Montipora Cap Spots, Blasto "feathers"

[Sasha T]

First, this montipora was one of the first coral I added. When I bought it its color was a little washed out, and it has slowly been regaining its red tone. As it did I noticed that there were two areas on the coral that had brown discoloration. I started treating it by giving it a good scrub with a soft toothbrush, then dipping. Didn't have any readily visible effect. With the smaller spot on the right I experimented with lightly scraping off the brown area from the skeleton, scraping it each time I found a brown spot that could not be scrubbed off. As you can see it's "brown free" and is slowly coloring back up. The other brown spot seems to "run deeper" into the piece. So questions are two fold:
1) What do you think I'm dealing with, and have you had experience with it and
2) Is my treatment of scraping it away doing more harm than good even though I seem to be getting positive results? Can I apply it to the large spot, even if I run the risk of putting a hole in the cap?



Second "issue" is this feather-like growth coming coming off the base of one of my Blasto frags. It wasn't there when I originally bought and treated the frag, so it has grown quite quickly. I don't see any "head" or "base" that the feathers are growing out of, they seem to be growing directly from the stem of the coral.

Could someone ID this, and is it potentially problematic?


I did try looking at the pinned "Great Link on Identifying and Solving Coral Diseases" in this forum, but all that seems to be there now is the preface paragraphs and no additional info.

 

[Matt1997]

Monticap looks like nudis. Look underneath the plate for little white bristle looking creatures.

 

[Kyle1970]

Tough to see in the pic but is feather like thing algae? That picture reminds me of bryopsis.

 

[Luke.]

lol the picture you drew on the 2nd hahaha

 

[Sasha T]

@Matt1987 - The Monti DID formerly have montipora eating nudibranchs, which after treating (multiple dips for the adults, multiple scrubs for the eggs) I religiously search for. I have other montipora in the tank that have not developed the same issue and this piece, if kept clean of the brown accumulations, seems to be repairing itself. If it was damage from the MEN's, would that mean that the brown areas are from the flesh being stripped by the MEN's and then overgrown by algae? If that's the case, can I restore the piece by grinding/scraping off the algae and the piece will grow over the damage?

@Kyle1970 - If it is algae it's the ONLY occurrence in the tank, and grew VERY quickly but stayed in that one location on that single frag. The "fronds" look very much like feathers with bare areas on the stems, which don't match pictures I've seen to date of bryopsis, but I will keep looking.

@Luke All I have is my phone so anything I took a photo of would be better served by an illustration anyway, haha.

 

[Luke.]

It’s pretty common when the skeleton is exposed like the first pic (the white) it’ll be prone to getting algae growth from lights and especially is you have higher phos

 

[Luke.]

Wonder if some eggs made it and re hatched and came back ? So hard to say best thing is to always qt to keep an eye out but I mean even I don’t (but will try with my new set up)

 

[Sasha T]

I wish I had the mean to run a QT tank, but I didn't see a MEN or a new white spot until a month later, thinking the original spots were the results from stings or nips. It hasn't developed any NEW white or faded patches, the one on the "right" used to be larger and bone white but even with my camera phone you can see the color bleeding back into it as long as I keep the area clean.

 

[Matt1997]

Since you had the montis in the past, I suspect one may have got through. That’s classic MENs look on a monti cap. White rings in random locations, eventually dead flesh covered in algae. I’d take a close look at night.

 

[Matt1997]

I actually noted a pretty incredible thing that montis do in poor water conditions. They will cover themselves in algae and bleach out until water quality improves. Then they will slime off all the algae and color will start coming back within a few days. Check all water params

 

[Sasha T]

Just an update:

The "feather" that was coming out of the Blasto has indeed been ID'd as bryopsis as Kyle1970 suggested after it developed a larger patch. I have done a few water changes, repeatedly cleaned my filter, replaced my GFO and AC and have been physically removing as much as I can. So far so good.

I took a chance and scratched into the brown spot of the montipora to remove the brown algae, and it appears to be getting more aggressive with its healing, the other white spot is almost gone and no other montipora have had white spots or tissue damage.