candy cane help please

tattoooedlex

New member
I purchased this candy cane from liveaquaria last week. unfortunately when it arrived it was broke into three pieces. instead of doing the smart thing and immediately letting them know, I glued the pieces back together and hoped for the best. after trying like crazy to find a place it can comfortly sit upright, I ended up having to mount it to a frag disc to give it some stability. Since the final placement( it was dripped for 2 hours then dipped in seachem coral dip) a week later as you can see it is starting to plump up nicely. I have it in the sand bed right now. every night its sweepers come out nicely. and over the past week I have fed it some chopped up pe Mysis once. however here is my issues. Did I doom it by gluing it together? if you look at the last few pics it looks like its stalks are starting to bleach. or maybe it is just because that is the part that is buried in the sand? however the heads appear to be doing fine.
I have a 90 gallon with only a few coral, this being my first lps.
I have two LED bracketed systems for lighting. One marineland reef capable and I do not remember the brand of the other.Each have I believe 54 1watt white bulbs and 8 actinic blue, while the other has 36 1 watt white and 6 actinic blues. water params are in check although I have not tested calcium( which I will now buy a kit to do so)
Should I be concerned it is dying? and if so what can I do to help it?
thank you all for your help
 

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The only part of the coral that is alive are the fleshy tips. The bleached part is just skeleton that the coral leaves behind after it grows. It looks fine :)
 
and the purple stuff on the skeleton is coralline algae. You killed the portion that was under the sand but it will grow back
 
My candy cane had a few heads that looked small like yours, while the rest looked fine. The small ones were shaded, and the colony was on the sand bed. I put the whole colony higher into the light ( I have LED's too), and they went nuts. Look great now. I have mine placed in the middle of the tank height wise, and a little off of center so not in the brightest spot. If they are opening at night and eating, give them more light.
 
Candy Canes are kind of funny, they shrivel up sometimes and plump up when they get happy.

I have a couple of jagged pieces of fiji rock that I have wedged mine in between. That seems to work out. They will do that if you touch them or they fall on the sand. So don't worry too much about it. It is just a little stressed, it will recover.
 
They looks nice and in agreement with HurrucaneSystem, mine would shrivel up for a couple days, and then all of a sudden be nice and puffy the next
 
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