halimeda carries bacterium infecting coral?

[Sk8r]

Just saw a warning in another forum from Ecology Letters Oct. 2004 that says halimeda macroalgae carries a bacterium aurontimonas coralicida, which causes disease in corals.

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=449 was the link given.

 

[Krish]

Thanks for the info...

 

[morgan]

yeah but whhat dose it look like there was no pic or explenation of what kinda macro algea

 

[Sk8r]

Halimeda is that very stiff stuff that looks like Christmas Cactus, little plates joined by connection-joints.

 

[MikeS]

Hmmm...interesting....

I'd love to see the actual reseach data behind it...the abstract there is kinda vauge and a bit reactional...

Nugues, Smith, Hooidonk, Seabra and Bak, claim that white plague type II, which has caused widespread deaths in Caribbean corals, often occurs simultaneously with heavy growths of macroalgae.

Chicken or the egg here? A widespread dieoff of corals and the critters symbiotic with them will likely trigger a situation where algae are able to flourish...but is this truely the cause?

The algae is often sold as an ornamental macroalgae for the reef aquarium, however, on the basis of this research it may perhaps be wise to remove it from your aquarium now.

That sounds a bit hasty....I've had this algae growing on my LR off and on for 6 years now, and I can honestly and truthfully say that I have never lost a coral to any disease. Every coral I have lost has been due to predation (read=crabs, shrimps), or a mistake I've made (read=reefslide). If this stuff is toxic enough to cause a huge wipeout in a vastly more open system than our little glass boxes, how come we haven't heard of this before? many have it, and I have yet to hear a link between the two...

For more details see the paper: Maggy M. Nugues, Garriet W. Smith, Ruben J. Hooidonk, Maria, I. Seabra, Rolf P. and M. Bak (2004) - Algal contact as a trigger for coral disease. Ecology Letters, Vol. 7.

I'll start looking for this tonight, I'd love to see how they conducted the experiment and what their results were...

MikeS

 

[MikeS]

gonna move this to the advanced forum....

 

[Sk8r]

I'll be interested to see any details. I don't have any halimeda in my system, but...