Elegance Coral - new & my only coral - is something wrong??

[KarenLR75]

Have 112 gallon tank. Using carib sea rock (NOT live rock). Have 2 mated percula clowns, 2 skunk cleaner shrimps (very big), and a melanurus wrasse.

Tank is about 12 to 13 weeks old. Has cycled a few times, had multiple diatom blooms, etc. Have some very powerful European lights (husband bought them, I don't know the brand but I know they are supposed to show more light in the blue spectrum?).

Just picked up our first coral, a green Elegance coral this past Sunday. In the first pic, that is what it looked like up until last night. The other pics are pics from this morning (NOTE: The lights don't come up until noon and they stay on until 9 PM. They are set to do various things like cloud cover during the day which we increased since we were adding a new coral).

I'm hoping when the lights come up the coral will 'relax' and be free flowing again. I'm baffled as first several days it seemed so happy. If this is normal, great but if not I want to get ahead of it. The 1st 2 pics are the coral from Sunday to yesterday afternoon. The other pics are from late afternoon yesterday through this morning...

Input is greatly appreciated.

 

[KarenLR75]

Quick add-on post. The clowns have ignored it and are not harassing it so that rules out one source of irritation. IF lights are the possible problem - I'm wondering if we need to either turn off one of the lights/power one down (there are 3 lights that we can control). Or do we try to move the coral to a 'shadier' area even though it's not where we really want it until it gets more 'acclimated'?

 

[FoxFace Fish]

first of all are your water perimeters ok? Also you may want to try a little more light see what happens

Also the coral needs light. When my lights go out for the night my Kenya tree (for example) shrivels up like that, but after about a hour of the lights back on it opens back up and loves its tree little life

Also the best way to help your coral is to leave it alone for a bit, especially if you are newer at reef keeping (keep in mind I am guessing that is the case)
if it does not look better in 4-5 days or it just completely shrivels down then there is a problem. Just try more light and give it time to get used to its new home. It is just like a fish and can get stressed to. They best way to get coral to grow is just do not ...... with it

 

[KarenLR75]

Water parameters checked out spot on 2 days ago but I know things change quickly. I urged husband to test water last night but it was late. We actually have an ABUNDANCE of light in the aquarium (current pics taken before lights came up).

After doing some quick reading here and there, I thought maybe we had too much light on it. I'll get spec details on lights but they are BRIGHT! Not sure why he has lights set to only come up at noon but hopefully once they come up, maybe it will open some? The first few days the coral never closed up (day or night - just at night the tentacles looked 'less full').

The last aquarium we had was over 20 years ago (just met..lol) and we had a saltwater aquarium (no corals) for almost 5 years. Then life and having young kids hit and we are just now at the point in our lives where husband wanted to get back into the hobby (he's always had a love for aquariums).

Things sure have changed! It actually seemed SO much easier 20 years ago! Of course, we are doing a reef tank this time which obviously changes so many things.

Also, coral has very moderate flow in the tank. I like the 'low flow'. Husband working to get his Ice Cap gyre (sp?) working (it was brand new and failed in less than 24 hrs). I don't care for it as the lowest setting still seems like a 'wind/water storm' to me??

 

[FoxFace Fish]

Water parameters checked out spot on 2 days ago but I know things change quickly. I urged husband to test water last night but it was late. We actually have an ABUNDANCE of light in the aquarium (current pics taken before lights came up).

After doing some quick reading here and there, I thought maybe we had too much light on it. I'll get spec details on lights but they are BRIGHT! Not sure why he has lights set to only come up at noon but hopefully once they come up, maybe it will open some? The first few days the coral never closed up (day or night - just at night the tentacles looked 'less full').

The last aquarium we had was over 20 years ago (just met..lol) and we had a saltwater aquarium (no corals) for almost 5 years. Then life and having young kids hit and we are just now at the point in our lives where husband wanted to get back into the hobby (he's always had a love for aquariums).

Things sure have changed! It actually seemed SO much easier 20 years ago! Of course, we are doing a reef tank this time which obviously changes so many things.

Also, coral has very moderate flow in the tank. I like the 'low flow'. Husband working to get his Ice Cap gyre (sp?) working (it was brand new and failed in less than 24 hrs). I don't care for it as the lowest setting still seems like a 'wind/water storm' to me??

At least you know what you are doing and did not just jump into it. keep us updated to see if it opens back up. Anyone here is willing to help Just see what happens and let us know if it does not change. I would check water again and when the light turns on give it a bit to open up. Do not stress to bad unless it starts wasting away or bleaching

 

[smatter]

You chosen a notoriously difficult first coral to put in your tank. They don't ship well and the septa are often damaged leading to bacterial infections. I hope it pulls through for you because they are impressive when they are happy.

 

[FoxFace Fish]

true story but I was not gunna tell em that. Ruining their hopes and stuff XD

 

[mcgyvr]

yep.. elegance is NOT a good choice for a beginner/first coral..
They can be very difficult to keep alive in captivity.. (Aussies are supposed to be "easier" than Indo varieties to keep )..

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-01/eb/index.php
http://www.saltwateraquariumblog.com/elegance-coral/

 

[FoxFace Fish]

buy a Duncan it looks somewhat similar and very pretty and easier to care for

 

[billdogg]

Although I agree that Elegance corals can be more difficult to keep, that looks pretty normal to me. They will, much like anemones, inflate with water and then expel the water and waste periodically. The first several times mine did that, my wife was convinced it was dying. After about a year, she began to accept that it was just doing what it does. And FWIW - mine started out about that size and now takes up well over 1/3 of the open area of my 120DT.

It will do best if the stony base is buried so that it's flesh can be supported by the sand. They like good lighting and turbulent flow. They are most often found in lagoon areas.

hth

 

[KarenLR75]

One thing about 20 years which was good and bad...all of the stuff we wanted to know we looked up in books that had been around for a while but were updated versions. We have an LFS that was super reliable and helped steer us as we learned (he sold business 15 yrs ago).

Now, the abundance of information is both a good thing and a bad thing. On many, many sites and per all of our LFS's which usually do NOT agree with each other, the Elegance Coral was listed as a good beginner coral. Sure, I read stuff saying they were more difficult but (I'm an analyst for a living so I'm using to sifting thru a LOT of data) but there were just as many touting it as good. I also verified that my reference sources "for" and "against" were comparable (i.e. forum opinion vs forum opinion, professional article vs. professional article, etc.).

We did have anemones with our first tank which hosted our clowns. We actually, when we were newly into it, made beginner mistakes 20 years ago in that we had different types of clowns all in the same tank. God blesses fools every now and then and ironically we somehow had a happy tank despite diff types of clowns (including maroon), an ant. lion fish, tangs, etc. We had a couple of anemones and it wasn't until after 2 years that we found out...THEY CAN MOVE! We learned a lot with anemones of the time but it was an...interesting experience.

I'm not sure it counts towards 'coral experience'.....I'm really bummed to hear we actually got an incredibly difficult coral when I THOUGHT we had done our research and it was with a LFS, at least one of their staff members that has seemed to have a great deal of experience with reef tanks. We've looked at his personal tanks. Sigh...the contradictions in the information out there is frustrating.

 

[KarenLR75]

Side note: We intentionally picked out a coral locally after watching them for a few weeks as opposed to having one shipped in.

There is a huge online seller of all types of corals located 2 hrs from us that once we felt we AND the tank were ready, we will be driving to so that we can ensure a less traumatic transit time for anything else we buy.

 

[KarenLR75]

Is there a way to edit posts so that when I remember something to share, I don't have to do a new one?

We're getting ready to do another water change (will check water readings first). Using RODI water (wow, what a change and setup to generate 'said water' since the last time we had tanks!).

We learned the hard way 20 years ago to always get info on your livestock (i.e fish) to keep a VERY careful eye on potential bio-load. One thing we FAILED to check was how big this coral could potentially grow!

I already uncovered that unpleasant revelation late last night and have been wondering what we're going to do as we have no desire to have this take up 1/3 of the tank. Another 'lesson learned'. We SHOULD have known to check on this but didn't. If it's not sick/dying, then I guess we need to make plans on perhaps finding an alternate home BEFORE that day comes. I will NOT pass off livestock that is not healthy to ANYONE ELSE. It's our responsibility, whether this was the 'right' coral to get, to do what we can to help it reach optimum health.

My husband did painstaking research for about the past 3-6 years about how technology had changed and what type of tank he felt would be best, along with all of the necessary components a reef tank (or a saltwater tank) requires: protein skimmer, lights, gyre, heaters, stuff for refugium "tanks" under the main tank, studying different reef tanks and 'best practices'.

That being said, we are definitely already finding out that you cannot research EVERYTHING to the nth detail and like all humans, we will have some more 'lessons learned'. We'd sure like to minimize those though.

 

[homer1475]

FWIW all corals will overtake your tank. there is a reason people frag corals. It will take a long time before it takes over your tank, don't sweat it. You'll more then likely kill the coral or get out of the hobby before something slow growing like an elegance takes over your tank.

Xenia, and/or GSP will overtake your tank long before the elegance will.

 

[FoxFace Fish]

If you want something to take over your tank. Get a Xenia XD

 

[KarenLR75]

homer1475 - good point. I know husband wants to frag corals but like anything else, we prefer slow and methodical. We have to get all the intricacies of having a healthy and productive SINGLE reef tank down first.

Thanks to all for your warning that our coral is actually a difficult one in the end. We'll keep that in mind as we go forward. Posting updated pics of the "problem child' coral since the lights came up. You can see our newest fish addition in the pics below, a melanurus wrasse (bought him at same time as the coral) swimming by the coral.

The mated percula clowns tend to slowly bob by maybe once or twice as they tend to stay on one side of the tank. We REALLY wanted a Powder Blue Tang or possibly a White Tail Bristletooth Tang (we need to think through owning this specific tang some more) so we'd have a fish that does swim 'back and forth' but after going over it with others, we feel the tank needs to be more established so we're holding off on this for now.

 

[homer1475]

IMHO That is a beutiful elegance.

Just keep an eye out for the tentacles to shorten up and fatten up. If they start to get shorter and fatter it may well be on it's way out. Elegance suffer from a disease that only affect them known as ECS(elegance coral syndrome), google it to see what it looks like. Typically ECS only affects elegance from the indo pacific, but it can be contracted by aussie elegance as well. I've had 2 die from this disease, my current elegance is an aussie elegance and came from someone who had it for 3 years prior.

My elegance:

 

[KarenLR75]

Homer1475,

Thanks! We loved the color but after reading the articles that mcgyver (sp?) posted about ECS....I am quite blown away!!

I did come across the info you mentioned and that POSSIBLY, a TRUE Australian Elegance...I think one article also inferred if it was a true Australian Elegance AND if you either got it from a RELIABLE source or procured it more recently, you MAY not have a coral with a quick death sentence hanging over it.

Sounded like in one of the articles, an 'infected' Elegance can pass it on to other seemingly healthy Elegance but what I couldn't pick out is whether it could pass any of the issues that came with ECS on to a DIFFERENT species of coral.

From now on, I'm likely to post what we are considering here as well as looking for charts on corals..like we see on fish about their difficulty levels. I saw one thread on it that I'm going to copy info from but I do miss a nice, succinct chart.

Your Elegance appears to be thriving and healthy! It's a lovely specimen! I'm relieved that you seem to have gotten a truly good one. I think I also read you can tell the difference between Australian and was it..Indonesian? by looking at the bottom...that was 'before coffee' today so I need to go back and re-read. I hate the thought of disturbing our new coral when it is still in what I consider to be an acclimation period. I could ask our LFS for the shipping manifest to show it is truly an Australian Elegance but who knows if they'd do that..or if they might have gotten theirs as a frag.

Well darn..lol...seems like just as it was back then, most of my education comes with a price (and usually via a mistake) :spin1:

 

[KarenLR75]

true story but I was not gunna tell em that. Ruining their hopes and stuff XD

By the way....this cracked me up!!:lmao:

 

[Gladmaker]

Is there a way to edit posts so that when I remember something to share, I don't have to do a new one?

You won't be able to edit your posts until you've been on here a while. The Edit function will show on the lower right corner of your post.