Ideal Elegence coral set up?

[maxxII]

I've been folowing the "Elegence Coral Issues" thread and was impressed by the knowledgable people who showed up to help out. I've been interested in these corals for a very long time, tried twice, and not had any success with them, so I stopped trying til I could figure out what I was doing wrong.

For my own information, what is the ideal Elegence coral set up?

Nick

 

[elegance coral]

It's nice to see hobbyists stop buying animals that do poorly until they figure out why.
It would depend on where your Elegance came from. I would assume that the first two you had came from the Indo Pacific. These are very sensitive corals, but rather inexpensive. The Australian Elegance corals are much hardier, but cost a little more. The Diver's Den has one now.
The ideal set up for an Australian Elegance would be a system with a good amount of turnover so that you could keep the water clean, but not to much turbulence in the tank. I accomplish this by having the return plumbing run behind the rocks with many different discharges. This eliminates virtually any jet wash in the tank. A large protein skimmer, because Elegance corals like to eat large protein based foods. A refuge or sump to grow plenty of algae to help keep the water clean. A constant source of calcium. A good strong MH or T5 lighting system. The coral would need to be slowly acclimated to the lights by positioning it deep in the tank or away from direct intense lighting. This may be easier with MH because the amount of light changes as you move the coral horizontally or vertically. With T5's the light doesn't change much as the coral is moved horizontally. There would be no tangs, clowns, or large crustaceans in the tank. The coral would be feed meaty foods about once a week. Every once in a while I like to drop a couple of live FW feeder fish in the tank. I'm not sure if there is any true benefit to this, but it may do the coral some good to have some live prey for a change.

 

[adunne]

How do you know you are getting one from Australia? is this the one you are talking about thats aval now?

http://www.liveaquaria.com/diversden/CatDisplay.cfm?sku=0080550000000&siteid=20

its says from Indo

 

[Coderabit2]

Austrailia no longer exports corals I believe. Therefore any "aussie elegances" are going to come from being aquacultured. I don't think you can tell by looking at the coral; mainly a trust from the person you are buying it from. Search the web as there are a few places that are selling aussie elegances. LA must have sold the Aussie elegance.

 

[Echidna09]

Unless the stop on Aussie corals was very recent, they are still exporting. We got some aussie corals last Thursday at work.

 

[maxxII]

The ideal set up for an Australian Elegance would be a system with a good amount of turnover so that you could keep the water clean, but not to much turbulence in the tank. I accomplish this by having the return plumbing run behind the rocks with many different discharges. This eliminates virtually any jet wash in the tank. A large protein skimmer, because Elegance corals like to eat large protein based foods. A refuge or sump to grow plenty of algae to help keep the water clean. A constant source of calcium. A good strong MH or T5 lighting system.

Interesting!

I had always heard that Cataphylia preferred less "clean" water, and one hypothesis for their generally poor outlook these days was because skimmers had gotten better at cleaning the water column.

What make/model skimmer do you have on your system EC? Could you please post pics of your corals and your system specs?

Nick

 

[elegance coral]

Yesterday when the DD update e-mail went out they had an Australian Elegance. It seems to be gone this morning.

It has been a myth for decades that Elegance corals prefer dirty water. This is simply untrue. These are stony corals not unlike the rest. Elevated nutrients like phosphate interfere with the corals ability to lay down new skeletal material for growth. This is one of the reasons that people believe these corals are prone to polyp bail out, where the polyp simply floats off the skeleton. If Elegance corals are provided with the proper water quality this is not an issue. As nitrate levels increase an Elegance corals expansion will decrease. When the nitrate is reduced the Elegance corals expansion will return to normal. This myth got started because Elegance corals can be found in waters that are not as clean as the waters of the coral reef or open ocean. Elegance corals have no control over where they live. Just because they may be able to survive in a les than perfect environment does not mean we should try to duplicate it in our systems.
My skimmer is a DIY design. It's about 3 feet tall and 6 inches in diameter. It is fed through a venturi and has a recirculating pump with a pin wheel mod and a venturi on the intake side. The display is only 29gl with a BB. I have a 100 micron filter that is changed out daily. A 55gl sump/refuge with a DSB and lots of algae. I have a 5gl kalk dispenser that adds kalk as the water evaporates. (also DIY). I'll see what I can do about getting some new pics. These are a few I already have on Imageshack.

 

[chrisstie]

I have heard rumors that the CITES permits letting stuff out of Australia are coming toward the end of the current run that we've seen through the summer but a few more are still trickling in. I'd say once its over you'd have to wait for next year to see them come in.

Not sure how true this is or not.

I've also heard talk of a few other areas near Australia with similar colored corals that are cheaper to get ahold of and will be available more often than the occasional australian shipment so we may see some price drops with competition.. Just have to watch and see