPS labeled when bought as a torch but clearly after being near other torches--is not. It's been stung hard and had brown jelly develop in QT. It's basically a uniform single branch frogspawn i guess if that even makes sense...

Anyway, in a hospital tank, i tried just chemiclean after a hydroperoxide basting on infected area and iodine dip. The brown jelly returned after a little over a day. The other LPS i had in the hospital tank also had brown jelly return with just chemiclean as treatment.

Based on that, i removed the brown jelly. Actually cut away the skeleton on one LPS to clean tissue, basted hydrogen peroxide, dipped in iodine again, and now have the full range of Cypro, Chemiclean, and two anti-biotics added the hospital tank. This massive combo worked for the LPS in the pic above (with large skeleton showing but corner recovering).

Any, just another anecdote.... Will update in a few days. I am changing the water every couple days and re-treating the hospital tank. After a couple days the water turns a weird tinge yellow, so i figure just best to change out 100% and redose. I am running a bubbler with the hope of keeping PH up as well as small circulating pump.
 

Mywifeisgunnakillme

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A little update on the three corals i have in a small hospital tank with brown jelly after coming in from late shipments. They're not doing well. The brown jelly keeps re-emerging and I remove it as it pops up. Unfortunately it kills more and more of the coral each time it pops up. Using a combo treatment of cipro and chemi-clean in the hospital tank.

A couple observations.
  • When i cut the skeleton of one coral to try to cut my losses as last ditch effort, i noticed the brown jelly went deep into the coral. Maybe sometimes infections run deep and maybe sometimes infections are mostly on the surface of the coral? One being harder to treat than the other?
  • Also, unlike the treatments i had success beating brown jelly just a couple weeks ago, i have not cleaned/scrubbed the hospital tank. I just changed the water.
  • Without physically cleaning the hospital tank every couple of days, i've noticed the water fouling rather quickly (unlike the treatments a couple weeks ago when i kept the hospital tank clean). I guess i just got lazy and thought the cleaning was not necessary since anti-biotics were being dosed.
  • Anyway, the next time i wage this battle i think i will keep the hospital tank sparking clean and drain and scrub it every couple days. Make sure no brown jelly is living in it under other film algae or whatnot. Since it's only a one gallon tank it's pretty easy to do so.
  • My thought is that the brown jelly infected the hospital tank (surface areas) as a whole, maybe lived under/protected by surface film algae, and that in fighting this disease with medicines it may be best to be really careful to keep the brown jelly both off your corals AND off/out of the tank/water column.
Anyway, looks likes a failure this time... but maybe these observations helps someone else, try something different....
 

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

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