SICK LOBO - need identification/advice

[lauriemae]

Hi all,

In our 55 gallon tank, one coral after another has been biting the dust. First, the elegance, then a brain, candy cane, pineapple and now his lobo, which has been wonderfully happy for eight months has developed some cyst looking bumps this last week. Well tonight it looks as if one has burst and stringy stuff is coming out. On the second photo, there is a bump on the left side with stringy stuff coming out, but it is hard to tell, there is also some coming out on the right side underneath.

Can anyone tell me what this is?

All of the water parameters are perfect...it's been checked by us quite often and several LFS's as well. This tank has T5's and LED's. All of the corals had done beautifully for sooo long and now each are dying a slow death...Mushrooms, todstool, frogspawn, etc. are thriving still.

My other tank has a bad outbreak of hair algae...finally got rid of most of the red slime/cyno algae and now I have hair algae and all my beautiful corals under the halides look brown---nothing but brown corals, sand, rock, lol.

I'm attaching a couple of photographs of the lobo and it's bumps/stringy stuff.

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Laurie Mae

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Wow... I've had a Lobophyllia now for several years and have never seen anything like those bubbles. That's bizarre.

As far as the stringy stuff in the 2nd picture, those look like mesentary filaments - think of them as the nuclear weapons in a coral's stockpile of weapons. My lobo is near some mushrooms and sansibia and every so often, mesentary filaments just appear coming out of the fleshy outer part of the tissue. They can reach out quite a ways and they latch on to whatever is bothering it and "teach it who's boss." In your picture, I sure can't see anything that the lobo might be trying to attack, but those strings sure look like mesentary filaments.

Just a guess, but I'd say the bubbles and filaments are all some form of reproduction. If you're having unexplained coral deaths in the tank, maybe there's something in the water causing undue stress. Corals under stress will often devote their energy to reproducing since they know their end is near.

I just had an incident where one of my powerheads decided to puke it's guts in my tank, and it wasn't at all obvious except for really upset corals. All water tests came back OK. While the odds are slim, you might want to remove all your electrical items from your tank (heater, powerheads) and give them a really good inspection and cleaning... just to make sure their seals are still good and the potting is good on the powerheads.

 

[lauriemae]

Thanks so much for your insight/advice. We'll start looking at things to see what we can find as far as electrical items. Just how would you know if a power head puked its guts in your tank?

Will let you know what we find.

 

[lauriemae]

you know what I just thought of? There is a large anenome in the back lefthand side of the tank. He can get rather large, but for close to a year he has been in the same place, happy as a lark....just the clown and him. WELL, this morning, he decided he was tired of that place and started to try to move which worried me because I lost a couple of anenomes early on in the filter system, etc. I was SO happy this one decided to stay put. Guess what? When he gets big, he almost touches the lobo...and maybe he does sometimes? Unfortunately if the anenome decides to travel, there is no other wonderful spot for him, if THAT is the issue, we may have to find another home for the lobo....thoughts?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

For me, the powerhead thing became apparent when I saw a column of hot water coming out the BACK of the powerhead, where the cord exits the body. Y'know how hot water looks kind of distorted around a heater when it's on? That's what I saw. In addition, when I took the powerhead out of the tank, it was really really hot. I guess I'd just say take a good close look at things and feel the powerheads for excess heat. Odds are that's not your problem, it's just fresh in my mind so that's why I mentioned it.

As far as knowing the powerhead was puking its guts out, during an "autopsy" of sorts, after pulling off the back plastic cover of the powerhead and exposing the area where the coils are potted/epoxied in, it was obvious the epoxy had disintegrated in an area and the copper coils were exposed to saltwater.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Hmmm... that anemone issue definitely sounds about right. He doesn't have to touch the lobo for the lobo to know it's there. Corals can "smell" danger pretty well and break out the weaponry.

 

[Jspires688]

I have a lobo that sends out stringy things like that all the time I have moved him and it still happens my tank is really full there is no where he can be put where he is not close to something else

 

[Krypt]

If your nem has been stationary for a long time and then just starts moving, that's a signal that something is definitely wrong. If the powerheads and other gear check out, try running some GAC to clean the water of any toxins that may be in the water.