EMeyer Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 (edited) I have an interesting finding from my most recent round of sequencing that I thought I'd share. In this unreplicated case study, I found that an in-tank antibiotic treatment appears to have cleared up an outbreak of brown jelly disease (BJD), without causing any problems for the rest of the microbiome or any detectable problems for livestock. If anyone is having BJD issues, and would like to try this treatment, I'd love to sample your tank before and after the treatment to replicate this finding. I'm busy with Turkey today, so it'll be a few days before I can post the data here. This post is just a teaser. Here is what I've found A specific Bacterium (an undescribed species in the genus Acrobacter) is associated with BJD that sporadically shows up in newly imported Euphyllia The BJD can be transmitted by placing an affected coral in an otherwise healthy tank, resulting in disease and stress in several Euphyllia species An in-tank treatment with a specific low dose of a commonly used aquarium antibiotic appears to have arrested this problem and allowed the affected corals to recover samples of the aquarium microbiome before and after the treatment show that The abundance of the suspected pathogen (Arcobacter sp.) is greatly reduced by the treatment The diversity and balance of the aquarium microbiome were not damaged by the treatment; in fact, both scores increased following the antibiotic treatment, along with the relative abundance of nitrifying microbes. So, anybody got BJD? Message me if so... I'll update with data when I can... Edited December 8, 2020 by EMeyer 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EMeyer Posted December 8, 2020 Author Share Posted December 8, 2020 (edited) I finally got around to writing this up on Reef2Reef. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/experimenting-with-in-tank-antibiotic-treatments-for-brown-jelly-disease.782438 A quick summary: Quote Infection with a specific bacterium in the genus Arcobacter contributes to BJD. This infection can be safely treated in the aquarium with low doses of a commonly used aquarium antibiotic. This treatment doesn't appear to damage the microbial community, but may actually improve it. So, anybody got brown jelly in your tanks? Edited December 8, 2020 by EMeyer 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
obrien.david.j Posted December 8, 2020 Share Posted December 8, 2020 1 hour ago, EMeyer said: So, anybody got brown jelly in your tanks? Sorry for you, Good for me - No Brown Jelly in my tanks. Thanks for publishing this research and conclusions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
half-astronaut Posted December 8, 2020 Share Posted December 8, 2020 Strong work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EMeyer Posted December 21, 2020 Author Share Posted December 21, 2020 Bjd showed up in a different tank (a grape coral with 2 polyps), so I sampled and removed the diseased head, and treated the tank with the same treatment as described above. Currently 7 days in, the cut coral is fully recovered and I don't see any algae issues or nutrients. I'll report here again when I get the microbiome samples finished, but so far at least it appears thats n=2 saying the treatment is safe and associated with recovery. Does anyone who's sent me samples in the past have a nice healthy torch colony in your tank at the time of sampling? Please let me know if so. Does anyone have a video of a gold or other high end torch you would be willing to donate for advertising purposes? I can trade corals or microbiome tests! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted December 21, 2020 Share Posted December 21, 2020 Hi Eli, Great news about the BJD intervention and some promising data re whole tank treatments. Given the results on the biome balance, I wonder if this could provide some hope for doing targeted antibiotic treatments to help restore balance to tanks that have gotten "out of whack" for one reason or another (you know where I'm going with this one). Clearly risky but I could see where a combination of targeted antibiotic with reintroduction of desired bacterial strains could potentially be a more broadly useful paradigm (not that BJD treatment isn't a breakthrough in and of itself). Thanks! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bamburgb Posted December 30, 2020 Share Posted December 30, 2020 just noticed this morning that one of the heads on a newer torch of mine seems to have BJD or atleast is looking like it while all my other torches seem happy and fully extended. I was curious when reading the experiment where you got the ciprofloxacin. Did you have any SPS in your tank when treating the tank? If so were there any negative impacts on them? Trying to find a way to save my Joker torch hoping its not to late. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EMeyer Posted January 31, 2021 Author Share Posted January 31, 2021 On 12/30/2020 at 10:19 AM, bamburgb said: just noticed this morning that one of the heads on a newer torch of mine seems to have BJD or atleast is looking like it while all my other torches seem happy and fully extended. I was curious when reading the experiment where you got the ciprofloxacin. Did you have any SPS in your tank when treating the tank? If so were there any negative impacts on them? Trying to find a way to save my Joker torch hoping its not to late. Sorry I missed this a month ago... hope things turned out ok in the meantime! No, I have not tested this in an SPS tank yet. I've treated two soft coral + LPS tanks so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EMeyer Posted February 1, 2021 Author Share Posted February 1, 2021 On 12/21/2020 at 11:52 AM, albertareef said: Hi Eli, Great news about the BJD intervention and some promising data re whole tank treatments. Given the results on the biome balance, I wonder if this could provide some hope for doing targeted antibiotic treatments to help restore balance to tanks that have gotten "out of whack" for one reason or another (you know where I'm going with this one). Clearly risky but I could see where a combination of targeted antibiotic with reintroduction of desired bacterial strains could potentially be a more broadly useful paradigm (not that BJD treatment isn't a breakthrough in and of itself). Thanks! Absolutely, I'm really encouraged to see evidence that low doses of antibiotics can alter the balance of the microbial community without killing it off. Its really tempting to experiment more along these lines. (Just what I needed, more experiments for the list!) Next on my list is Vibrio. I have a pretty potent and specific anti-Vibrio compound that I've been testing as a dip with mixed success. But I think based on the safety and efficacy data from these cipro trials its time to test the anti-Vibrio compound on intact systems. -- Anyone else got some brown jelly? I'm still interested in taking additional samples, either from tissue or an infected tank... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
albertareef Posted February 1, 2021 Share Posted February 1, 2021 3 hours ago, EMeyer said: Next on my list is Vibrio. I have a pretty potent and specific anti-Vibrio compound that I've been testing as a dip with mixed success. But I think based on the safety and efficacy data from these cipro trials its time to test the anti-Vibrio compound on intact systems. Really interested in how this goes given what my biome results looked like during my multi-crash cycle! Thanks for all the great work Eli! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bighoho Posted March 4, 2021 Share Posted March 4, 2021 So I'm currently experiencing this my euphyllia, of course the ones that have gone down the quickest are also our most expensive ones. Years of health growth gone when I added a simple indo torch. It's so depressing... one by one they've all started to form brown jelly. I've done the water change portion of this and am running my UV non-stop in hopes of killing any bacteria in the water column I'm now down to the last four torches in the tank, I expect the hammers and frogspawn to not be far behind. Would love to try my hand at what you've done here. Thanks for the research, was very very informative... Can I ask what brand of cipro did you use? I was looking at the Thomas Labs version but would like to replicate what you have. https://aqualabaquaria.com/products/fish-flox-ciprofloxacin-antibacterial-medication-thomas-labs 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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