Growth, Death and Revival

[MikeandNicole]

One of the first corals I ever bought for my 12g was a single head of dendro back in roughly december of 2008. It survived a tank crash where the temp of the tank dropped to around 55 degrees. It has always been one of my favorites.

Here is what it looked like around when I bought it:

Couple of new heads:

This was like a few months ago:

All of a sudden the dendro started dying, the heads just started to melt. Next thing I know I am losing head after head and getting really depressed. We did everything we could and it just continued. We switched the tank it was in and essentially did a %100 water change. The dying stopped and all of a sudden dozens of baby heads started popping out!!! So here they are:

 

[HPark]

Interesting. Glad it made a comeback! One of my favorite corals. I'm interested to see what others think could have caused the recession, maybe a bacterial infection?

 

[willietang021]

overfeeding with food rot inside the polyp is usually the cause of the head dying from within. The tissue will starts to melt and one by one it died. But new babies always grow back on the skeleton.

 

[Flanders]

overfeeding with food rot inside the polyp is usually the cause of the head dying from within. The tissue will starts to melt and one by one it died. But new babies always grow back on the skeleton.

I am curious whether anyone has done research to back this up. I have heard this before and am pretty skeptical of it.

 

[willietang021]

I have dendros for the past 5+ yrs. they were the corals that got me into the hobby. I had 4 seperate Dendrophyllia crashes in total. Twice was because of over feeding and 2 was because of tank equipment failure when I was away for business. I now have over 180+ heads in my tank that had last for more than 3 yrs+ and survive 2 tank crashes (everything else die). I am doing nothing different from what I had before the 4 past Dendro crashes, the only thing different is feeding once a week or once every 10 days. Rather than feeding twice or more a week. (I love to watch them feed). I still feed each head even now it takes well over 90+ mins.
I don't know if there is any research or anyone did any study on it. But speaking from experience, and seeing dendros die from within was the only thing I have for speaking out.

 

[MikeandNicole]

Very glad I posted over here because I never would have expected over feeding being a reason for death. I will certainly cut back on target feeding as I was doing it several times a week.

 

[Terryz_]

Overfeeding is definitely one of the cause for death, I am a culprit for the death of my rhizo. Fed it too big chucks of shrimp.. I think twice a week with some mysis would be good enough..

 

[willietang021]

Overfeeding is definitely one of the cause for death, I am a culprit for the death of my rhizo. Fed it too big chucks of shrimp.. I think twice a week with some mysis would be good enough..

FINELY CHOPPED UP meaty food. overfeeding and food too big for the coral to digest and unable to spit it back out is the same thing. Happened to me before also. I understand why we choose NPS sometimes, beacuse of their color and their responsive feeding habit. I Love to watch them feed so I always feed, but I learned my lesson

 

[Wonton Soup]

I personally theorize that rather than "over feeding" the coral, a simple change in one of the many variables of our aquariums alters the metabolism rate of the coral. If a chemical imbalance slows the rate of metabolism within the coral and you keep feeding at the same rate, unaware of this change, then certainly food could sit in the stomach of the coral and begin to create great problems from within.

 

[willietang021]

I personally theorize that rather than "over feeding" the coral, a simple change in one of the many variables of our aquariums alters the metabolism rate of the coral. If a chemical imbalance slows the rate of metabolism within the coral and you keep feeding at the same rate, unaware of this change, then certainly food could sit in the stomach of the coral and begin to create great problems from within.

GREAT ANSWER!!!:thumbsup:

 

[StephLionfish]

Good luck with the dendro, bro. My mantis gave mine a beating, it quit eating for nearly a month, and now looks like this. It's finally taking food again, and is bouncing back fast.