Lost a goniopora to BJD :(

[MartinM]

Although I normally talk about carpet anemones and clams, I also have several Goniopora that have grown really large, some from frag size to larger than a volleyball. But today I lost a really nice ‘red glitter’ goniopora, that had gone from a 1cmx1cm frag to about half the size of a golf ball in less than two months. Then, inside of 24 hours, gone. I’m still trying to save what’s left of a small amount of tissue inside the skeleton in a QT tank with Ciprofloxacin after an iodine dip, but we’ll see. I’m also doing a low dose Ciprofloxacin treatment of the whole system, as per @AquaBiomics protocol.

I’m just lamenting about how fast we can lose the LPS we love to this disease or collection of diseases

I’ve always iodine dipped new Goni frags, but I think in the future I’ll do a full five or seven days of QT + low dose Ciprofloxacin before introducing. I think whatever it is, it got introduced on this or some other new frags.

 

[mike550]

Although I normally talk about carpet anemones and clams, I also have several Goniopora that have grown really large, some from frag size to larger than a volleyball. But today I lost a really nice ‘red glitter’ goniopora, that had gone from a 1cmx1cm frag to about half the size of a golf ball in less than two months. Then, inside of 24 hours, gone. I’m still trying to save what’s left of a small amount of tissue inside the skeleton in a QT tank with Ciprofloxacin after an iodine dip, but we’ll see. I’m also doing a low dose Ciprofloxacin treatment of the whole system, as per @AquaBiomics protocol.

I’m just lamenting about how fast we can lose the LPS we love to this disease or collection of diseases

I’ve always iodine dipped new Goni frags, but I think in the future I’ll do a full five or seven days of QT + low dose Ciprofloxacin before introducing. I think whatever it is, it got introduced on this or some other new frags.

Total bummer. I’m rebooting my tank so I also have to rebuild my corals. At my point in this hobby (2-1/2 years) I’m still in the mindset of I don’t buy livestock that I wouldn’t regret losing the next day.

 

[Atherial]

I had brown jelly on the torch that I got from AquaSD. At least I only lost a beginner torch. I hope you can save some of your glitter goni.

 

[MERKEY]

What do you keep your mag levels at and has it fluctuated at all in the past 2 months?

Could be totally unrelated but I've notice some corals like goni's and torches that will bail if mag drops.

Sorry for your loss.

 

[MartinM]

What do you keep your mag levels at and has it fluctuated at all in the past 2 months?

Could be totally unrelated but I've notice some corals like goni's and torches that will bail if mag drops.

Sorry for your loss.

Great point. I did have a fluctuation in ca/mg/alk due to a AFR dosing line that emptied itself when I was fixing a clogged dosing pump (idiot move on my part, I thought it was empty). The last time I had an alk swing like this, another Goni developed an infection (thankfully saved all of it with antibiotics). I completely forgot about the correlation, thanks for pointing it out. Ugh, sometimes the tiniest mistakes cost us a lot in ‘heart pain’ as someone I know puts it.

Thanks guys for chiming in.

 

[MartinM]

Total bummer. I’m rebooting my tank so I also have to rebuild my corals. At my point in this hobby (2-1/2 years) I’m still in the mindset of I don’t buy livestock that I wouldn’t regret losing the next day.

Why the reboot if you don’t mind my asking?

 

[mike550]

Why the reboot if you don’t mind my asking?

I had an infestation of hydroids that overran my tank. I also had some corals (gsp and xenia) that took over all my rockwork. So I scraped out a lot of the stuff from the walls and rock. Then as a second step I took out the existing rock in sections and really brushed and cleaned them with peroxide. Now I’m Qting pretty much everything (exception is certain inverts) before going into the DT

I‘ve got some new rock curing and will replace the existing scape in sections so the tank “works” bit more to my liking.

 

[reefpunk]

I just beat BJD and saved my torches using an antibiotic called Clindamycin. I put 900mg in my tank which is around 200g total water volume between my sump and DT. It was a last ditch effort that paid off.

 

[MartinM]

I just beat BJD and saved my torches using an antibiotic called Clindamycin. I put 900mg in my tank which is around 200g total water volume between my sump and DT. It was a last ditch effort that paid off.

I’ll stock up! Sounds like about 1mg/L dosage? Did you treat for 5 days?

 

[reefpunk]

I’ll stock up! Sounds like about 1mg/L dosage? Did you treat for 5 days?

I should be forward and say that I don't have much knowledge when it comes to putting antibiotics and other medications into my tank. It was truly a last ditch effort with the antibiotics I had left from a previous illness I was dealing with. As of today all signs of BJD are completely gone. The torches that had BJD on them are already making a recovery and regrowing tissue where the BJD was. Polyps are fully extended and no longer deflated.

 

[AgentSPS]

Sucks to hear about your loss. I too lost a red glitter to BJD in recent weeks. Happened literally in a matter of hours.

 

[MartinM]

Sucks to hear about your loss. I too lost a red glitter to BJD in recent weeks. Happened literally in a matter of hours.

do you know if it was triggered by anything? Every time I have an (accidental) all swing I’ve had one get an infection. This is the first time I’ve lost an established one since learning about antibiotic and iodine treatments though. I might have been able to save it but I was out of town and webcam video fidelity just isn’t good enough to see the polyps

 

[OrionN]

Low dose treatment using antibiotic is detrimental to your tank and to the environment . All it does is to select for resistant strains of bacterial.
That is how you get SUPER BUGS (or super bacterial) that are resistant to everything, one antibiotic at a time. We have bacterial that are highly resistant to everything we throw at them, and they are killing patients.

PLEASE DO NOT DO IT.

This is why knowledge is needed before one can prescribe antibiotic. Why you need a prescription to get them. There are all kind of loopholes around this regulation.

 

[MartinM]

Low dose treatment using antibiotic is detrimental to your tank and to the environment . All it does is to select for resistant strains of bacterial.
That is how you get SUPER BUGS (or super bacterial) that are resistant to everything, one antibiotic at a time. We have bacterial that are highly resistant to everything we throw at them, and they are killing patients.

PLEASE DO NOT DO IT.

This is why knowledge is needed before one can prescribe antibiotic. Why you need a prescription to get them. There are all kind of loopholes around this regulation.

I also worked in the medical field and medical research and respectfully disagree. ‘Superbugs’ alone rarely kill perfectly healthy people (there are almost always underlying issues and compounding factors such as overweight/obesity, diabetes, COPD, poor diet, hypertension, etc), other drugs (like antidepressants) contribute far more to the creation of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains than do antibiotics themselves (some large publications about this came out recently), and the only actual testing, sampling, and culture studies I’m aware of for aquariums show that the low dose treatments are very effective at selectively eradicating pathogenic bacteria while having virtually no impact on the rest of the aquarium’s microbiome.

 

[OrionN]

Young healthy people do not succumb to bacterial often. But not everyone is young and healthy. That is why we need antibiotic to keep people alive.
when you expose a large population of bacterial to low level antibiotic, the one that is sensitive to it will get out competent by the one that is resistant to the antibiotic.
That is how super bugs start.

If you wipe out 99,99% of the bacterial but does not kill all of it, a week later the 0,01% will repopulated and they are all resistant to the antibiotic. In our body, when we give antibiotic, the maimed but not dead bacterial will be mopped up by our immune system and eliminate. So we are cure most of the time.
I repeat: Do not give low level antibiotic to our tanks. It is bad for the environment. If you or your family get infected, you maybe the first one that get kill.
there are enterococcus that absolutely resistant to EVERYTHING that we throw at it. People that get infected with these do not do well, especially the ones with endocarditis (heart valve infection)

 

[MartinM]

Well, you also have to be specific in your definitions. How do you know what level is killing 100%? How do you know there is ever a 100% eradication? These things are just not exact without access to a lab as well as culture equipment, microscopy, etc. . I’m also not following the logic of treating a reef aquarium, and the end result being an antibiotic resistant strain, infecting humans.

There’s simply no way to say X antibiotic at Y dose will kill 100% of whatever unknown pathogenic bacteria happen to be in the system.As I mentioned, the only culture and microscopy work I am aware of demonstrated that the pathogenic bacteria in question was completely eradicated at a very low dose, thus higher dosages were not required. I’m sure you’re aware that it is unnecessary and irresponsible to use a higher dose than necessary. So the dosages you’re recommending may be way higher than is required for the pathogenic bacteria commonly found in reef aquariums. But there is no way to know without significant research. There is too little information, and too little actual science and our hobby for us to know. There’s no way to know if the dosage you’re recommending has a 100% eradication rate, versus a dose that is 10% of that, or maybe we need to dose 200% of what you’re recommending. There’s simply not enough information to know.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a proponent for responsible antibiotic use for sure, but none of us are able to take a very scientific approach to treating our reef aquariums. We don’t know what the pathogenic strains are, we don’t know what the required dosages are, we only have anecdotal evidence and a few cultures to give us educated guesses.

Compared to the tens of millions of people that may or may not be consuming antibiotics responsibly, I don’t think a few dozen reefers are going to elevate the risk of antibiotic resistant strains to any significant degree, especially as these are closed, salt water systems.

 

[OrionN]

I don't recommend exposing our reef tank which is full of bacterial to low level antibiotic. I recommended that we take the infected animal out to a hospital tank and treat it. That way we don't select for resistant organism by exposing a huge number of bacterial to low level antibiotic to select for resistant strains. (I really sound like a broken record here)

In our body, antibiotic actually does not do all the work, it is our immune system that did the mop up and eliminate pathogens from the body. Of course, antibiotics help the immune system to do this by maiming the bacterial. This is why we want to use minimal dose that work to clear up the infection. We try to decrease the effect of antibiotic to the normal bacterial population in the body by use low dose, narrow spectrum and try to replace the normal flora with probiotic supplement during and post antibiotic treatment.

When we do culture of infected material in human treatment, we always test for antibiotic sensitivity, and the concentration of antibiotic needed to inhibit the bacterial, so we know which dose of antibiotic to use. We selected to narrow spectrum antibiotics (weaker antibiotics to many patient) to minimized affect the normal body flora. Of course, we cannot do any of these with treatment of reef tanks. That is why treatment of the whole reef tank is not recommended. The dose of antibiotic I recommended for treatment of sick anemones take into account the volume distribution (water volume of the HT) to put the concentration in the ballpark of concentration level in human treatment.

I really get frustrated when I see all the reefers misuse antibiotics. While I do not think what I wrote all those years ago on antibiotic usage in our hobby is wholly responsible, I do think it is responsible in large part. IMO, using low dose antibiotic in a reef tank is the worst misuse of antibiotic of all offending uses of antibiotic by reefers.

We have a crisis in antibiotic availability at this time. Finacial reward for companies to developed antibiotic is low because patients do not take antibiotic indefinitely, as opposed to HTN, diabetes, or cholesterol medications. Because this reason, there are no new antibiotic coming down the pipeline. We must make do with what we have and if the antibiotic is not available to treat the superbug, then the patient die.

The argument that there are only a small number of us doing the abusing, so it does not affect the problem does not hold water. We must all do our part. We cannot let everybody else do the right thing, while we misuse antibiotic because this is exactly what cause the problem in the first place.

 

[reefpunk]

I don't recommend exposing our reef tank which is full of bacterial to low level antibiotic. I recommended that we take the infected animal out to a hospital tank and treat it. That way we don't select for resistant organism by exposing a huge number of bacterial to low level antibiotic to select for resistant strains. (I really sound like a broken record here)

In our body, antibiotic actually does not do all the work, it is our immune system that did the mop up and eliminate pathogens from the body. Of course, antibiotics help the immune system to do this by maiming the bacterial. This is why we want to use minimal dose that work to clear up the infection. We try to decrease the effect of antibiotic to the normal bacterial population in the body by use low dose, narrow spectrum and try to replace the normal flora with probiotic supplement during and post antibiotic treatment.

When we do culture of infected material in human treatment, we always test for antibiotic sensitivity, and the concentration of antibiotic needed to inhibit the bacterial, so we know which dose of antibiotic to use. We selected to narrow spectrum antibiotics (weaker antibiotics to many patient) to minimized affect the normal body flora. Of course, we cannot do any of these with treatment of reef tanks. That is why treatment of the whole reef tank is not recommended. The dose of antibiotic I recommended for treatment of sick anemones take into account the volume distribution (water volume of the HT) to put the concentration in the ballpark of concentration level in human treatment.

I really get frustrated when I see all the reefers misuse antibiotics. While I do not think what I wrote all those years ago on antibiotic usage in our hobby is wholly responsible, I do think it is responsible in large part. IMO, using low dose antibiotic in a reef tank is the worst misuse of antibiotic of all offending uses of antibiotic by reefers.

We have a crisis in antibiotic availability at this time. Finacial reward for companies to developed antibiotic is low because patients do not take antibiotic indefinitely, as opposed to HTN, diabetes, or cholesterol medications. Because this reason, there are no new antibiotic coming down the pipeline. We must make do with what we have and if the antibiotic is not available to treat the superbug, then the patient die.

The argument that there are only a small number of us doing the abusing, so it does not affect the problem does not hold water. We must all do our part. We cannot let everybody else do the right thing, while we misuse antibiotic because this is exactly what cause the problem in the first place.

I'll be honest I am not very knowledgeable with this kind of information. However I haven't done a water change since I dosed my tank with antibiotics so none of the water has even gotten into the water systems here and I've ran carbon 24/7 a couple days after I put the antibiotics in the tank(I dont know if carbon helps remove antibiotics from the water but I assumed it would help). I didn't mean to trigger a debate with what I found helped with my BJD.. I was just trying to share my experience to help others who might find themselves in the same situation.

 

[MartinM]

I don't recommend exposing our reef tank which is full of bacterial to low level antibiotic. I recommended that we take the infected animal out to a hospital tank and treat it. That way we don't select for resistant organism by exposing a huge number of bacterial to low level antibiotic to select for resistant strains. (I really sound like a broken record here)

In our body, antibiotic actually does not do all the work, it is our immune system that did the mop up and eliminate pathogens from the body. Of course, antibiotics help the immune system to do this by maiming the bacterial. This is why we want to use minimal dose that work to clear up the infection. We try to decrease the effect of antibiotic to the normal bacterial population in the body by use low dose, narrow spectrum and try to replace the normal flora with probiotic supplement during and post antibiotic treatment.

When we do culture of infected material in human treatment, we always test for antibiotic sensitivity, and the concentration of antibiotic needed to inhibit the bacterial, so we know which dose of antibiotic to use. We selected to narrow spectrum antibiotics (weaker antibiotics to many patient) to minimized affect the normal body flora. Of course, we cannot do any of these with treatment of reef tanks. That is why treatment of the whole reef tank is not recommended. The dose of antibiotic I recommended for treatment of sick anemones take into account the volume distribution (water volume of the HT) to put the concentration in the ballpark of concentration level in human treatment.

I really get frustrated when I see all the reefers misuse antibiotics. While I do not think what I wrote all those years ago on antibiotic usage in our hobby is wholly responsible, I do think it is responsible in large part. IMO, using low dose antibiotic in a reef tank is the worst misuse of antibiotic of all offending uses of antibiotic by reefers.

We have a crisis in antibiotic availability at this time. Finacial reward for companies to developed antibiotic is low because patients do not take antibiotic indefinitely, as opposed to HTN, diabetes, or cholesterol medications. Because this reason, there are no new antibiotic coming down the pipeline. We must make do with what we have and if the antibiotic is not available to treat the superbug, then the patient die.

The argument that there are only a small number of us doing the abusing, so it does not affect the problem does not hold water. We must all do our part. We cannot let everybody else do the right thing, while we misuse antibiotic because this is exactly what cause the problem in the first place.

Your post jumps from some superficial, basic info about antibiotics in humans, to not recommending their use in reef aquariums @OrionN - but you also wrote an (excellent) guide to their use for treating anemones. The only distinction I can imagine here for this to not be hypocritical would be QT vs display, but the bacteria don’t care what kind of aquarium they’re in, and neither does the antibiotic.

Succinctly put, my point is that you, me, nor annyoe else has any in vivo or in vitro information about the antibiotic treatment of reef organisms beyond some very limited publications and anecdotal evidence. Therefore, making any kind of claims regarding dosage, efficacy, eradication rate, etc are pulled from absolute thin air…except for the work @AquaBiomics has done, which is based on water sampling and culturing, and it’s how I based my dosing. His sampling showed that dosages of much, much lower than the dosages you suggest are effective at 100% eradication of the bacteria responsible for some brown jelly diseases.

As a former biologist, toxicologist, and medical researcher, it’s my opinion that antibiotic use in reef aquariums poses essentially zero risk for humans, and/or for the creation of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria that are dangerous to humans. Your opinion may differ, and neither of us have the data to be able to make any kind of more accurate claim than an opinion.

 

[OrionN]

Your post jumps from some superficial, basic info about antibiotics in humans, to not recommending their use in reef aquariums @OrionN - but you also wrote an (excellent) guide to their use for treating anemones. The only distinction I can imagine here for this to not be hypocritical would be QT vs display, but the bacteria don’t care what kind of aquarium they’re in, and neither does the antibiotic.

Succinctly put, my point is that you, me, nor annyoe else has any in vivo or in vitro information about the antibiotic treatment of reef organisms beyond some very limited publications and anecdotal evidence. Therefore, making any kind of claims regarding dosage, efficacy, eradication rate, etc are pulled from absolute thin air…except for the work @AquaBiomics has done, which is based on water sampling and culturing, and it’s how I based my dosing. His sampling showed that dosages of much, much lower than the dosages you suggest are effective at 100% eradication of the bacteria responsible for some brown jelly diseases.

As a former biologist, toxicologist, and medical researcher, it’s my opinion that antibiotic use in reef aquariums poses essentially zero risk for humans, and/or for the creation of antibiotic resistant strains of bacteria that are dangerous to humans. Your opinion may differ, and neither of us have the data to be able to make any kind of more accurate claim than an opinion.

The very fundamental fact about antibiotics is that low level exposure of antibiotic to a large number of bacterial select for resistant bacterial. This is so basic, "What don't kill you make you stronger" kind of thing. There are plenty and clear data regarding using antibiotic in chicken and fish feed result in the high level of bacterial pathogen with high level antibiotics resistant. This was the reason the FDA banned the use of antibiotic in feed. Unfortunately, the FDA does not control what happen to various practices outside the US.

There is a very clear differences between treating in HT with adequate antibiotic to kill essentially all the bacterial, vs. treating in DT with low amount of antibiotic. In complex setting of the DT, the bacterial number is a lot more numerous, and there are many areas where the antibiotic just does not penetrate (deeper than surface of the sand or rock). We know that Oxygen does not penetrate these areas because we have anaerobic environment there. Antibiotic, been a much larger molecule will not penetrate these areas either. I superficially read some of the way people treat the whole tanks, they always give very low level of antibiotic. Each antibiotic treatment given to a reef tank, will result in the bacterial in these tanks become resistant to the antibiotic used. I don't have to do a "study" to know this, just like I don't have to do a "study" to know that throwing a cat out of the 4 stories window down to cement pavement will result in a dead cat. Landing on its feet will not help in falling from a distant that high.

....His sampling showed that dosages of much, much lower than the dosages you suggest are effective at 100% eradication of the bacteria responsible for some brown jelly diseases....

There is two very clear fallacy in the above statement. First, before claiming that one can eradiate bacterial responsible for brown jelly diseases got to isolate and prove that the bacteria in question is responsible for the disease in the first place, which I don't think was done. Maybe you can enlighten me on this. Second, there is no reasonable scientific reason or even a reasonable hypothesis why "pathogen" is more sensitive than "non pathogen" regarding to their sensitivity to antibiotic. Rather, the reverse, in general, is arguably true.
If that statement is true, wiping out 100% of the bacterial in our reef tank would be a huge problem rather than a benefit. Rather like throw out the baby with the bath water.

...making any kind of claims regarding dosage, efficacy, eradication rate, etc are pulled from absolute thin air…

This statement is not true. Concentration of the medication in HT and easily calculated and the range of effective ball-park concentration of antibiotic can be easily obtain. When we do tests, we are routinely given information on what antibiotic the bacterial is sensitive or resistant to and at what concentration. What I did was recommended the dosage that give approximate level that would be in human blood when we take this medication (cipro in this case).

I wrote of my initial failure of treatment of a Magnifica with Cipro many years ago, and my experiences with treatment failure over the years. When anemone died, without treatment, it stunk to high heaven, but when an anemone died during adequate treatment course, it does not smell. That is why I know that the bacterial is adequately treated, just that the damage and injury to the anemone was more than its ability to survive before the bacterial infection was bought under control.

Again, it is clear beyond doubt that repeated exposure of a huge number of bacterial to low level antibiotic created bacterial resistant to antibiotic. It is not recommended to add antibiotic at a low level to our reef tank because of this problem. While I don't think the numbers of reefers is large enough for the FDA to jump into the regulation, it will regulate and ban this practice if it is large scale like in poultry and fish farming.

This is my last post on this thread as I said what I wanted to say. Peace to all.