Elegance Coral Loss

[tarpons]

I am so bummed. I've had the most beautiful elegance coral in my tank since Nov (my first coral). It seemed to be doing great and was definitely a centerpeice for my tank. I don't know what went wrong, so I'd like some opinions.

Water parameters are great -- 'trates 0, trites 0, kH 12, Ca++ 460, pH 8.2, temp 78. Ammonia 0. I changed 10% of water weekly using Reef Crystals. Live sand and live rock present. Hammer coral visibly growing. Frogspawn growing visibly. Montipora Capricornis growing visibly. Bubble Coral growing visibly. Duncan Whisker Coral budding. Shrimp reproducing.

Tank is fed DT phytoplankton daily and rotifest daily at dosages suggested on the bottles. Skimmer is always on.

Just prior to its decline, I up-graded my lighting from PC to 2 250w 10K metal halides, with 50/50 PCs and lunar lights.

Just prior to its decline, I started feeding the anemones, other hard corals, and the elegance coral mysis shrimp with a baster every other day. It seemed to LOVE the shrimp.

It started looking poorly about 1 week after the above changes (about Jan 1). It closed itself up, shed large amounts of slime daily and never re-opened. It started receeding in places from its skeleton this week and was thus removed -- it smelled foul -- though some tissue was still living.

I've read that this is a "beginner" coral. My anemone's have been settled. There are no Softies in the tank.

Any thoughts on what I did wrong? I'd love to have another, and don't want to kill another such gorgeous coral.

Thanks,
Candy

 

[tarpons]

OOPS . . . forgot to mention that the SG is running 1.026 and phosphates are running 4ppm.

Candy

 

[spaulr]

Did you acclimate it to the new lights over a few weeks? IE, move it to a lower position in the tank and then back to its original spot? Halides pack a huge punch over PCs. How deep is your tank?

 

[tarpons]

Initially, I did not turn on the metal halide on the half of the tank that the Elegance was in -- just the PCs. When I turned on the second MH, I moved the elegance coral to the bottom of the 25in tank from a mid-tank rock shelf. The coral had already closed up before the move.

Candy

 

[SnowManSnow]

Elegance corals are nearly impossible to keep alive in recent history. From what I read from older reef keeping books they use to be extremely hardy in captivity, but recently the concensus is that they almost always perrish. It could have been somthing in the water, or a lighting switch, but my bets are that the coral was going to die anyway. I'm not trying to be negative, but the elegance corals are just plain difficult.

B

 

[Anonymous]

With Snowmansnow on this one, according to most of the reading I have done, of late elegance corals have been overharvested, forcing their collection a long distance from the holding area of the harvesters. They are also being taken in deeper water. The increase in capture/shipping stress is apparently the cause of many of the fatalities. IMO the typically deeper water where they are apparently being harvested from is also likely to require more careful light acclimatisation.

I share your pain, I lost 3 beautiful specimens over Xmas due to an overheating issue. If you want to try again, look to leave the coral for as long as possible at the LFS to give it as much chance to recover from capture/shipping stress before subjecting it to another bagging/ driving/ new acclimatisation round of stress. (Assuming your LFS has good tanks and will do so for you- mine wont and sells reserved livestock out from under me at every opportunity)