What's up with my BUBBLE??

[apexi]

I've had this green bubble coral for a few months. It's been doing awesome as can be seen in the first pic until recently. Now it looks like a section of it has deflated, and that the "skin" is also pulling apart from the skeleton as shown in the pics below.

Is there something wrong that I need to fix asap, or is this a part of coral growth/expansion? Any help appreciated!

I'm running three 250W 15k halides, four 96W actinics, and have tons of flow. Calcium 400ppm, Alk 8dhk, PH 8.25, Nitrates less than 5ppm, Temps 80-81F, Salinity 1.025. Setup includes protein skimmer in 40gallon basement sump, phosban reactor, activated carbon, RO/DI, temperature controller.

 

[dnjan]

Are you target-feeding after lights-out?

 

[roscoe]

bubble corals don't like excessive flow.

 

[apexi]

it was in a low flow area and was doing awesome. After much research I've concluded this was due to one or both of the following:

-recently fragged a huge xenia colony, and all the chemical warfare could've resulted in the bubble's decline. Looking through my journal the bubble started to look unhappy during the same time period.

-no question there is some kind of tissue infection. The coral tissue has receded almost entirely from the base of the skeleton around the back and sides, and a bit of the front.

I immediately did a 15 min dip in Lugol's to try and stop the spread of the tissue infection and repositioned the coral away from the xenia colony. Hoping for the best.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Hope you can stop it in time. With the ones I've had, it seems like once that tissue recedes up into the septa, bad things happen very quickly.

I haven't had much luck with bubbles. My first one, I put it in a dumb spot and a hermit gave it a good bash with it's shell. After fighting the infection at the point of injury for about 2 months, it finally just kind of disintegrated over the course of 2 days. When they go, they go quick. The second one I thought I had a good spot for - and I did. Until my clown fish decided to start kicking sand up with its tail right into it. I didn't really notice what was happening until it was too late. Guess the clown didn't like the new neighbor in "his" corner.

I think you've done all you can, other than move it to a quarantine tank. Is that possible?

 

[apexi]

Well here an update so far after a few days. After the Lugol's dip and relocating the bubble away from the Xenia and in an area with as mild flow as I could find in the tank, it's been looking like this. You can still see the septa (skeleton) from the damage. Will the skin ever grow back over this area? Talking to some others it seems as though in these cases the best you can do is stop the tissue infection/recession, but that it would rarely ever grow back in a reef tank environemnt, maybe it would grow back in the ocean. Any advice?