Open brain coral problems

[AlfreB93]

Ok so my girlfriend saw this open brain coral, she fell in love with it and bought it for me. To be honest i dont know a lot about it and she surpriced me with it (she gives me a lot more credit than what i deserve) yesteday it was normal, open, and beautiful today looks like its shrinking please any advice , my parameters are ok, everything else is triving , thanks in advance (i just added it to the tank this woulf be the second day)

 

[marrone]

It's very common for brain corals to shrink down during the day, and blow up when the lights turn off. Try feeding it, as it has a big mouth right in the middle.

 

[ZippysFunLand]

I have one of these guys too, but i know him as a wellso folded brain coral. I'm not really sure what the difference is, a quick google search of the two shows some corals that look very similar....

Regardless of the exact name, the one in the photo you posted looks perfectly normal to me. I've had mine since august (got him from "The Reef Shoppe" at the fall frag swap). He shrinks up sometimes and other times he puffs up until he's almost the size of half a softball. He appears to have 3 mouths and i have never seen any tentacles. I've tried spraying him with minced bits of shrimp and whatnot but he doesn't seem to eat it. I think he mostly just filters stuff out of the water when he puffs up.

Honestly he's a bit of a mystery to me but he's low maintenance and his color is great. He does make me nervous sometimes when he's shriveled up but im pretty sure its perfectly normal.

.

 

[AlfreB93]

Sorry wrong picture , in this one is the way it lookd now

 

[menac]

I have one, not exactly like yours but I would say just give the coral time to adjust to your setup and light settings. When I first introduced my brain coral to my system he puffed up on the first day, but closed up a bit for a few days. He started opening up more and more as it adjusted to the lights and parameters.

 

[ZippysFunLand]

I can't say for sure if thats OK, but I can tell you that when I first got mine, for about a week I would look at it and question whether they had sold me a real coral or if it was just a painted piece of rock. When i touched him, i was surprised to see that he was hard as a rock. After about a week he softened up and started wiggling a little bit in the current.

Whats your water temp \ salinity \ calcium \ nitrate \ phosphate?

My params are (roughly) 80 degrees, 1.024, 440 cal, 20 nitrates, .05 phosphates. I do 25% water changes every 2 weeks using reef crystals. It might seem like a lot, but it seems to be working out well.

 

[92CornerReef]

i had the same issue also. i move mine to a very low flow area that was a little shaded. it recovered and bounced back well.

 

[AlfreB93]

Yeah thank you guys, today is doing a lot better, my theory is that my lights where a little to strong for it, even tho it was only the blue of my led at 60 %, also it seems like it has two mouths im wondering if its going to frag itself or something