SPS blackened ends

[Fly Guy]

Ok, ive got a bunch of sps here that i really dont know what they are. They range from acrops, montis etc. They range from 1 inch and 1 arm to 6 inches many arms. On more than a couple of them they have a blackened tip or two almost looking burnt. Is this anything to be concerned about and should i break the blackened tips off?
Pics arent going to happen anytime too soon as acclimitization is my priority at the moment..........unless somebody pipes in letting me know i shouldnt even be putting the stuff with black on it in my tank, at least not in my display tank. I would be putting all of it in my 46 as a quarantine but for reasons i wont go into i really dont want to do that either...unless they are a risk to others.

Thanks and ill be checking with eager ears. Im hoping this isnt part of the reason I got this lot at a steal..................

[Fly Guy]

Ok...Kind of funny....kind of sad........look how many times this thread had been viewed. Thats about how many times i have refreshed the page.......

[VWD]

Well fly Guy, I think for now get them in your tank. Then have a good look at them , Don't break anything thing off until you have them under good ligthing. Can't say for sure.

[Fly Guy]

Thanks for the input. They all appear healthy. I just wanted to ask and hope that someone didnt respond with a "Oh nooooo, youve got the super contagious to all corals Black Tips of Death Virus. If you even get it on your skin you will never be able to keep corals alive again.....EVER!!!!!!"

[autochek]

My only suggestion, is to make sure there are no red bugs on them.

[Fly Guy]

Originally Posted by autochek

My only suggestion, is to make sure there are no red bugs on them.

Red bugs? I havent noticed any, but ive got the lights off in the tank. I will keep a look out. What would that mean?

[theplatypus]

Oh no you've got the super contagious to all corals black tips of death virus.

[Fly Guy]

Originally Posted by theplatypus

Oh no you've got the super contagious to all corals black tips of death virus.

haha

I KNEW it was something like that. I was going to a positive thinking class but i KNEW it wouldnt work!!

[Geoff]

red bugs are these really annoying pods that suck the life out of SPS, mainly acropora spp.. you almost need a magnifying glass to see them. they look like tiny red dots on the corals. i really mean tiny here, maybe half the size of a period.

G~

[tdwyatt]

Bill,

As much as I would like to say "just put them in the tank" (which is prolly OK), not knowing why the tips are black will always make me say to err on the side of caution and request that you isolate these specimens until you determine the etioilogy of the problem. Isolate them at least until you can show us good up-close in-focus pix with fine detail of the damage. Hopefully it is just damage to the specimens from any number of physical causes.

To my knowledge, there is not a disease specific to "black-tips" as such. This is usually a non-specific symptom of tissue death due to any number of problems rather than a particular disease. It could be red bugs as others have stated, but I think this type of damage is unikely due to red bugs, usually the entire specimen gradually loses color and either turns brown or dies, and is restricted to Acrporids only. More likely the cause is tissue dmage at the tips and colonization by some type of algae due to one of the following: grazing of the tips by coralivorous fishes, tip death due to phosphste limitation and exposure to intense lighting for extended times (think overzealous use of GFH to remove phosphate in BB systems), phototoxicity due to too strong a lighting without proper light acclimitization (very strong lighting will due this on its own under some conditions), or sedimentation resulting in smothering of the tips and loss of lighting. This type of tissue damage my occur when mounted specimens are knocked over by urchins, scavenging fishes, or some large snails in systems with sand bottoms (especially wrassses). Death of the rapid growth tips can occur in systems with insufficient or no supplementation of calcium and/or alkalinity. I am sure there are some substances that when taken up by the most rapid growth areas can be toxic only to these areas as well (copper in sub-lethal doses, for example). The tips could also be brown simply because they were kept in transport bags too long and the plastic was in direct contact with the coral tissue, resulting in tissue necrosis and subsequent colonization of the bare skeleton by cyanobacteria or some spp. of brown algae. There are many potential casuses for these brown tips, and most are just loss of the tissue at the tips. However, there is the potential that the necrotic tissue could be a problem if you put them in an established tank due to the introduction of such a large load of potentially pathogenic bacteria at once that it might be pathogenic to normally healthy tissue. In these circumstances, simply the sheer numbers of bacteria may be the problem, not the lack of ability of the coral to fight off what might normally not be a pathogenic spp of bacteria.


I vote for isolation until either resolution and normal growth appear, or fragging and an iodine dip are performed, simply because I am cautious. As already stated, it may be nothing. However, it is lot eassier to say you wasted your time being overly cautious than it will be to try and remove infected specimens from the system and treating a tank of newly infected specimens...


HTH

[whatevva]

Quote:

haha

I KNEW it was something like that. I was going to a positive thinking class but i KNEW it wouldnt work!!

Whatever you do...DON'T touch the outside of the bags that the corals came in!!

[smeese]

Is it possible while handling you allowed cross contamination of the slime of one to another, They can burn each other just with the remaining residue on your fingertips so rinse inbetween different corals....may not be the case here, but good to know regardless. Good luck