Brown Jelly Disease

[wazupjames]

I am losing a battle to brown jelly disease. I need help, Every morning it seems like 1 more coral is toast. All perams are normal. Please help!! Tank is over 1 year old.

SG 1.025
Temp 78
Ammonia, Nitrite, Silicate = 0
Nitrate - 5
Calc - 420
Mag - 1480.

 

[tektite]

Check out this link:

Brown Jelly Treatment

 

[seafansar]

Dip your corals in iodine solution every day and have high flow. Good luck! It's a hard thing to beat.

 

[yvr]

If you see any brown jelly ie. necrotic tissue, you can use airline tubing to siphon off the dead/necrotic tissue and give the coral a bath with an Iodine solution like TM Pro Coral Cure or similar product. The iodine will act as an antiseptic and hopefully kill prevent the spread of the tissue necrosis.

 

[tektite]

The above link I posted has details on how to cure corals of brown jelly. Iodine does not do that unfortunately.

 

[Frankie]

Fully agree. Iodine is not a cure all and rarely does anything but stain the coral.
The link provided comes from a reliable source.
Good work tek!

 

[BigAl07]

That's a good article indeed but with all due respect . . .

I've had GREAT luck with Iodine used with BJD. Maybe I've been very lucky but I can't help but think there's more to it than that. Here is a rough outline to my BJD routine.

A) Set up IODINE dip per directions on Lugol's bottle
B) Remove coral and dip in solution for 10 minutes
C) Repeat this treatment 2x a day for 1 week
D) I always increase flow in the area the coral in is immediately to help "blow off" some of the protozoa
E) My first reaction to ANY tank problem (well not a leak or mechanical issue) is LARGE bags of Activated Carbon. I almost always have a few on hand ready to toss into the sump.


For a good while I was the "Dr Dude" for coral that came into the LFS damaged in shipment. I have had "some" experience with FrogSpawn, Torch, and of course Hammer Coral. If I had to guess I'd say I've dealt with BJD no less than 15x in the last 2 years. Some of these were tanks of friends or at the LFS but if caught early and SOME form of treatment is started immediately your odds of saving SOME of the colony are pretty good. The key is doing SOMETHING ASAP. I lost a whole tank of Euphyllia in less than a week about 3 years ago.

Again remember that what works for one tank or coral may or may NOT work for yours. If you do use IODINE as a treatment do NOT treat your tank. Treat the infected coral OUT of the tank only.

 

[seafansar]

+1 on what Al said. I have used iodine to treat two of my corals that got brown jelly. I did lose most of the coral, but mangaged to save pieces of them and they grew back. Maybe just luck with me too, but I think the iodine helped.

 

[Frankie]

I agree Allen that Iodine will in fact help and remove the chilophora and maybe kill it off in the dip. But this is not dealing with the problem that caused it and it will reoccur once put back into the infected tank. The same go's for Heinz method in the above link.
Your main reason for long term success is more then likely the Carbon. The main issue is really the water quality. You can in fact cure this problem with one regiment of freshwater dips in a single day.
Freshwater dips will in fact kill off the protozoa if done in stages and raising the salinity from one dip tray to another. But it is a lot of work.
After using Iodine for dips and having problem with it staining the corals I started to question the logic in using it diluted so little as in the directions Lugo's suggests doing.
But I will agree that Iodine will work also.