Micro Elegance

[Sandeep]

I thought I would create this thread to keep track of and collect all the images of my micro elegance.

Two years ago in Jan 2008 while fragging my Elegance, I inadvertently ended up with a tiny piece of coral with a few tenticles. I was going to throw it away, but decided to keep it and see if it would regenerate.

Here is what it looked like initially, about the size of a dime:

Well he's steadily grown and has regenerated a complete disk of tentacles and one mouth. This is what he looked like awhile back:

Here are the latest pictures, taken a few days ago, and is about the size of a nickel. It's interesting to note that at night time he extends his tenticles out and they appear quite thin and long at that time, but thicker and shorter during the day, I have not observed this in my larger Elegance corals.

You can see the scale of how tiny he really is in this picture with my small/medium sized fire shrimp 'Big Red' next to him:

And here is a FTS of his home where he lives in my 5.5g pico reef tank:

He is only fed occasionally with a mysis shrimp or food flake placed in his mouth about once every two weeks, with weekly feedings of the entire tank with cyclopeze.

I'll try to keep this thread updated with new images over time. Hope he survives in the long term to become a big boy one day.

 

[GoingPostal]

That's really cool, it looks almost like a duncan at that size. I hope it continues to do well, how much skeleton is there to it? Do you have a pic of it all closed up?

 

[whatcaneyedo]

I'm curious about how you fragged your elegance? I bought an aussi elegance at the beginning of December that is doing well so far. If it lives a year and continues to grow I want to try fragging it as well.

 

[KarmaChameleon]

Love the pico, and cute elegance!

 

[Whalehead9]

very cool

 

[Sandeep]

The piece of skeleton that it is attached to is about the size of a dime. I have not really noticed any skeleton growth yet, and I don't want to disturb him to check. Everything grows very slowly in my pico.

I fragged the Elegance using a hacksaw and a blade. Taking the Elegance out of water, sawing from the base towards the tenticles and then using a sharp blade to cut through the flesh. I've done it twice now over the last 3 years, fragging each Elegance into 4 to 5 frags and watching the frags each grow as big as the initial Elegance. I feed them pieces of silversides once every two weeks and they grow like gangbusters.

 

[whatcaneyedo]

Thats great that you've been having that kind of success. I've been feeding my elegance small bits of silversides or krill several times each week and I've watched it put on 1/4" of new skeleton already in the two months I've had it. When I feel confident that my elegance is going to last long term I'll frag it. I own a diamond blade bandsaw that I've been using to frag a variety of LPS so that is likely what I will use when the time comes.

 

[heuerfan]

What type of lighting are you using for your elegance?

 

[180+55reef]

what type of elegance is it

 

[triggerfreak]

+1 but still cool looking.

It does look like a little duncan = )

 

[PokerReefer]

To elaborate earlier. That elegance does look like a Ducan. If it would be in the lfs and you purchased it as such. What a suprise you would have in 6 months or so when it starts getting big = )

 

[drawman]

That is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

 

[Sandeep]

For reference here are pictures of the original Elegance from back in Dec 2007 before I fragged it.

After fragging in Jan 2008 this is what the gang looked like
(the frags are on the tank floor, that's another Elegance on the rock, micro elegance frag is at the extreme left of the picture)

​

Lighting is the 18" Current USA T5-HO but planning on building a LED fixture for the pico.

 

[triggerfreak]

Very nice.How did you go about fragging it and how long did it take the frags to heal and look that good.

For reference here are pictures of the original Elegance from back in Dec 2007 before I fragged it.

After fragging in Jan 2008 this is what the gang looked like
(the frags are on the tank floor, that's another Elegance on the rock, micro elegance frag is at the extreme left of the picture)

​

Lighting is the 18" Current USA T5-HO but planning on building a LED fixture for the pico.

 

[swampy42]

great fragging job!

 

[Sandeep]

Latest picture of my micro-elegance which is now the size of a quarter. I also fragged my elegance in my nano into 5 large pieces and ended up with two tiny pieces of a few tentacles each attached to some skeleton. You can see them to the right of the micro-elegance in the picture. It will be interesting to see if I can keep them alive in the long term and if they develop a mouth like my original micro-elegance did.

 

[whatcaneyedo]

Very cool. Are you still just using a hacksaw to frag with?

My elegance from December continues to do well and grow, perhaps sometime soon I'll try fragging it myself.

 

[Sandeep]

Time to update this thread. A couple of weeks ago I cut off a small sliver of skeleton with a few tentacles from one of my larger Indo-elegance frags.

Glued to a rock base it is just a few mm in size. Over time it will develop a mouth and a complete circle disk and in 3-4 years will be as big as the micro-elegance that you see in the background. That micro-elegance is around 4 years old and the size of a silver dollar now.

 

[kochis4]

I never knew elegance coral could be fragged. Guess I learned something new today.

 

[Reel North]

I love these corals. I feed them 2-3x a week. Absolute pigs. Mine is massive already. I also was unaware you could frag them. And the mini ones are just too cool for school!!

Thanks for sharing