ORA Pink Bird's nest, this is pretty tough coral.

[rkb]

A couple months ago I scored a this ORA frag from my LFS. Like all ORA frags this one came in on one of those hideous black plastic frag plugs. And like other ORA pink bird's nest it was totally brown from the grower's lighting. In an attempt remove it from the plug by squeezing the plug with some pliers I shot the coral across my kitchen flow, twice. That would be a tile floor... Of course the coral shattered into a few pieces and knocked the growing tips off. Figuring it was a total goner it snapped the remaining piece off the plug, glued all the bits I could find to some LR and tossed into the tank- no acclimation. I figured after what it had already gone through what good is acclimating.

To my surprise, it polyped out within hours and now after a couple months it is getting it's pink color. The growing tips have returned in force and I think it will become a nice colony.

 

[belgian_waffleman]

Nice story! glad it's doing OK, Love the coloration on the birdsnest. I had a similar but not as dramatic experience with the ORA plug.

Waffleman

 

[phenom5]

Man...I hate those plugs.

 

[lwolfe44]

wow good deal. what kind of lighting are you running to get it to grow and color so nicely

 

[rkb]

wow good deal. what kind of lighting are you running to get it to grow and color so nicely

Thanks, the tank is a 40B and I running 2X150w 14K Phoenix MHs and 4X39w T5s.

 

[Amphiprion]

Looks like it recovered very nicely. That sounds like the story of my ORA rose millepora all over again.

 

[MikeandNicole]

We have had really good luck growing out the ORA birdsnest. Under our 250w MH we kept is right on the sand bed and had incredible growth. Under our T5s we keep it middle level and have had great growth. It survived our tank crash but lost a bunch of color.

 

[Stanley-Reefer]

I removed mine.... it had grown about 30x that size in a year and was killiing neighboring corals and growing nice hair algae where those fallen corals put up their last stand.

It was nesting the AEFW in my tank too that are 2 weeks gone:beer:

It was about the size of a basketball and I had to break it to get it out of my canopy!

 

[rholguin]

Its good to hear that everything turned out well for you, but with me its a different story I cannot keep birdsnest even if my life depended on it. I keep anything else except for birds. Kinda of a shame cause I really like birds. Oh well.

 

[anderson99]

Wow, great looking piece! The ORA plugs can be a real pain. I usually dremel off the bottom part and glue the base to my rock work.