The Elegance Coral Project
- Thread starter EricHugo
- Start date
zenya
Premium Member
EricHugo said:
This is so sad to look at and it makes me angry as well.
Eric,
So how many more corals exactly do you need? If you can locate them and secure them I'm willing to pay for them so the money that we have now can be put to use as it was intended. I'd hate see this project fall short on anything, especially something like the money.
davejnz
In Memoriam
Eric,the Elegance at the LFS where Alex is at bailed out from its skeleton.Unfortunately,one of the workers there didn't realize that was the one that was going to be shipped and discarded the skeleton.Surprisingly,the polyp is still alive.I've heard of polyp-bail-out before but never seen it first-hand with Catalaphyllia.I will be fixing my elegance mon. and shipping it tue.It too has the cottony,webby,white stuff present around the oral disc.I know it
wont live much longer so fixing it will be my only option.It is weird how the one i sent and the one that i kept both started showing signs of disease around the same time after appearing healthy.
for awhile.there are still 2 elegances remaining that are now in a display tank with Alex and are seemingly healthy.Maybe we can get him to donate one if it indeed stays healthy as it seems that
diseased corals wont be hard aquiring but healthy ones for control,thats the hard part(as you had already stated).
On a side note,i was in another LFS that i used to do business with and got into a shouting match with the owner after asking him why he repeatedly orders Catalaphyllia and Goniopora knowing that there long-term survival in captivity is not good.
I got the typical answer,well the ones i get are doing fine,I asked him about the dead one he sold my friend a month ago.
He replied,I have no problem keeping mine here,I then said you
only have to keep them alive long enough for an uneducated customer to come in and say look at this pretty bubble-tipped elegance and buy it.He replies,well they keep buying them so there must not be any problem.I had to leave before things started getting ugly as his ignorance and his ethics were starting to **** me off.Thats one more LFS i wont be doing business with anymore
wont live much longer so fixing it will be my only option.It is weird how the one i sent and the one that i kept both started showing signs of disease around the same time after appearing healthy.
for awhile.there are still 2 elegances remaining that are now in a display tank with Alex and are seemingly healthy.Maybe we can get him to donate one if it indeed stays healthy as it seems that
diseased corals wont be hard aquiring but healthy ones for control,thats the hard part(as you had already stated).
On a side note,i was in another LFS that i used to do business with and got into a shouting match with the owner after asking him why he repeatedly orders Catalaphyllia and Goniopora knowing that there long-term survival in captivity is not good.
I got the typical answer,well the ones i get are doing fine,I asked him about the dead one he sold my friend a month ago.
He replied,I have no problem keeping mine here,I then said you
only have to keep them alive long enough for an uneducated customer to come in and say look at this pretty bubble-tipped elegance and buy it.He replies,well they keep buying them so there must not be any problem.I had to leave before things started getting ugly as his ignorance and his ethics were starting to **** me off.Thats one more LFS i wont be doing business with anymore
zenya
Premium Member
davejnz said:
Dave,
Please don't get discouraged. We'll have to deal with any LFS or a vendor that have the corals that we need. Please secure them if you think they are useful and I'll pay for them to be sent to Eric so we can reach our goal and Eric can start working on the real problem instead of thinking of funds or specimens that needs to be collected. After that, you can boycott that lousy SOB and take your money somewhere else, I'll personally applaud you for standing your ground.
Tonight, midnight check on elgance purchased yesterday reveals a small star fish I presume eating the coral. I removed it and have photos on my web page but will post one here. when removing from the LFS bag I also saw one of these small star fish in the bag. After thorough inspection through the bag with a hand lense I saw no others, but I suppose there was at least 1 more. Does the coral look healthy?
Ron
Ron
RustySnail
New member
Eric-
I spoke with Eddie (owner of Tropical Paradise www.tpaquarium.com) about obatainig elegance corals. He is a primary sponsor for our club (BARE); and would be happy to make a donation of elegance corals on behalf of his store and our club. Please send him an e-mail (info@tpaquarium.com) so you can discuss specifics about type and quantity of corals that he can donate. I will also check some other local sources in the next couple of weeks and try to get more donations for you. We could then package them all together and send via TropicalParadise.
HTH...
-Russ
I spoke with Eddie (owner of Tropical Paradise www.tpaquarium.com) about obatainig elegance corals. He is a primary sponsor for our club (BARE); and would be happy to make a donation of elegance corals on behalf of his store and our club. Please send him an e-mail (info@tpaquarium.com) so you can discuss specifics about type and quantity of corals that he can donate. I will also check some other local sources in the next couple of weeks and try to get more donations for you. We could then package them all together and send via TropicalParadise.
HTH...
-Russ
Elegance
Elegance
Hi Eric,
I am in the uk and have had a elegance coral for around 4 years now is there any information I can give that may be of some use to your project?
Cheers Eddy
lush01@hotmail.com
Elegance
Hi Eric,
I am in the uk and have had a elegance coral for around 4 years now is there any information I can give that may be of some use to your project?
Cheers Eddy
lush01@hotmail.com
Hi Eddy:
The information you could provide is listed in the Elegance Coral Project Summary thread right below this one. It is also in the first two posts of this thread. thanks for the offer.
Project update:
Thanks to John Link's efforts, we are now, I believe, over the required initial funding requirements for this porject. I say this only tentatively, because I still have nowhere near the number of corals I need, and if the donated money must be used to purchase corals, we are below the study needs. However, I have had an onslaught of offers, and if everyone comes through with their promises, we should have enough. All that would remain is for me to acquire some directly from the exporters or the ocean, and we are in good shape.
I currently have eleven sick elegance corals all ready to be sent off to histology. I thought I would share a little preliminary finding on these specimens.
One of the things I do after fixing the coral tissue is decalcify the skeleton. You have to dissolve the carbonate in dilute buffered HCl so the polyps tissue can be sectioned. As this happens, you get to see all the organic material that is left in the skeleton. Many of the corals had quite a few small bivalves, probably Lithophaga, within the skeletons, but not all. One had a small, as yet, unidentified crustacean that is probably a pit crab, but is very odd looking.
The second interesting aspect is the amount of algal and fungal filaments in Catalaphyllia. This is perhaps expected given a relatively well bored, lightweight skeleton, especially one that is found buried in organically enriched sediments. All corals hae some amount of extraneous material within the skeleton. But these Catalaphyllia have a lot...way more than any other coral I have worked with. Also, these filaments are attached to and may be penetrating the tissue. I have to work fairly hard to carefully remove a lot of this material from the underside of the polyps where they were originally attached to the skeleton.
Penetration of fungal filaments has been found to occur in some corals, and though the coral usually walls them off, they are not alwas successful and the invasion of filaments does result in pathologic conditions in those corals studied. It will be interesting to see if, and to what extent, any algal or fungal invasion of tissue is occurring.
Most interesting, thus far, is the "white material." As you may be aware, many of these corals, especially in the later stages of decline, develop a white mucus like web or white film/paste along the tissue margins. I had previously said this may be a secondary or opportunistic colonization, and perhaps infection, and I posited that I suspected it would be Beggiatoa.
As it turns out, this material is far more developed on the underside of the polyps, and heavy deposits exists between the skeleton and the calicoblastic epithelium. It is not macroscopically visible in all samples, but is definitely in most samples. Some have this material visible within the polyp tissue, too, so it is clearly capable of being invasive. However, what role it plays is a total guess.
Friday, I did some smears and staining of this material, including gram stain. The material is homogenous and mostly homogenous filamentous debris with cells present. It is very white, and very "cheesy", but does not look white under the microscope. After the gram stain, and much of it tinted with safranin to the visible eye (indicating gram negative), I was almost counting my chickens that the white was from the reflected sulfur granules within the gram negative Beggiatoa.
What I saw, though, was very odd. The safranin really hadn't been taken up much, nor had the crytal violet. Very few things iin this material took the stain, and if anything, many of the filaments were staining blue, indicating gram positive if bacteria at all. But the blue stain was very light. It no longer really looked like bacterial mats or biofilms, or anything but a lot of debris.
I also had a resident microbiologist come up to take a look. We talked about it for awhile, and he said, "you know, this looks liek Actinomycetes more than anything, but there aren't any marine actinomyctes are there?" I said, no, I don;t think so, but I'll check." As it turns out, there are. And, they are being investigated for antimicrobial properties, found in marine sediments, resistant to high metal loads, etc.
Now, I'm not at all sure yet that's what these are. I have never seen marine actinomycetes before under a scope, and only learned of their existence 48 hours ago. Nor am I sure what role they migh tbe playing here, if that's what they are. Interestingly, these things are beneficial to plants in sediments. Are they also normally beneficial to corals that live in sediments by providing nutrients? Are they even Actinomycetes?
Lots to find out yet, but it was an interesting week with the elegance corals.
The information you could provide is listed in the Elegance Coral Project Summary thread right below this one. It is also in the first two posts of this thread. thanks for the offer.
Project update:
Thanks to John Link's efforts, we are now, I believe, over the required initial funding requirements for this porject. I say this only tentatively, because I still have nowhere near the number of corals I need, and if the donated money must be used to purchase corals, we are below the study needs. However, I have had an onslaught of offers, and if everyone comes through with their promises, we should have enough. All that would remain is for me to acquire some directly from the exporters or the ocean, and we are in good shape.
I currently have eleven sick elegance corals all ready to be sent off to histology. I thought I would share a little preliminary finding on these specimens.
One of the things I do after fixing the coral tissue is decalcify the skeleton. You have to dissolve the carbonate in dilute buffered HCl so the polyps tissue can be sectioned. As this happens, you get to see all the organic material that is left in the skeleton. Many of the corals had quite a few small bivalves, probably Lithophaga, within the skeletons, but not all. One had a small, as yet, unidentified crustacean that is probably a pit crab, but is very odd looking.
The second interesting aspect is the amount of algal and fungal filaments in Catalaphyllia. This is perhaps expected given a relatively well bored, lightweight skeleton, especially one that is found buried in organically enriched sediments. All corals hae some amount of extraneous material within the skeleton. But these Catalaphyllia have a lot...way more than any other coral I have worked with. Also, these filaments are attached to and may be penetrating the tissue. I have to work fairly hard to carefully remove a lot of this material from the underside of the polyps where they were originally attached to the skeleton.
Penetration of fungal filaments has been found to occur in some corals, and though the coral usually walls them off, they are not alwas successful and the invasion of filaments does result in pathologic conditions in those corals studied. It will be interesting to see if, and to what extent, any algal or fungal invasion of tissue is occurring.
Most interesting, thus far, is the "white material." As you may be aware, many of these corals, especially in the later stages of decline, develop a white mucus like web or white film/paste along the tissue margins. I had previously said this may be a secondary or opportunistic colonization, and perhaps infection, and I posited that I suspected it would be Beggiatoa.
As it turns out, this material is far more developed on the underside of the polyps, and heavy deposits exists between the skeleton and the calicoblastic epithelium. It is not macroscopically visible in all samples, but is definitely in most samples. Some have this material visible within the polyp tissue, too, so it is clearly capable of being invasive. However, what role it plays is a total guess.
Friday, I did some smears and staining of this material, including gram stain. The material is homogenous and mostly homogenous filamentous debris with cells present. It is very white, and very "cheesy", but does not look white under the microscope. After the gram stain, and much of it tinted with safranin to the visible eye (indicating gram negative), I was almost counting my chickens that the white was from the reflected sulfur granules within the gram negative Beggiatoa.
What I saw, though, was very odd. The safranin really hadn't been taken up much, nor had the crytal violet. Very few things iin this material took the stain, and if anything, many of the filaments were staining blue, indicating gram positive if bacteria at all. But the blue stain was very light. It no longer really looked like bacterial mats or biofilms, or anything but a lot of debris.
I also had a resident microbiologist come up to take a look. We talked about it for awhile, and he said, "you know, this looks liek Actinomycetes more than anything, but there aren't any marine actinomyctes are there?" I said, no, I don;t think so, but I'll check." As it turns out, there are. And, they are being investigated for antimicrobial properties, found in marine sediments, resistant to high metal loads, etc.
Now, I'm not at all sure yet that's what these are. I have never seen marine actinomycetes before under a scope, and only learned of their existence 48 hours ago. Nor am I sure what role they migh tbe playing here, if that's what they are. Interestingly, these things are beneficial to plants in sediments. Are they also normally beneficial to corals that live in sediments by providing nutrients? Are they even Actinomycetes?
Lots to find out yet, but it was an interesting week with the elegance corals.
Dan@ReefSplendor
Sponsor, 10 & Over Club
Eric
I realize that you have been extremely busy, researching, reading and replying to this thread but I still await your instructions on the number of specimens that you require as well as timing for delvery. When you get a moment please reply.
I have imported six cats since my last post (greater number than usual). Two died in our facility.. received in apparent good order... they perished exhibiting the classic symptoms. I have traced the other four through the various LFS' who have been in contact with the hobbyists.. to date all are still thriving.
regards
I realize that you have been extremely busy, researching, reading and replying to this thread but I still await your instructions on the number of specimens that you require as well as timing for delvery. When you get a moment please reply.
I have imported six cats since my last post (greater number than usual). Two died in our facility.. received in apparent good order... they perished exhibiting the classic symptoms. I have traced the other four through the various LFS' who have been in contact with the hobbyists.. to date all are still thriving.
regards
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