My quest to fight Elegance Coral Syndrome (ECS)

pixelhustler · Jul 20, 2020

I bought a beautiful pink tip elegance (origin unknown) a few weeks ago. It opened within a day of introducing it into my tank but the tentacle and oral disk extension was never great compared to the other Aussie Elegance already in the tank. A few days ago the tentacles stopped extending and overnight the coral stopped opening, it only opens partially exposing some of the green on the oral disk in the afternoon/evening. Today it started showing that white stringy substance coming from their digestive system, meaning it's very stressed by now. It responds to food (reef roids) but I'm not sure it's actually eating it.

I spent the past few days reading on Elegance Coral Syndome (ECS) and I'm on a quest to nurse it back to health - I will try any ideas and suggestions. I relocated it to the bottom substrate and built a plastic hood to protect it from the light and excessive flow. The interesting thing is it started to open up and the white stringy guts started disappearing within an hour of putting the hood on.

The first thing I'm thinking of trying is the 15 minute FWD idea by @OrionN

Elegance Coral Syndrome Diagnose and Treatment with Fresh Water Dip

Elegance Coral, Catalaphyllia jardinei, is a LPS that is very beautiful easy and is one of my favorite LPS. Since early 2000, it was well known by reefers that Elegance coral is easy to care for, unless it contracted Elegance Coral Syndrome (ECS), a universally fatal disease with no known cure...

www.reef2reef.com

My hunch is the disease is caused by bacteria so this may very well be the most effective treatment. It's very effective against dinoflagellates, which are single-celled just like bacteria, so I'm hopeful.
The other thing I'm going to experiment with are broad-spectrum antibiotics. I'm going to try Seachem Metroplex as it seems to be one of the safer antibiotics (metronidazole). I found a study on white band disease on Acros and this antibiotic was one of the treatments. It didn't beat the disease but it slowed it down so I'm willing to give it a shot: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964940/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4083779/
The question is whether I should treat the entire tank with antibiotics or only the FWD solution. I have a lot of other corals in my tank and don't have a QT tank so I'm hesitant to treat the whole tank with metronidazole. The benefit of treating the FWD is I could increase the dose, but I'm not sure 15 minutes/day will be enough for antibiotics to work. I'm thinking of doing both: a slightly lower dose for the whole tank and slightly higher dose for the FWD.

I will also do a 50% water change tomorrow. Other than that, any ideas are very welcome. I'm trying to keep it fairly simple to avoid stressing the Elegance too much. The other question is whether I should treat both my Elegances. The healthy one is starting to decrease its extension so I'm thinking at this point prophylaxis is not a bad idea. Will keep you updated and post progress pictures, for the better or worse.

Daniel@R2R · Jul 22, 2020

Keep us posted on your success. #LPSexperts

doctormark · Jul 22, 2020

I have kept elegances since the late 1990's. Just when ECS was coming into the picture. ECS is definitely most likely seen with Indonesian specimens and has been shown to be transmissible from specimen to specimen. The characteristics are very specific, the mucous coat and abnormally swollen oral disc are distinctive traits.
In years past I have treated specimens with various antibiotics (doxycycline, tetracycline) but did not have success. It was not until recent times that I tried a freshwater dip with an affected specimen and had success.
I personally dipped the animal in FW for 15 the first day or two that symptoms were shown. I then transferred it to a clean quarantine tank. I believe that is important as the microbe may still linger in the aquarium.
Personally I would treat both elegances. It is contagious. I can't remember exactly but there is a very lengthy thread on reef central about ECS from the early 2000's.

OrionN · Jul 23, 2020

Coral pathogens are specific, a lot are species specific but some are genus specific. I don't think ECS infect any other coral.
I would not treat the whole tank. I would document well what you have, then document the treatment and how it affect the coral.
Please keep us posted. Please also document it on my thread on ECS and FWD
Good luck and TIA

pixelhustler · Jul 24, 2020

Thanks, guys. Here's my first update. Hard to tell yet but I'm seeing signs of improvement.

June 26, healthy and a couple of weeks after receiving it. The seller ended up sending me a different coral than the WYSIWYG because the one I ordered wasn't happy. This makes me believe ECS was already in the tank.

July 15, a few days into initial symptoms. I don't have pictures but a few days later it wasn't opening at all

July 20/Day 1: 15 min FWD and 25% water change. Both Elegances looked very rough for a few hours after that, closed up with a lot of slime production. The healthier Elegance that I dipped as prevention looks worse now around the tentacles but it’s fully open and it will recover. The sick elegance that didn’t open started to open within a few hours. Picture after FWD:

July 21/Day 2: Rest. Healthier Elegance still opening fine. Sick Elegance opens for a few hours in the afternoon/evening but tentacles are still fully retracted.

July 22/Day 3: 5 min dip in a solution of saltwater, Bayer dip, and one measure of Seachem Metroplex. They both tolerated this well with no slime production afterwards. Sick Elegance is puffed up but starting to open a bit

July 23/Day 4: Rest. Healthier elegance looking good except tentacles are not fully puffed up. Sick Elegance still closing up for half of the day, and still showing white stringy gut.

July 24/Day 5: 7 min dip in a solution of 50% saltwater 50% freshwater + Bayer + Metroplex. 25% water change. I didn’t dip the healthier Elegance as it was never doing too bad and it looks pretty good now. Sick Elegance (pictured below) is now fully opened up with retracted tentacles but really puffed up. I'm now cutting small slits in a solo cup to further protect it from the light (I don't have a QT tank)

After the dip I discovered this bright red spot on the coral, I’m baffled as I’ve never noticed it, I’m pretty sure I inspected it for fall crabs all this time and it wasn’t there.

I’m now going to give them a week or so of rest and observation. I might do Coral RX dips with some Metroplex but I can't risk doing FWD anymore. Both are in a restricted light and flow area. As a side note, my maxima clam was showing some symptoms of Pinch Mantle Disease, so per @OrionN advice I gave it a 30 min FWD. It's not opening better than ever. This is interesting as Orion has drawn comparisons between PMD and ECS so I too wonder if they might be related.

Lastly, here's a picture of the healthier Elegance that was getting really puffy a week ago, it now looks in better shape, minus some damage around the tentacles sustained during the FWD. Keep in mind this Elegance was never closed up, but it was getting really puffy and it's now deflated a lot:

Let me know if you guys have any thoughts and suggestions, so far this seems promising.

pixelhustler · Jul 28, 2020

Update #2:

The healthier Elegance is doing well, hasn't been treated ever since.
The sick Elegance still has not shown symptoms of tissue recession but is a bit puffy and will only fully open its oral disk (no tentacle extension) a few hours every day. I've continued to dip it every other day so the white stringy guts (Mesenterial filaments) are still present due to the stress. I wanted to dip it with two other products before letting it fully rest for a week:

July 26/Day 7: 10 min dip in saltwater + Coral RX + Seachem Reef Dip (Iodine). 15 second rinse in fresh water.

July 28/Day 9: 7 min dip in saltwater + Coral RX + Metroplex. 15 second rinse in fresh water.

I'm aware I've been doing a lot of dips and I'm now going to wait a full week to avoid overstressing it. The goal is to see the mesenterial filaments recede as an initial indicator of recovery. Whatever pathogens it's fighting should be very weakened by now, so it's the coral itself that has to work towards its own recovery. I'm still keeping it mostly covered to protect it from light and flow but I'm letting a bit more light in to make sure the zooxanthellae can produce some energy. Here's a picture a couple of hours after the dip, it will open a bit further later today or tomorrow. I will start feeding reef roids if its feeding response improves.

Will post another update in a week. As always, any thoughts or suggestions are very welcome

Chibils · Aug 2, 2020

How are things progressing? Any luck?

pixelhustler · Aug 3, 2020

Chibils said:
How are things progressing? Any luck?

Unfortunately, I'm now starting to see signs of tissue recession. It hasn't been a week since the last dip and it's opening less than before. In addition, the healthier elegance has been partially closed today. I'm now debating whether I should resume dips every other day with coral RX/metronidazole/iodine or let it rest. They seem to be doing worse than before but I'm not sure if it's because I was dipping them, or just the natural progression of ECS. As always, I'll take any ideas and suggestions, and I will continue posting pictures even if they end up dying just to show the progression of the disease

ReefDude716 · Aug 3, 2020

pixelhustler said:
I bought a beautiful pink tip elegance (origin unknown) a few weeks ago. It opened within a day of introducing it into my tank but the tentacle and oral disk extension was never great compared to the other Aussie Elegance already in the tank. A few days ago the tentacles stopped extending and overnight the coral stopped opening, it only opens partially exposing some of the green on the oral disk in the afternoon/evening. Today it started showing that white stringy substance coming from their digestive system, meaning it's very stressed by now. It responds to food (reef roids) but I'm not sure it's actually eating it.

I spent the past few days reading on Elegance Coral Syndome (ECS) and I'm on a quest to nurse it back to health - I will try any ideas and suggestions. I relocated it to the bottom substrate and built a plastic hood to protect it from the light and excessive flow. The interesting thing is it started to open up and the white stringy guts started disappearing within an hour of putting the hood on.

The first thing I'm thinking of trying is the 15 minute FWD idea by @OrionN

Elegance Coral Syndrome Diagnose and Treatment with Fresh Water Dip

Elegance Coral, Catalaphyllia jardinei, is a LPS that is very beautiful easy and is one of my favorite LPS. Since early 2000, it was well known by reefers that Elegance coral is easy to care for, unless it contracted Elegance Coral Syndrome (ECS), a universally fatal disease with no known cure...

www.reef2reef.com

My hunch is the disease is caused by bacteria so this may very well be the most effective treatment. It's very effective against dinoflagellates, which are single-celled just like bacteria, so I'm hopeful.

The other thing I'm going to experiment with are broad-spectrum antibiotics. I'm going to try Seachem Metroplex as it seems to be one of the safer antibiotics (metronidazole). I found a study on white band disease on Acros and this antibiotic was one of the treatments. It didn't beat the disease but it slowed it down so I'm willing to give it a shot: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4964940/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4083779/
The question is whether I should treat the entire tank with antibiotics or only the FWD solution. I have a lot of other corals in my tank and don't have a QT tank so I'm hesitant to treat the whole tank with metronidazole. The benefit of treating the FWD is I could increase the dose, but I'm not sure 15 minutes/day will be enough for antibiotics to work. I'm thinking of doing both: a slightly lower dose for the whole tank and slightly higher dose for the FWD.

I will also do a 50% water change tomorrow. Other than that, any ideas are very welcome. I'm trying to keep it fairly simple to avoid stressing the Elegance too much. The other question is whether I should treat both my Elegances. The healthy one is starting to decrease its extension so I'm thinking at this point prophylaxis is not a bad idea. Will keep you updated and post progress pictures, for the better or worse.

Question do you have the parameters of the water that the coral came in and your parameters when you added it. How long did you acclimate and which method of acclimation. Don’t use coral rx it is too strong lol like you can smell it from feet away when you take cap off. Use 1:4 ratio of peroxide with tank water for no longer than two minutes then rinse with turkey blaster with fresh saltwater. Arc owner and salty from frag father corals do this with all of their coral dips. What park level is your tank bottom at and what kind of flow do you get on sandbed

pixelhustler · Aug 3, 2020

ReefDude716 said:
Question do you have the parameters of the water that the coral came in and your parameters when you added it. How long did you acclimate and which method of acclimation. Don’t use coral rx it is too strong lol like you can smell it from feet away when you take cap off. Use 1:4 ratio of peroxide with tank water for no longer than two minutes then rinse with turkey blaster with fresh saltwater. Arc owner and salty from frag father corals do this with all of their coral dips. What park level is your tank bottom at and what kind of flow do you get on sandbed

Thank you, I will try to add a bit of peroxide to my dip. I'm not sure what parameters the seller had - I have pretty standard water parameters and doing 50% WC weekly.
I'm not sure about the total PAR but I've kept the Elegance mostly protected in a cup with holes. I'm a bit worried the light won't be enough for the Elegance's zooxanthellae so today I partially uncovered it (cut the cup in half), turned off half of my lights and I only have one 12' inch Truelumen Pro actinic strip on. The PAR is supposedly 65 but at the bottom it should be much less. I'm also keeping it at fairly low flow. Just fed it some reef roids and the mouths opened a bit but the feeding response is faint. I will probably dip it in antibiotics tomorrow, and add a bit of peroxide and iodine.
Part of me wants to let it be and not overstress it, but it seemed to be recovering when I was doing a lot of 5-7 min dips every other day, so I think I'll end up going that route.

ReefDude716 · Aug 3, 2020

pixelhustler said:
Thank you, I will try to add a bit of peroxide to my dip. I'm not sure what parameters the seller had - I have pretty standard water parameters and doing 50% WC weekly.
I'm not sure about the total PAR but I've kept the Elegance mostly protected in a cup with holes. I'm a bit worried the light won't be enough for the Elegance's zooxanthellae so today I partially uncovered it (cut the cup in half), turned off half of my lights and I only have one 12' inch Truelumen Pro actinic strip on. The PAR is supposedly 65 but at the bottom it should be much less. I'm also keeping it at fairly low flow. Just fed it some reef roids and the mouths opened a bit but the feeding response is faint. I will probably dip it in antibiotics tomorrow, and add a bit of peroxide and iodine.
Part of me wants to let it be and not overstress it, but it seemed to be recovering when I was doing a lot of 5-7 min dips every other day, so I think I'll end up going that route.

that would be way under the par elegance corals typically would be they would be considered moderate light (150 to 250) so you would be fine without the container the issue with the container would be flow. Yea give it another day or two to before doing more dips. What size tank do you have that you are doing 50% water changes? Test your water parameters tomorrow and post them if you can

pixelhustler · Aug 3, 2020

Here's the latest picture. There's some minor tissue recession all around the skeleton but it's now especially obvious where the arrow points. You can tell from the white color a new and larger portion of tissue came off. The orange substance between the mouths is reef roids. The mouths are opening to eat it so that's a positive.

pixelhustler · Aug 5, 2020

Good news and bad news:
The good news is the mesenterial filaments were almost gone and the Elegance still has a feeding response. The bad news is tissue recession is progressing, although not too fast.
I will continue doing dips but every 5-7 days and I will be feeding it Reef Roids every couple of days with my pumps off since it doesn’t have tentacle function.
I removed the cover but dimmed the lights as I’m worried it might be light starved. The oral disk still opens half way and I’m not ready to give up just yet, as most of the coral is still very much alive. Here’s a picture a few hours after the dip, not the best reference as it always looks quite stressed post-dip.