Candy Cane still not opening after about 3 weeks

mope54

In Memoriam
I bought a candycane coral off a fellow reefer who was breaking down his tank. When I got to his house, the coral was in a bucket of his tankwater and the polyps were all closed.

I took the bucket home, drip acclimated the coral and popped it into my 30 gallon tank after a few hours. I have a 150 MH over the 30 gallon. It wasn't in direct flow. After waiting for a week, I still hadn't seen the heads open up (there are about 12-13 heads on the branch). I never attempted to direct feed the coral because the heads weren't opening before, during, or after the photoperiod.

Then, after the 2nd week, I moved the coral to my 90 gallon to see if the lighting was too much. Over the 90 I have 4x55 PCs. One of the 6500's broke on the right side, so I just have an actinic over the right side of the tank (it's a show tank for my eel with some frilly mushrooms and xenia around, not much coral to worry about lighting).

Anyway, after this 3rd week, I've noticed that the flesh is starting to roll back on a few of the heads and they still haven't opened.

Can someone tell me if I'm doing something wrong or if I need to move the candies back under the MH? This morning I tried feeding with some brine and plankton via baster, but no tentacles came out. When I take the baster and lightly blow water across the heads, I can see pliant flesh still so I'm not looking at skeletons yet ;)

My sg is 1.023 and my params are in spec. I use NSW from scripps in San Diego. Thanks for any help.
 
Kinda hard to say. When my candy cane corals in my nano start to do that it usually means the salinity is getting out of whack and/or it's time to do a water change.

The candy striped one does not like mh, and does well in under a 32w pc in my little tank.

I have a green one that does well under metal halide.

The tentacles do not come out (at least not fully) until the lights are out for me. What kind of flow do you have in the tank?
 
I would get it under some light. If you want to try this it may work, I use cyclop-eeze to feed my corals. When I put it in the tank all my corals immediately open up. I have the same coral in my tank and I only see them open when Iââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢m feeding.

I donââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t like the freeze dried as much as the frozen.
 
thank you for the comments. When I moved the corals to the smaller tank, they definately closed even further. So they were "open" in the sense that the meaty portions were puffed up. But the inside of the disc area was closed. think of siomething like a deflated basketball for example.
 
Back
Top