I purchased a open red brain coral yeasterday. Shortly acclimation my pesky cleaner shrimp went to dance on it. The brain responded by contracting and spitting some brown threadlike material out of it's mouth. Any ideas what this stuff is? This morning all polys appeared open. All seems OK
My experience has been that brown strings expelled from the mouth of the coral is actually zooxanthella being expelled and is actually related to acclimation to new lighting rather than irritation at being touched by a shrimp.
My trachyphilia is regularly perched on by a large frogfish and doesn;t seem to be upset by that.
It is almost certainly zooxanthella. My relatively new trachy is doing the same thing.
Speaking of which, sorry to hijack the thread, but my trachyphilia has been "holding on" to the emitted zooxanthella for about four or five days now. They are partly still in its mouth, and if I try to work it away with a blast of water it goes nowhere. Anyone have experience with this? In all other aspects it appears completely healthy.
