Shedding Wells

[bonerfortuna]

My Wellsophyllia has totally separated its flesh from its skeleton. The flesh is still alive, puffing up under light and seems to have found solace in between a few rocks so its holding its shape. Ive removed the skeletal remains to allow more room and am wondering it its over or this thing has a chance. Everything else is fine and normal, dont have the water params handy but its a healthy tank. I havent seen this in the search results and would like the opinions of the more experienced here. Should I just remove it if its a hazard to the rest of the tank ? Thanks Peter

 

[bonerfortuna]

anyone ? Beuller ?

 

[ALTI]

doesnt sound good peter. if u know UG filters, i will take a wild guess that u might know a little something about reefkeepeing so i wont go through the basics on you. did u do anything different to the tank or had anything unusual happen? i really doubt that it can survive without the skeleton, but alot of corals have surprised me in the past. did u remove the skeleton from the water? if not put it back where it was. i have a habit of buying dead coral skeletons and ive had quite a few of them return from the dead.

 

[sarduci]

I have a frogspawn that came in a shipment of three frags, two of the frags didn't make it, one of them looked bad and pulled back off the skelleton. Now, it's happy and 4 times bigger than when I got it, but where it pulled back from I have 2 more small froggies starting from.

 

[Rothie]

There was another thread in this forum a few months ago relating the same experience.Someone on that thread said they had also experienced this.The outlook seemed optomistic.You could try to do a search for the thread.

 

[davejnz]

Its called polyp bailout,I've seen it with Elegance corals and Scolymia.
I think its said to be a stress related response.With the right conditions,the coral can continue to survive and start calcifying a new skeleton.Keep feeding it as often as you can and it'll have a much better chance of survival.These corals are very active feeders and IME,will recede when starved.BTW,the genus Wellsophyllia is no longer recognized,they're all Trachyphyllia geoffroyi.

 

[bonerfortuna]

Thanks for the help guys, Im gonna make a PVC ring for him to hold his shape on the sandbed, feed religiously and hope to bring back a sucessful report down the road.