New lps keeper, need help on doughnut coral

[ivans75]

My tank is close to 7 weeks now and after all seems good, decided to get my first lps. First choice was a medium size red green brain coral. Bought it and took it home, it was not expanding at first but at that night i can see its tentacles coming out. Looks its doing ok. Then few days after, fell in love with this red doughnut coral and bought it. Placed it on the sand close to my green sand anemone and until now, i dont see it's expanding. It looked fluffy and bigger at the lfs. Would the anemone scared it?
Why is it not expanding? Okay my po4 is bit high, would that cause it not wanting to expand?

Water parameter is 0 nitrate, 0.25 po4, 380 calc and 1200 magnesium. Salinity is 1.0255

Thanks

 

[LAKEM0NSTER]

have you tried feeding them? after I feed my LPS corals, they puff up real big.

Maybe there's too much flow on them? I'd love to see some photos.

 

[greech]

Fleshy LPS don't like high flow if that happens to be the case. Brighter light than they were kept in previously can cause some LPS to retract for a while too. What kind of sand anemone do you have and is the nem close enough to sting or irritate the donut? Is this a scolymia? Might want to test your alk as well.

 

[bglegs]

Also cal should be atleast 420, mag1350,alk 8dkh for corals..

 

[ivans75]

okay I dosed more calcium and magnesium, I havent tested the KH because i got no test kit for that, it's quite hard to get that where I live. But I am pretty sure my water KH is pretty good as the brain coral expanded very big in the day time.

Also I do know lps dont like high flow so I placed it on a spot where the flow is minimum. I has expanded a little especially around the mouth, it was like inflating upside not the side. I am bit worried now.

How do you feed it? I bought seachem phytoplankton, the lfs guy told me to feed it with this. I can't get brine shrimp easy where I live as well, LFS told me to feed it with liquid coral food.

Please do enlighten me more.
Thanks

 

[ivans75]

here's pic of my healthy red brain coral, it's fluffy

Here's pic of my donut, it looks pale, doesnt expand/inflate well but, it did respond to food (small cut of raw shrimp) at lfs the color is more red, orange and green

 

[Dave VG]

The nem looks close enough to sting it and or at the least irritate. I would move it.

 

[Sheol]

I concur. Get it away from that anemone! It might get stung & damaged in that location..

Matthew

 

[ivans75]

yup it has just been moved to a new location. Looks like it's quite happy there i can see it's getting bigger but still not as fat as it was in lfs.

Do you really need to aclimate these things?

 

[Dave VG]

Glad to hear it's doing better. I do not acclimate corals but starting to rethink that. Never lost one yet or had them stress out to much till recently when I bought some cloves. For the most part most of them open within a couple of hours with the exception of those darn cloves I mentioned that I got recently. So I'm beginning to think some of the more sensitive ones should be and my change things up and just acclimate everything.