Save sun coral?

[kikimers13]

First off; I am not happy that the coral arrived in the condition it has and now I'm hoping that I can somehow nurse it back to health. I ordered it from reefs2go.com and here's the condition it's in while still in the bag:

There's about 7 "healthy" heads to the coral and the rest is skeletal. Should I try to frag it (and if so how? I never have fragged) and save it that way or should I just leave it as is and try to feed it as best as I can with mysid/reef chili mix and hope it turns around?


Also a little OT; how should I handle it with the company? Should I request partial credit or just let it slide?

 

[kikimers13]

Just bumping

Sent from my Vortex using Tapatalk

 

[username in use]

If they claimed they were sending a coral with all those heads alive, I would get a full refund, as its an uphill battle at best.

You can nurse that back to health, you just have to be diligent with feeding to get it to open.

 

[kikimers13]

Thanks for the reply. I have requested a full refund from the company so I'll see how that turns out.

I got one head to come out just far enough for a piece of mysid to slip into it's grasp but the rest never moved, just stayed concave. I'll keep trying, I think I'm going to set up my 10gal qt and take the coral out of my dt for now until its eating regularly. I thought I might stick some live brine and copepods in so it'll maybe be enticed into opening but I wasn't sure if live vs. frozen would matter.

Sent from my Vortex using Tapatalk

 

[username in use]

It could help it open to put in some phyto or oyster feast, then try and feed it multiple times a day with cyclopeeze. I find mine open fuller when presented with multiple feedings a day of smaller pieces than one a day of a larger.

 

[RichardinMa]

You will likely need to do tiny feedings at least once a day to get it eating. They usually will not extend tentacles when they are really stressed and weakened but if you can settle food onto the mouth they will usually take it in. Do that for a few days and it should start getting stronger. As far as reefs 2 go is concerned, I ordered from them once and as far as I'm concerned they can go 2 hell. They shorted an item and it took several emails to get a refund and the stuff they did send was a pathetic animal for the price.

 

[kikimers13]

I found a pretty good solution with help from the lfs guy and all of you. He suggested putting it in a critter keeper within the dt when I need to feed it so that it isn't stressed once again from another acclimation. He had a lot of food suggestions but I think I'll stick with reef chili/mysid and I'm going to try phyto as an enticing agent as the lfs suggested by squirting it over the coral before trying to do other foods. Hopefully I can get it looking better, going to take a lot of work

Thanks for the help, and I'm still open to suggestions if anyone has more.

Sent from my Vortex using Tapatalk

 

[kikimers13]

Coral had about 3 heads barely open last night @ feeding time so slight improvement.

An update with reefs2go.com they completely refunded the coral and stated it shouldn't have been sent to me in that condition so that worked out well.