Bringing back a half dead dendro polyp?

[psimitry]

So a few days ago, I noticed that one of my dendrophylia heads appeared to be getting harassed by a nearby hammer coral. Not having any desire to see the head dead or remove my hammer, I decided to move the dendros. Unfortunately, I moved it under my halides with some pretty direct exposure. Due to this, I moved them yet again to be in a much better spot, out of halide exposure and away from the reach of any of my corals (though admittedly, it's not as good a spot for viewing).

Now, one of the heads (out of a total of two) appears to be in pretty good health. The other is pretty retracted, worse yet, it appears to be showing parts of it's skeleton through the flesh. I know enough to know this is bad, but the other half of it appears to be in good health. The other problem is I can't feed it. Its tentacles aren't sticky.

Is this something that I could potentially pull out the dendro from the tank and food storm it in a small container and hope it would eat? I'm having troubles figuring out how to save this thing.

I also have a 14G nano-cube that I could put it in, that I have running all the time for quarantine and cycling. This tank is LOADED with assorted bugs all over the tank, so I think it might be the better solution, but if there's no way of saving that first polyp, then I'd rather leave it in the current display tank.

The pain in the butt here is that it was the polyp that just sprouted a new one.

 

[Trichome]

From what i can tell dendros seem to be pretty hardy. I would acclimate it to the 14 gallon tank and try your best to food storm/ spot feed it. Don't give up on it till its 100% dead. I have had some pretty crazy come backs with frogspawn and sun coral. Your coral may still be trying to recover from the hammer incident. Best of luck!

 

[psimitry]

Welp.

So the dying one now has half its skeleton showing, and the one that was living now refuses to take food.

I'll do my best to keep it alive, but I do not have much hope.

So there's $120 down the drain.

 

[dendro982]

If you anyway have nothing to lose, you may frag the healthy polyps, even if one is left.
Didn't try this on dendro, but did that on Tubasrea and Cladopsammia, same family.
Place frag on the safe spot, use some new carbon for a few days, and try to feed.

Good luck!

 

[psimitry]

I may actually have written off that last polyp too quickly. I still don't think it's all that healthy, but I adjusted the rock that it's on so that it is sticking straight up.

Now that it's there, I can simply lay small mysis shrimp on it, and after a WHILE it will take them.

I do miss the days when both polyps were really healthy and all I had to do was blast a few shrimp at them and they'd eat them hungrily.

 

[dendro982]

If your Dendrophyllia is like Tubastreas, then in 2-3 weeks it should send tentacles and eat as usual.

 

[Trichome]

I agree. If you are able to get it to eat it will rebound in time. The tentacles will be really small at first but i am sure you can get it back to the healthy long tentacles with in 1 months time.

 

[psimitry]

well things aren't looking good for this poor dendro. I simply can't get it to eat anymore. I lay shrimp directly on the mouth and it actually curls over so that it can spit it out. I suppose I could try something smaller than a PE mysis, but it's what its always eaten before.

Additionally, I think that the outer rim of the skeleton is starting to show, and that's pretty much when it's a goner.

 

[dendro982]

If you have only PE mysis, you always can cut it in small pieces. I personally prefer give food to them few small pieces, then one large. But the only dendrophyllia I have is branching lemon yellow.

If skeleton started to show, it's bad. Time to feed by immersing into the food with some flow, each day for a few days, maybe it starts eat on its own.

It's up to you, of course, but I would offer more variety, including organisms of saltwater origin and balanced frozen fish food from LFS:
- adult brine shrimp , cyclop eeze or Reef Plankton for a taste,
- Sally's SFB or Hikari mysis (brand doesn't matter as long as you make pieces small), most - if not all - mysis is not of marine origin,
- chopped SFB or Big Al's Plankton, this is of marine origin, unlike brine and mysis,
- VHP Formula (Very High Protein), Formula Two, Marine Cuisine, cut to the same size as below, as balanced enriched food,
- or 1.5 mm (1/32") particles of grocery salmon, halibut, shrimp, mussels, all mixed together.

Maybe flow was too strong, damaging soft tissue.