What is my Gig doing?

[MikeyA]

Hello all, my gig has a balloon like growth floating out of it. A little background, I've had this blue gig in qt going on 12 days now. It arrived in very poor shape but it was improving greatly till around day 6-7,now it's been a struggle trying to see improvement in health. I would rate it at a 5. Well tonight while doing my 100% qt water change, before dosing cipro i saw this. Anybody know what it's doing?

 

[MikeyA]

I also meant to add that out stress spawns everyday right before I do my water change. I also had a routine of doing 100% wc's every 12hrs (7am/7pm) while adding cipro in the am and smz/tmp in the pm.

The vendor completed a 7 day cipro treatment before he shipped it, arrived in rough shape and unresponsive to initial cipro treatment (3 days) , shifted to smz/tmp (7 days) and saw improvement, now the nems health is reverted some so reverted back to cipro only in the pm (on day 2 currently. Here's a Pic on day 4-5 on smz

 

[Vitabella]

Air bubble stuck inside the anemone. I have never had an anemone stress spawn and survive both gigs and mags. I’m crossing my fingers for you bud!

 

[resortez]

Last picture looks like it might begin to settle in. Definitely looks in better shape compared to the first 3 pictures. In my personal experience, a dead giveaway of when a carpet is about to exit, you will see pieces of their tiny tentacles all over the tanks floor. Your carpet doesn’t seem to be dropping any flesh, so I would assume that to be a positive sign.
Maybe add a small dose of iodide/lugols to help with the recovery of any damage to its flesh. I would keep magnesium steady & at healthy levels. Checking parameters to make sure there are no drastic swings that can further stress the carpet.
In my personal experience, based on the pictures, the carpet looks to be doing better. Hopefully it makes a full recovery. Good luck.

 

[resortez]

Thats one thing that takes time to learn in this hobby, redundancy will save you a massive headache & heartache

 

[Ocellaris123]

Any recent pic of it?first few does look like ingested air.

 

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

To be honest, if theres no evidence of a current bacterial infection, I would stop dosing ciprofloxacin. Ciprofloxacin is a very strong antibiotic and will damage its existing holobiont.

If I were you, I'd stop treatment, move the anemone to a cycled tank, and run carbon.

 

[D-Nak]

Last picture looks like it might begin to settle in. Definitely looks in better shape compared to the first 3 pictures. In my personal experience, a dead giveaway of when a carpet is about to exit, you will see pieces of their tiny tentacles all over the tanks floor. Your carpet doesn’t seem to be dropping any flesh, so I would assume that to be a positive sign.
Maybe add a small dose of iodide/lugols to help with the recovery of any damage to its flesh. I would keep magnesium steady & at healthy levels. Checking parameters to make sure there are no drastic swings that can further stress the carpet.
In my personal experience, based on the pictures, the carpet looks to be doing better. Hopefully it makes a full recovery. Good luck.

The last photo in this thread is not the latest photo. The OP's initial post has the latest photos. It shows a gig that is clearly struggling.

 

[D-Nak]

To be honest, if theres no evidence of a current bacterial infection, I would stop dosing ciprofloxacin. Ciprofloxacin is a very strong antibiotic and will damage its existing holobiont.

If I were you, I'd stop treatment, move the anemone to a cycled tank, and run carbon.

There is evidence of an ailment. It's never been proven to be a bacterial infection, so I don't know if we'll ever see any conclusive evidence that it is indeed a bacterial infection, though based on successful use of antibiotics, we can conclude that the likelihood of bacterial infection is high.

What has been anecdoctally proven to work (given the amount of success stories with its use versus the failures without) is the use of Cipro. We can agree that it's a strong antibiotic and is capable of killing the anemone, but without it the chances of survival are slim to none.

I have been tracking S. gigantea in captivity for over 10 years (back in the Reef Central days) and I have never seen one -- NOT A SINGLE ONE -- recover from the deflation-inflation cycle without the use of antibiotics.

I've yet to see a viable alternative other than Cipro to get gigs to acclimate. There are combinations of Cipro used with other antibiotics that seem to work, but those used on their own (meaning without Cipro) have had mixed results.

 

[Decamicron Labs Verified Sponsor]

I cannot say I am as well versed as you are in anemones. I will trust your judgement. Exposure to cipro for several weeks would take a toll on any organism, but I agree the question is to weigh this risk against others.