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hgsports

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I'm having trouble with my Elegant (pink tip) and one of my suspicions is the lighting. The tank is a 75G (48x24x16) lit by 4 96W PC's (2 daylights, 2 blues).

When i first introduced the elegant about two weeks ago I placed it a litte more than half way up in the tank. After a couple days I noticed white string like emissions starting to cover sections of the soft body.

After a bunch of research I discovered a reference in Delbeek's book about Acontia Filaments with this description:

"Sometimes a stressed coral may appear to be covered with fine white strings. These are its digestive filaments that can be ejected externally for defensive purposes....super saturation of oxygen, as can occur from too strong illumination will also stimulate ejection..."

So I moved it down a bit and sure enough in a day, the string "dry up". But now it wont expand at all, remaining mostly withdrawn and rather unhealthy looking... alomost like there isnt enough light.


So now I'm confused... I only moved it down about 2" - 3". There isnt much "in between" to try for...

Another cause of this problem can be noxious compounds in the water. I'm testing for Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate (all 0.0), Alk (10), PH (8.0), Iodine (.02... too low), Ca (400), and phospate (0). What else could it be?


Any help would be greatly appreciated!


John
 

slojmn1

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Elegance corals have been having a reputation for being difficult to care for over the past year or more. Check out the search function and you will probably find a number of threads discussing the general decline in elegance survival rate in home aquaria. I have my elegance buried part way in the sandbed to help simulate, at least a tiny bit, where they naturally live on the reef, in the muddy lagoon areas buried in the mud. I have my elegance under 2x400w MH and 4x110w VHO, for a total of 1240w of light. It seems just fine with this lighting. I do have this coral off in a front corner so it is not in direct light at all, but there is still quite a bit of light on it. It is really hard to tell what could be happening to your coral. I have only had two other elegance corals in all of my years of reef keeping and they were both disasters, dead within the first 3 months. This current guy is happy and thriving in my tank for 8 months now. Different tank, different parameters. Who knows???
 

hgsports

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Thanks for the info!

New news.... I'm reasonably certain that the strings are Acontia filaments. They seem to be emitted at night and clear up over the course of the day. I dont think that my moving the Elegant made it clear up, i think it just appeared that way.

This morning I checked very early and noticed that the two sections where the filaments cover the soft tissue had small "bugs" crawling over them. The bugs were transparent and actually walking down into the space between the soft tissue and the shell direct where the filaments seem to come from.

I've already dipped the elegant in Lugols and would have thought that killed off any parasites.
Do you think it's the "bugs"? Any ideas what they are?


Thanks again for your help!


John
 

THillson

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Given your lighting I can't imagine that it was getting too much light. Mine (five years in my tank), like slojmn1's, is under two 400W MH and four 110W VHO, off to the side of direct light and on the bottom of the tank (approximately 28" from the lights). It may be just reacting to the stresses of shipping/transport and multiple acclamations. Your water parameters look OK. Do you have the coral oriented straight up? These are found in the wild mostly laying on their sides on sand bottoms in turbid lagoons. Mine is particularly sensitive to current strength. It likes it just enough to sway the tentacles, any more and he won't open up fully. Have you tried feeding it? They will take small bits of shrimp or similar offerings.

It may be tough to do but, resist the impulse to move the coral every day, or changing another parameter in the tank trying to please it. Do everything now that you think will help and then leave it along for a few days to a week to see how it reacts. Otherwise you may have it perfect one day and change it before the coral has a chance to react.

Good luck
 

JeremyR

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Are you sure the "bugs" aren't just your normal run of the mill amphipods, mysis shrimp, etc. that come out at night? Flashlight watching always shows me a bunch of "bugs" crawling all over my corals.

Btw, lugols won't kill the invert "bugs", it's more of an attempt to ward off infection.
 

THillson

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I've never heard of parasites on these corals, not to say that there aren't. Could it be possible that they are just taking the opportunity, not the cause like clams deaths and bristle worms. You could try posting to Ask Dr Ron over at Reefcentral.com about parasites. Any chance of a pic? It's not good to hear that the coral is separating from the skeleton. LPS corals should have tissue fully covering the outer edge of the skeleton, and at least ¼ of a inch down. This is not to say that it won't recover though.
 

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