Torch Coral Disease?

RDNanoGuy · #1 09-30-2010, 08:49 PM

I would like to hear anyone's opinion on this. I have had this coral in my tank for over 6 months and it has always been healthy until two days ago. When examining the tank at lights on I noticed this one head had its tentacles retracted more than the rest of the coral. Over the next 24 hours the tentacles completely retracted and a white mucous membrane started to form. Today the mucous has covered the whole head. Is this a disease or rot or is this part of the corals life cycle? All the other heads seem fine. What should I do about this?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Delphinus · #2 09-30-2010, 09:13 PM

Other than the "white" part of the description it sounds a little like brown jelly disease. If I'm not mistaken it is a protozoa (or maybe bacterial). It's NASTY stuff, you will lose heads overnight and there is risk of losing the whole coral. Euphyllia like torch, hammer, frogspawn, etc. are unfortunately very susceptible to it.

I'm not sure what the solution is - maybe a dip of some kind. There should be lots of info online though so try googling it and see if you think if it could be that or not. What has me stuck is that brown jelly is ... well, brown, and what you seem to have most certainly isn't.

untamed · #3 09-30-2010, 09:24 PM

I would remove that head. Just clip/saw it off as low as you can get it.

#4 10-01-2010, 05:04 AM

You will have to frag that head and maybe the ones on each side. But I would try just fraging that one head I had this happen to a very large torch I wound up with 2 frags with 4 heads each and a single head lost 5 heads in total.

Bill

RDNanoGuy · #5 10-01-2010, 09:41 AM

Thanks for the input.

I have removed the injured head from the colony.