Sarcophyton (toadstool) bacterial infection

[andrewkw]

This little hole has been forming for the past few days. I thought it was perhaps propagating but it's definitely not. There is a little die off around the area and after using a turkey baster there appears to be a hole in the coral. I'm too tired to do this now so I'll wait until tomorrow but I think I will just cut it just past the infection then cut around the infection and have a little frag. It's too bad because this one is a rather slow grower and I seriously have 40 neon green ones, but this is the only semi long polyped tanned one I have.

I haven't added anything to my tank in about a month and no other corals show any issues. Just a random fluke?

 

[andrewkw]

I don't know why I try posting a video directly to R2R it never works...

 

[andrewkw]

Follow up. I cut out the infected area. It was actually 2 small holes. However I had a lot of trouble looking at it under the microscope. There is not enough back focus to put the coral directly under the scope. Eventually I took some scrapings off the hole but saw very little movement. It had been out of the water about 5 minutes or more at this point.

Again no idea what any of this means, this is the first time I've looked at a coral under a microscope but hopefully the leather recovers just fine now that the infected area has been cut out.