aussie elegance

[fishox]

I've had my aussie elegance for about 6 months now and it has been thriving. I light my tank with 8 vho bulbs, with my aussie in the sand of my 120g tank. Last week, 4 of my bulbs will not work due to the wiring harness starting an electrical fire. Obviously i had to buy a new harness but when i received the new harness, it had female pins, when i needed male pins to connect the harness to the ballast. After what is going to be about 2 weeks of half of the light it usually has, my elegance isn't doing so well. Today the meat of the color came out of the skeleton and was floating around. I put the coral back into the skeleton (it was still sticky atleast), fastened it down with zipties and put it half way up in my tank in a cup of sand. My question is this, Should i go out and by an emergency replacement t5 HO fixture or will my coral die no matter what by the time i get my new harness, which will be wednesday or thursday of this week? Or could my elegance be fine the way it is for the next couple days? Please any input is greatly appreciated.

 

[Bongo Shrimp]

If the tissue came off the skeleton it sounds like polyp bailout. Basically it is a last ditch effort of the coral to somehow get to better conditions where it can thrive. I've heard of it happening in aquariums and I've never heard of the coral making it. Maybe it works in the ocean once in a while. I'm not an elegance expert but polyp bailout an happen to any LPS.

 

[Alkamist]

i have heard of Polyp bailout in elegance corals as well and i have never heard a happy ending to it. on guy i remember reading about said he had kept it alive for a few weeks but it ended up dying in the end.

 

[elegance coral]

I have dealt with a whole bunch of cases where the polyp of an elegance detached from the skeleton. 100% of those cases ended in the death of the coral. Maybe, just maybe, with the coral bound to the skeleton with zip ties, it will be able to begin laying down calcium carbonate again.

I've never seen lighting cause this issue. I would start testing the water. Calcium, alk, PH, and phosphate. In every case I know of, there was a problem that could interfere with calcification, just prior to the bail out.