Reef nutrition

Digitata ... disease(??)

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sfsuphysics

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Hey I got this green base orange polyp digi, and it seems to be getting some sort of infection, for lack of a better word. It started small, but it's affecting various areas.

Now what it's not is monitpora eating nudibranchs, because I've dealt with those before (they dealt me a loss to 95% of my montis at one point), and when they eat they leave white skeleton behind, but this almost looks like a strawberry yogurt covering it, in fact you can still some of the polyps under some parts, other parts... bleh, it looks like skeleton.

Now there's a digi nearby (foreground) and doesn't have any issues, however looking at the polyps I'd guess its a slightly different coral.

Fish in the tank are yellow tang, tomini tang, double barred rabbitfish, and clown fairy wrasse, parameters are "normal" (~80F, 8.0pH, undetectable phosphates, nitrates, etc, Ca 400, Alk 7-8dKh.)

It is kind of under my 250w MH bulb... however it has grown there from a smaller nub, and this "infection" is recent, this is the last montipora I added to the tank too.

So any ideas on what this is? More importantly any ideas on what I should do in the mean time? Snip off healthy parts? dip in povidone or TMPCC? Less lighted area? Toss it out and just ask someone else to give me another piece?? :D It'd really be a shame to lose this coral, not that it cost me anything, but it does have a nice look to it.


Click thumbnail for larger picture, I didn't shrink it at all so you can see as much detail as possible
 
It must have caught digititus? :) Jk, sorry I'm no help. Thinks for nuking the aptasia in the background before you took the pic though :) ... I know, "shut up Levi, you are no help"

Seriously though, I saw some pricey stuff for sale at a LFS that said it helped with tissue restoral but I don't know about this sort of thing. I heard increasing iodine helps with infections but you probably new that.
 
Yeah the kalk globs was from yesterday's aiptasia hunting fest, its on a rock a considerable distance away too, so I doubt any kalk wandered back.

I'm not going to buy expensive coral revive stuff, especially when I don't know where the problem is, plus it was a freebe coral! (picked at a frag swap.. .from Norman's collection! :D)
 
I too got a frag of this at the swap...but I believe it was Sergio's. Mine bleached out a bit with the green base, but is otherwise healthy. Conclusion: Norm's tank has cooties


<---also about as helpful as Levi
 
That's odd Mike, I had the same thing happen to the same coral (ROAB orange polyp green body digi) about a year ago. It was taking over a large area in my tank, so I snapped off most of the branches, epoxied over all of the encrusted area, and left a small colony. The colony started to grow back and looked real healthy. Out of nowhere the polyps receded and the flesh became very thin, much like your picture, until eventually the colony died. None of my other Montis were affected, and they continue to be healthy. I didn't really trip on it because I was kinda glad it was gone. Strange thing is, there is a small area that seems to be coming back, or at least I pretty sure that's what it is, I've had so many corals in that area come and go I can count 3-4 small puddles that I'm not quite sure what they are, but one is looking orange :D
 
Can you use a turkey baster and baste any of that off?

Kind of a side track, but
I have a frag of that green base orange polyp digitata I got from Jeremy a while ago. When I got it though, I think it lost its green color. Right now it is white with orange polyps - will the green come back?
 
[quote author=A_Lee link=topic=4741.msg57704#msg57704 date=1223323384]
Can you use a turkey baster and baste any of that off?

Kind of a side track, but
I have a frag of that green base orange polyp digitata I got from Jeremy a while ago. When I got it though, I think it lost its green color. Right now it is white with orange polyps - will the green come back?
[/quote]I was never able to get it to go deep green like I've seen it before, if I bumped it or hit it with a baster you could tell the body was green, just never the forest green. I do still suffer from a lack of green in my tank that I think has something to do with the natural sunlight my tank gets. Good to know though that there are some pieces floating around!
 
Mine stays green :) I have two different ones, one is most likely not a digita but a close relative. When they loose color, the hole thing goes on me and I almost always know why (params off>alk)

Mike's looks like it's getting irritated by something...sweepers, chemical, parasite?
 
It is kind of a slow grower for me, compared to the other digitata I have in my tank. I did move it into my other tank this past weekend, where it is getting signifcantly more light. Right now it is ~6" under a 150W HQI, whereas before it was midlevel under HO T-5's. We'll see how it goes :)

Mike, after dipping, did the pink stuff at least come off?
 
[quote author=GreshamH link=topic=4741.msg57724#msg57724 date=1223331015]Mike's looks like it's getting irritated by something...sweepers, chemical, parasite?
[/quote]

That's what I was thinking too.
 
A_lee: after dipping it didn't come off, so it wasn't like a fungus that was covering it.

Norman: Well I moved it, so that should fix the problem.
 
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