elegance tentacles

[tranboy]

How do you guys get you elegances tentacles to open so long?Mine stay short and stubby.

 

[ILoveReefer]

How long have you had it? Lighting?

 

[Sandeep]

From what I've read long tenticles are found on ones from and in low flow areas and short stubby tenticles are from high flow areas. If your is in a high flow area you may want to move it to a low flow area and see if that effects it over a few months.

 

[jadeguppy]

Mine appeared to get longer when I started feeding it more.

 

[elegance coral]

Take good care of it and the tentacles will get longer with time. I have some with short tentacles that are getting longer all the time, and one with tentacles almost 5 inches long. It just takes quite a bit of time. I agree with the others as well, if the flow is to strong they will withdraw and their tentacles will never grow.

 

[jadeguppy]

Elegance, do you have a suggested method/ growth rate?

 

[elegance coral]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12640912#post12640912 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jadeguppy
Elegance, do you have a suggested method/ growth rate?

I did have a web site on Elegance Coral care, but I just recently closed it down. I may start up a new one before long.

My method for keeping Elegance corals is pretty simple. Just give them enough flow to make the tentacles move without moving the polyp itself. Provide them with the same water quality you would for the most delicate SPS corals. I try to keep my Elegance under bright MH lighting, but it may take a very long time to get them acclimated. I feed them small pieces of shrimp or fish about once a week. I don't feed them anything but meat. No shrimp exoskeletons, fish scales, or bones. This way they don't poo. My Elegance corals never poo. They digest all the food I give them. I try not to keep them with animals that are known to peck at them or steal food from them, like tangs and shrimp. I NEVER let clown fish use them as a host.
As far as growth rate goes, there are soooooooooooooooooo many variables. The health of the coral is probably the largest factor. If the coral has a solid, dark, cone shaped skeleton with distorted green pigments in the polyp, it came from a harsh environment and has had a very slow growth rate in the wild. It will most likely take quite a bit of time before it's growth rate takes off in an aquarium. If it has a white skeleton that has been fragged, and uniform green stripes on the oral disk, it came from a much better environment, and had a very fast growth rate in the wild. These corals simply need to recover from shipping and being fragged before their growth will take off. Sometimes laying down close to an inch of new skeleton a year, or more. The cone shaped Elegance have to recover from a life time of struggling to survive. They can grow as fast as the others. It just normally takes them longer to get started.

 

[cloak]

Short tentacles in my book always meant that something was wrong. Not very elegant any more.

FWIW.

Very tricky.