Bummed

[New2Salt]

Our green finger leather is dying, something has attacked the stalk and it is disinagrating, our main tank was turning a slight milky color, we ended up moving it to a tank we had cycled and hadn't decided what we wanted to put in there, it's only a 5 gallon, but the water is completely white now. The rock it is on also had a zoo on it so I'm hoping we can save the zoo at least. Any suggestions on what to do with the leather, I know they grow back but if it's this bad and the stalk is what is affected should we give up? All the other corals in the tank are doing just fine, especially our Leather Toadstool it's a beautiful golden brown now, very healthy.

 

[fishfreek]

Im sure kevin will have some good rock solid advice for you.

One thing that I had thought of would be to do some emergency style fragging. Leathers in general are very forgiving to being cut so what you could do would be to frag the coral an inch or so above the damaged area.

Put the healthy part on a rock to reattach and then im not really sure what the best thing to do with the bad part would be.

 

[reefrunner69]

do some emergency style fragging.

Couldn't agree more. Do a large water change on the milky water. Any limb or branch that isn't disintegrating....cut it and lightly rubberband it to a piece of rubble. Put it in the main tank under good flow. I would cut out the entire trunk from the rock it originally came on and place that back in the main tank. Some sort of necrosis has developed and you want to cut in front/behing the infection and dying tissue.

 

[ReefLady]

Definitely run some GAC (granular activated carbon) for a couple days as well.

 

[New2Salt]

Thanks to you all, plan on doing some water changes, and have been running the GAC too, not sure how much it can be saved, it was going ok for about 2 days after we got it and then went down hill from there, our main tank is doing so well I was afraid if it was a disease it would affect the other leather or coral we have, will do the fragging and hope it will do good. Thank you!

 

[Anemoneman]

not sure how much it can be saved

The smallest piece will grow into a new coral. Don't lose hope. I have grown full grown corals from a piece as small as your little finger nail.

 

[kribbz]

so to frag a leather you can just chop off an arm and it will grow back. because i have a leather and i was wanting to frag the little sucker. is there anything else to it than this?

 

[michealprater]

Nope thats it. Leathers very well could be the easiest coral to frag.

 

[New2Salt]

Well tried fragging and cut out most of the bad parts, changed water, but it's still disintegrating no good parts left, do you think it could have been from a bristle worm? Our other leather is doing just fine, I just don't understand why this one died as fast as it did, it was my understanding that leathers are the hardiest. Thanks for all your help.

 

[michealprater]

Well, I had a finger leather disinegrate one time. It was due to my PH getting up to 8.6. It died just a quick as your did. It did not bother my toad stool either. I would suspect high ph. What does yours test at?

 

[New2Salt]

Ours has always been at 8.2 never a flux in PH since we started, at first we thought it was in a wrong area and moved it to a better flow and not so close to the light, then it just started to break away.