My Coral has taken a beaten.

all SPS corals can be affected by both slow and rapid tissue necrosis
but fortunately it does not seem to be contagious as such
what can happen is
isolated corals are affected, whilst other corals in the same set up show no signs of issues
or, in any situation of a major negative influence ( temp increase, major parameter fluctuation, sudden change in lighting etc ) many corals can be affected at any given time

STN or RTN ( if either of these occur on branches of a coral, it is a relatively straight forward process to frag off the infected area, ensuring you frag low enough below the healthy tissue which if conditions in the aquarium are OK, healthy tissue will regrow over the expossed white skeleton

if either of these issue affect coral at its base, whilst you could frag healthy parts away from above that area, my preference has been to leave the coral, unless the issue starts to spread further up the coral

I do have a couple of SPS colonies in my reef , with barely visible STN at the very bases of the colonies, again I suspect that these developed due to lack of flow within the very middle of a tightly packed group of branches
those corals are still perfectly healthy from that area upwards, and as such I have chosen to live with the issue , due to fact from front viewing angle it is hardly visible and thus does not detract from my appreciated of my aquarium
if the STN started spreading up the coral at a faster rate than the tips of the coral are growing, then under those circumstances I would almost certainly decide to frag as many branches as possible and discard the base part with the STN



re bugs, when you say bugs I assume you mean copepods and amphipods? and as per the snail, they probably just took advantage of some decaying flesh or algae on the raw exposed area of flesh

if the bugs you mention are of a different type, then Pickupmans advise above is definitely worth following up with

Steve

 

Hahaha! Yes the bugs are the Copepods, those darn things are over everything, I have taken notice that a lot of them like to follow around those conehead snails, perhaps they think the snail knows something they don't.

It's encouraging, but it seems the process has stopped and as you mentioned the damage done to this point is barely noticable. Mainly near its base and on the underside of some larger branches and on the dead areas the number of the bugs has almost disappeared leading me to believe perhaps no more tissue is dying on that Coral.

The temps in my tank is more stable now with the cooler weather and I put a timer on my MH lights so the lighting time has gone from over 10 hours a day to 6.

Thanks for all the info Steve.