COTM: Aug 2008 Montipora

ok for the sad update....
I fragged it and made a lot of little pieces. Any area around the white areas, I made sure I had a very wide area of clean tissue. I had placed it in a QT tank. For 1 evening the frags looked good. The next morning the tissue started getting white again and within a couple hours here is the picture..
http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm169/schackmel/102_1300.jpg
http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm169/schackmel/102_1302.jpg

Plus it caused a major spike in water parameters...ammonia shot up sky high as the coral was literally dying. So I have a couple of QT tanks set up, with the same ph and SG, so I moved it to another one and figured I would dedicate two QT tanks to this task...unfortunately 1 is not bare bottom but I will not ever keep a monti in there. The coral continued to deteriorate so drastic measures had to be done. A friend of mine told me of a dip that would either kill the parasite or .......... So I tried it. I had a couple days without any new white patches appearing. It appeared that we were making an upward recovery. My monti that was only mildly affected has not had any new appearances and still has not. However today when I woke up the remaining frags of the original cup coral have become almost totally white. I did just give up on those pieces. I was able to salvage one piece of frag that looks like it was untouched
http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm169/schackmel/102_1303.jpg
and with any luck, maybe this piece will survive. I am due to treat prazi pro again today, and am hoping this little piece will pull through. I have read in some articles that eggs can lie in dorment for upto 18 months so this little mistake of mine is going to cost me that long of not having one of my favorite corals in my display tank for a year and a half.
I wanted an educational article for the COTM, but not this way. But hopefully somebody will learn from my mistakes out there. ALWAYS QT your corals and livestock!

 

How's it doing this evening??? Hopefully better!

Gin

 

thanks for the concern...but the one piece that I thought was going to make it now has a few white spots, within the last few hours...I am probably going to have to pitch it in the morning. I treated again with prazi pro and am going to wait until morning but the death rate is just to fast to do anything. And it pains me to watch, as I know what the outcome is going to be. By tomorrow night it will be white with brown slime. I have tried traditional dips, and high risk dips, and those burgers still survive. Only thing will kill them is to starve them!:-/

Here it is now



this was earlier today



fragged pieces a couple days ago


right prior to fragging on Weds.


Tuesday


recap..started Tues with small piece of growth breaking off....white area where growth broke off. Within 4-5 hours this occurred!

Here is the original piece of coral about 1 week ago (white is sand)



I was hoping to salvage a small piece of coral for grow out....but again the fear of placing back into my display would have been too great for too long. I must have had a gazillion eggs on that thing, which is now in my display tank and my QT tanks. No worries with the QT tank...nor with my display. Just no montis! I guess one positive thing...it could have been A LOT WORSE.....AT LEAST NUDI ONLY EATS ONE PARTICULAR SPECIES. I CAN NOT IMAGINE THIS HAPPENING TO ALL OF MY CORALS OR A COUPLE OF CORALS. THANK GOODNESS IT IS JUST MONTI. All I have to do is avoid monti for a while (Actually I am going to avoid adding anything for a while)

 

Potassium Permaganate <sp> Dip kills Nudis and eggs, I don't have the recipe though!

 

I was originally going to try Poly Ox...but could not find it anywhere. I then had somebody tell me about 2 possible dips that would either kill the eggs and nudi or kill the coral...one I tried and the other was the potassium permaganate. Both are extremely risky to coral and should only be used as last ditch effort and with exact directions followed to the tee(which mine were dying so it was a no brainer..and the person who recommended it had tried it many times and had been in field for years and years, and is an expert..so I tried it) but that is the reason I am not listing the name of the other dip in my posts.

Today the coral frag is worse...half is completely dead. I could probably frag the other half and try to salvage it, but I know it is not worth it anymore so I will probably just toss it today

I will try to post another picture right before I put it and me out of its misery! I just dont have time nor the heart right now...

 

I disposed of the last piece of monti a few minutes ago. Someone told me that if you let a piece of monti sit out and slime upthe nudi will come to the surface and you can see them a lot easier. So, I thought I would just try that out of curoisity. Remember this is after a FW dip (bad for stonies I know), 2 highly risky dips, and 2 tx with Prazi Pro. This just shows how resistent this SOB's are. This piece is one that seems fairly untouched...VERY SMALL



the white is all nudi and eggs. It is more obvious in real life..hard to capture in photo, esp on such a small piece like this. This has made me decide it is not worth it to try to salvage this piece!

 

montipora coral

Here are a few of my favorites from my tank

 

This is my fav that I look forward to having in my tank especially the plating type