Frogspawn decapitated

deton8it

Member
Last night my branching Frogspawn looked normal. This morning I have 2 empty heads (bare skeleton) and I see one of the heads (polyp portion) drifting around on the bottom of the tank. How did this happen? Everything else in the tank is normal. All parameters are good beside a little low on Calcium and Magnesium but I was already aware of that and gradually making progress on increasing it. Nothing new has been added to the tank in the past few months. I have had the Frogspawn for about 6 months without issue. The only thing that is different is new salt. But that water change was a few days ago. Any ideas?
John
 

deton8it

Member
Do I remove the head that I found and trash it so it doesn't pollute the tank when it dies? Do I leave it in there and hope it finds a good home?
 

btldreef

Moderator
Cut off the now skeleton heads and any others that look like they're melting as well. Remove the other floating head.
I just recently went through this, it's not good and can spread to other LPS. It's a bacterial infection. I lost 10+ heads of frogspawn, a huge Aussie wall hammer, 4 heads of branching hammer, 1 golden torch and 1 regular torch as well as a 100+ head colony of acans.
It got so bad in my tank that I ended up dipping ALL my LPS in Lugol's 2x
This after I had quarantined all corals/fish/rock etc and dip corals before they go in this tank. I have no idea what caused it
 

deton8it

Member
That just got expensive. I cut off 4 heads. The two that were obviously affected and 2 more that didn't open up all the way this morning. I'm down to one now. I also tossed my Welso that started bleaching just in case. Now that I'm down to one Frogspawn should I cut it down to smallest amount of skeleton that I can still work with or just leave it as is with the other heads removed?
Did it clear up after the two dips?
How do I get rid of it?
Do I need to dip my other LPS? I have a big Pearl Bubble about 1 foot away.
 

btldreef

Moderator
After two dips it cleared. I know others that this has happened to as well and 2 dips seems to be the way to go. Some have gotten away with just one. I wasn't chancing it. I also didn't act on it right away and lost a lot before I did anything.
You have to remove the dead heads, as long as that's gone you should be okay. I'd watch the bubble. Some of the corals I lost were in a separate tank that shared the same sump, so it's something that can travel in the water.
 

btldreef

Moderator
The Lugol's dip was 40 drops to 1G of water.
Then we did 5 drops daily on our 180 for a week. Now everything is fine
 

deton8it

Member
I just checked all of the LFS's around here and no one carries Lugols. The only place open today has Melafix and that is it. Another store around here carries Coral RX but they are closed for business until Tuesday. Hopefully Melafix will work.
John
 

btldreef

Moderator
Lugol's is really just iodine/iodide 11.835%
In a bind I've used regular iodine from the drug store.
 
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