My Coral has taken a beaten.

This morning when I left for work, my Coral was fine, but that stupid cone head snail thing was at its base, when I got home this is what I seen, the cone head was higher up on the white part of the Coral and those damn bugs were all over it and the Coral. You can see the 3rd pic was how the Coral looked this morning, the difference between the part is clean, just like a snail eating algae, you can see its path. I don't know what going on, but I found those big coneheads hanging around other Corals as well.

 

Hi ReefnJeff

to me that looks like a typical case of STN at the base of the coral
whilst I cannot state for a fact it is not damage done by snails

I can offer my opinion, and that is the snail investigated an area of decaying flesh on that coral , rather than attacked the live coral

how long have you had the coral?

I have noticed in my tank, that as corals grow flow can become an issue for areas at the base of the coral, as all the flow is being absorbed by the outer branches

in addition, due to this relative lack of flow to the inner areas of the coral, you can get localized nutrient highs ( the flow is no longer effective enough at removing the corals own waste or any other waste that falls within the branches of a compact coral such as that one)

the above may go some way to explaining why STN would start on a coral that was doing perfectly for a long time

Steve

 

I agree with Steve.

I have had BN do exactly the same thing on more than one occasion.

 

I had the Coral for about 2 months and it doubled in size, it always had good flow, I feed my fish around 7:30 AM before I left for work, other than where that conehead was, the Coral thats now white, was normal color and the polyps were out and looked no different from the rest, when I got home about 7 PM thats what I seen, but the conehead had moved then there was the bugs added. If lets say it was due to poor flow, isen't that kind of sudden and fast when just 12 hours sooner you could see nothing wrong at all.

 

STN=Sudden tissue necrosis.

 

ohhh! sudden!! thats what I call sudden, is there nothing I can do?

 

STN can also stand for slow tissue necrosis. I know it from long ago as sudden, then changed to RTN (rapid tissue necrosis).

If it progresses further frag it up and save what you can.

You can also try covering the area with super glue gel up to the perimeter of the tissue.

Unfortunately if all parameters are in line with no significant swings in alk I have never been able to stop it and have not kept BN in many years.

I was also told by other hobbyist that it could be viral or bacterial.

 

Hi reefnJeff

I have no doubt that you have the coral in good flow
if the coral has doubled in size in 2 months, and yet you have not changed the flow in any way during that 2 month period
than it is possible that the flow those areas of the coral used to get, is no longer as great as it was when the coral was 1st introduced
the extension on the branches, the increasing thickness of those branches
all work together to shield the area of the coral that is protected in the middle

I am not saying that it is definitely a flow issue, as there can be varying reasons, causes, stressors for a coral to develop areas of lost flesh

nutrients, temperature, parameter fluctuations etc its basically a similar situation with fish and ich, the potential may be there as in a pathogen or virus, and additional stressors can bring on an attack for a particular specimen

in a recent case I experience, I developed some STN at the base of a coral, but it was minor and hardly noticeable
the bare area in terms of coral flesh was naturally subject to colonization by algae (making the white difficult to see)
when my snails eventually found it, they cleaned that area up very nicely, which made the STN much easier for me to see

in the mean time, the STN had been increasing, but so had the growth of the algae colonizing it

so once visible again, the white STN area, was in fact much larger than what I had originally noticed

is it possible that a similar thing happened with this coral of yours?

 

Thanks steve wright, will the direction of flow is distrupted with a rotating flow deflector, so it gets a constant medium flow from one direction, with then a quick blast from the opposite direction.

Earlier this Coral had a bad burn from the super glue at its base and a short way up, it recovered well from that. I think this summer the worst changes in parameters in my tank was temp, the hot summer without a chiller I had temps in the range of 77 to 85.

Corailline made mention about the BN, is this STN limited to the BN only? I do have 4 other SPS Corals, is this something that could spread Coral to Coral?

 

ill just add, that if you expect bugs on the corals, you need to dip them to see...