It's all good. Everyone wants to make sense of this problem, simply because, on the surface, it doesn't make sense. In the 80's and 90's these corals were considered beginner corals, and practically bullet proof, so Indonesia exported them in huge numbers. It was reported to be the most popular coral in the hobby, at the time. Then things started to change. They started dieing and displaying strange symptoms. Before long it became nearly impossible to keep one alive. Australia added to the confusion when they started exporting. Their corals move through some of the same importers, wholesalers, and retailers as the Indonesian corals, but don't seem to suffer the same symptoms. This is just bizarre and doesn't seem to have an obvious explanation.
As with most puzzles, the more pieces you put together, the clearer the picture becomes. To get a true picture of what has taken place, we must start with the "hardy" corals of the good old days. Collection for the hobby was much different back then. We didn't have large, high tech, vessels with SCUBA trained divers. We had Indonesian natives, in small boats, collecting what they could on one breath of air. All of our elegance were collected in the shallow water of lagoons, grass flats, or calm reefs. These corals adapted to captivity quite well. After the problems started, Borneman dove the shallows of some collection sites in Indonesia. He found the elegance population devastated. A coral that was once abundant, was now nearly impossible to find. Indonesia was still exporting these corals in large numbers, so they had to be there somewhere. Borneman didn't find them until he dove to the bottom of the reef wall, to depths exceeding 100ft. Here he found corals that were very typical of the ones being imported into the US. Corals that were small, with cone shaped and dirty skeletons. This makes perfect sense. Indonesia had been exporting from the shallows, virtually unchecked, for a couple of decades. With the numbers depleted in the shallows, Indonesia was forced to dive to deeper depths to feed the demand for these corals. This is the tipping point where everything went wrong. As Indonesia started exporting larger numbers of these deeper water corals, our ability to keep them alive plummeted. Today, virtually all of these corals from Indonesia are collected at depth. The common symptoms seen in these corals are an over inflated polyp, and shrunken tentacles. We can cause these symptoms to appear, simply by exposing one of these corals to bright light. The same symptoms appear right after collection. The one major difference between the habitat in the shallows and the habitat at depth, is the amount of light the coral is exposed to. When one of these corals is brought to the surface, the amount of light it is exposed to increases dramatically. As it does, the rate of photosynthesis increases. As photosynthesis increases, the amount of oxidants being produced also increases. It's a well known fact that this process can oxidize, or destroy, the cellular tissue of corals. In Bornemans "project", he found damage to the "cellular architecture" of these corals. This is the physical damage that leaves these coral vulnerable to opportunistic, microbial infection. With coral bleaching events, and many other problems causing a decline in some coral species, there has been a great deal of research done on coral disease. What scientists are finding is that corals are very disease resistant. They typically don't become ill until after there is some physical damage, or other influence, that weakens the coral. Once weakened, the coral is vulnerable to many opportunistic microbes.
The reason Australian elegance don't suffer the same problems is due to the habitat they are collected from. While all Catalaphyllia Jardinei are the same animal, their growth form can vary greatly depending on the environment where they live. Those from nutrient rich lagoons or deep silt beds, have a stunted growth form. They typically grow about a 1/4" per year, with drastic seasonal changes in growth. They are also restricted to a relatively small size. Those that live in cleaner/brighter environments, may grow more than an inch per year, with little to no noticeable seasonal changes in growth. These corals reach much larger sizes. These are the ones that are typically collected in Australia. Before they are exported, these larger corals are fragged. You simply don't get these larger, rapid growing, corals in the harsher, deeper environments. So, Australia is collecting from prime elegance coral habitat, while Indonesia is collecting from a habitat where elegance simply survive.
