elegance coral
They call me EC
Chirocato, You first posted a pic of a hammer with 2 clowns in it. The coral was withdrawn and did not look happy. Then you posted a pic of what appeared to be the same coral without the clowns. In this pic the coral looked much better. Again you have proved my point with your pics. The coral looks much better without the clowns.
I think one of the problems here is that we don't truely know how our corals are feeling. In most cases we don't know our corals are sick until it becomes life threatening. As long as the polup is out we believe the coral is healthy. Especially in the Euphyllia family we can see one polup that on one side its full and its tentacles are flowing in the current. The other side of the same polup can be a white dead skeleton. The polup that remains may appear healthy down to the last tentacle. It stands to reason that our corals can be ill long before it becomes apparent to us. There have been enough people that have reported bad experiences with allowing thier clowns to use thier coral as a host for us to know this is a dangerous practice. Just because someone has allowed this and snapped some pic's of it doesn't mean that this is okay to do.
This is a pic of my very first Elegance coral with the pair of clowns that I allowed to us it as a host. Back then we didn't have RC to come to and get advice. Information on how to care for these animals was hard to come by. We had to learn by trial and error. In time this coral slowly started to not open up like it should. Eventually I had to take the clowns back to my LFS. Within one week the coral was back to its old self again. I got lucky and stoped this before my coral died. With all the evidence we have against this practice it should be our responsibility to worn newbies against it. Just my 2 cents.
I think one of the problems here is that we don't truely know how our corals are feeling. In most cases we don't know our corals are sick until it becomes life threatening. As long as the polup is out we believe the coral is healthy. Especially in the Euphyllia family we can see one polup that on one side its full and its tentacles are flowing in the current. The other side of the same polup can be a white dead skeleton. The polup that remains may appear healthy down to the last tentacle. It stands to reason that our corals can be ill long before it becomes apparent to us. There have been enough people that have reported bad experiences with allowing thier clowns to use thier coral as a host for us to know this is a dangerous practice. Just because someone has allowed this and snapped some pic's of it doesn't mean that this is okay to do.