Brown Jelly Disease - is the coral doomed?

Brian Goldstein · Apr 4, 2019

Hey Reefers-

Been battling BJD for about 3 weeks now on one of my Australian yellow hammers. It's been slowly losing flesh for a few weeks and looks to be coming to it's last days. This will be the 2nd yellow hammer I've lost to brown jelly. Weirdly enough, it's only been the yellow hammers that come down with it. It never spreads to other corals, and none of my other corals show signs of stress/disease. The hammer was doing great for months and then all of a sudden contracted the disease.

I've made numerous attempts to thoroughly dip and intricately brush any remaining brown jelly from the skeleton. It looks great for about day, but the protozoa are extremely fast replicators.

Seems like my only hope is some sort of antibiotic. I could also up my dipping to 2x/day for 3 days straight to see if that helps.. but it might be a lost cause. This variety of bacteria seems to be very hardy to your standard reef dip solution.

Any advice/comments are welcome.

Thanks,

Brian G.

Macdaddynick1 · Apr 4, 2019

Dip in peroxide, then iodine, then revive. I’ve lost so many corals to bjd, until I had a Duncan with BJD and I was like oh well, it will die anyways so let’s hit it with all we got. Ever since then I saved a few corals that way. Recently it was an acan. You literally have nothing to lose. Also when you take out the coral, make sure to first siphone out the diseased pieces on the coral. And afterwards increase the flow in the tank and watch you ph at night.

Brian Goldstein · Apr 4, 2019

any recommended dose for peroxide?

Macdaddynick1 · Apr 4, 2019

Brian Goldstein said:
any recommended dose for peroxide?

Don’t remember exactly but I have a post about saving a Duncan from the BJD. Check it out. I think I had a detailed description of the doses on it. May be try around 10-20% hammers are pretty sensitive

Brian Goldstein · Apr 4, 2019

Macdaddynick1 said:
Don’t remember exactly but I have a post about saving a Duncan from the BJD. Check it out. I think I had a detailed description of the doses on it. May be try around 10-20% hammers are pretty sensitive

Okay, will do.

I just dipped again. Will do peroxide/iodine later this evening. Don't think my chances are very good though.

Macdaddynick1 · Apr 4, 2019

Brian Goldstein said:
Okay, will do.

I just dipped again. Will do peroxide/iodine later this evening. Don't think my chances are very good though.

Oh yeah this is probably too late. Sorry bud. Just for future reference, you do all 3 dips one after another. Don’t mix them, but dips should go one after another.

Brian Goldstein · Apr 4, 2019

Macdaddynick1 said:
Oh yeah this is probably too late. Sorry bud. Just for future reference, you do all 3 dips one after another. Don’t mix them, but dips should go one after another.

I basically followed your process on your thread where you saved your Duncan colony. I did 1x dip of H2O2, followed by Iondine, another H202, Coral Rx dip, then back to a fresh saltwater container. The bacteria literally detached from the skeleton/tissue and floated up to the surface.

My dipping was a bit extreme, but I feel like the only thing that's going to save it are extreme measure. If I see the jelly come back, I am going repeat the process.

I'll update if anything should change.