Brain Coral Dying - Help - Picture Attached

Meaty24

New member
My favorite piece in my tank is dying. The flesh of the brain coral is peeling off and I can see the white skeleton. What should I do? Whater paramaters are on target.

I have Revive Coral Cleanser. Should I bathe it in that?

Also, I may not have been taking care of it properly. I never feed it directly any more because anytime I put mysis on it, it doesn't open up and eat it. I do, however, feed the entire tank with phytoplanktin, cyclopeze, marine snow, etc.
Please help me.
177392mini-007.jpg
 
That pic is tough to review. What type of brain coral is this? How close to the top? Some don't like too much light, and I see you have a bright tank...
 
I recently moved it to the middle of the tank. I wanted to try more lighting. It was on the bottom. I have crazy lighting. 3 400W metal halides and T-5 Bulbs.

How/when do you feed a brain, and what do you feed?
 
i do not feed mine and its grows like mad. i think you might of burned it by moving it up. move it back down in a low flow area and good luck
 
I agree with the above on the lighting. It sounds like you may have burned it. They don't require as much light as SPS corals and other do and generally do fine on the bottom of the tank, especially with that amount of lighting.
 
Yeah, lps don't need that much light. 400w halides, you should leave all lps on the sand bed.

Try taking a tupperware and cutting holes in the bottom. Turn it upside down to cover the brain, shove the edges down in the sand to hold it there. Squirt some mysis through the holes onto the coral and leave it there for a few hours. If nothing happens, switch to cyclopeez and try again. My trachy brain went without eating for MONTHS and had actually atrophied the feeding tentacles. It would push its "gut" outside of its body to digest the food, then retract its gut. You must have VERY thinly shelled crustacean food for this to work, and absolutely no flow over the coral (hence the tupperware). I literally brought my brain back from the dead this way, and now it's probably the healthiest coral in my tank.

Bottom line: lps MUST eat. Lots of flesh=lots of food.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14185881#post14185881 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rldavisou


Bottom line: lps MUST eat. Lots of flesh=lots of food.


Not necessarily. I have lots of LPS that I used to feed and now haven't fed them for over 6 months. Including an open brain that's doing fine.

IMO, I think the OP has fried the coral with too much light. That's way over kill for these. My open brain is shaded and it looks great. I have a maze brain that's on the bottom of the tank, mostly shaded with pretty much no flow moving over it and it's been fine for a long time. They just don't need a lot of light and when you see them in the wild, they're typically found on the ocean floor, where most of the light is well filtered down.
 
Back
Top