Stitchreef
New member
This is the odyssey of what may well be the most tortured coral in all of existence. Those without strong composure should turn away now.
For those who have chosen to go forward, let me introduce you to a small frag I purchased from an LFS in August of 2005.
This was the original frag and the original color I purchased for 10 dollars. It was my first SPS coral, bought not for its looks but to see if my tiny 15 gallon could support any hard corals. I didn't notice at the time but in this picture this coral has Red bugs. I had just started the tank and didn't even know what those were, but always wondered why I got no polyp extension from that coral.
This next picture was taken two months later in November 2005, and due to the red bugs, and having only a crap BakPak skimmer, and my general newbie-ness at the time, not much had changed.
This is when I noticed the Red Bugs and treated the tank with interceptor. Notice the difference only a few weeks later in the next pic?
Here there is finally polyp extension and the frag has begun to encrust in December of 2005. I had also upgraded from a 15 gallon, to a 20 at this point, and discovered just how important calcium and alkalinity are in Reef tanks! And so the odyssey continues...
The above picture was taken a month later (January 2006) and while not much has grown, I'd change a lot of the tank configuration then and finally put in a sump, so I could finally have a decent skimmer.
This next picture was taken April 2006, after I upgraded to a 29 gallon tank. Not much growth, but it is growing!
Now here things get pretty interesting. In this next shot was taken in April 2006 you can see some other corals around the coral of interest, and they're all different than they were previously. Why?
Chloramine is why.
A couple of months prior to this pic the 29 gallon tank I originally had developed a leak severe enough to require the replacement of the tank. I had a 30 gallon tank with SG 1.025 water filled and aged for a week. I had planned to use my usual RO/DI water, but I had just bought a new Deltec MCE600 skimmer and was testing it on that 30 gallon prior to the 29 gallons leak with tap water, and figured "well, London, Ontario doesn't use Chloramine in the water, just chlorine, and that degasses in a few days, let alone a week through the skimmer, so I'll just add in the salt, heat it up, and use that as my holding tank while I fix the 29 gallon!
Apparently that week London had a run-off problem with the water from some local farms and began introducing Chloramine to the water to sanitize it. Just my luck. So yeah, all my corals, my fish, my snails, etc were all exposed to chloramine for 6 hours while I was out getting the old tank sealed and fixed. Shockingly all my fish survived, but 90% of my snails died, as well as 99% of my corals. This frag was the only coral to survive. How, I don't know.
In fact, in the months later, it began to take off! This next pic is from August 2006.
So now its been through red bugs, and chloramine. What else could possibly go wrong?
AEFW! Acro-eating flat worms! No, I'm not kidding.
While I do quarantine my purchases, when restocking the entire tank I failed to do so on a couple of corals. I noticed our intrepid survivor coral first began to fade, and lost polyp extension again. I observed it closely and finally noticed small bite marks and later, with flatworm-exit treatment at very high dose, was able to blow free some of the pests that I confirmed were AEFW.
*sigh* By the time I noticed I pulled the rock with the coral on it and found not just flatworms, but their eggs as well, laid in the tiniest of crevasses. All I could do was cry and break off any portion of the coral with the AEFW eggs. I also carried out a lot of REALLY high-dose (30x normal concentration) flatworm exit treatments, which themselves dont kill the AEFW, but do irritate them enough for me to blow off the corals and suck up with a hose. This was the result in October 2006:
Thankfully a month later, December 2006, it was beginning to recover:
And finally, this past January I upgraded to a 90 gallon SPS-dominated tank with 6x54 T5s, a recirculating Deltec skimmer, a tunze wavebox and dual Tunze 6000s, as well as a Korallin 1502 Calcium reactor.
The coral has recovered nicely, no?
So there you have it, a coral that started a 1/2 inch frag, that survived Red Bugs, Chloramine and AEFWs! It's gone from a 15 gallon, to a 20L, to a 29, and then finally to a 90g. Who knows what the future will hold for this brave coral?
So what about you guys? Do you have any shockingly-resistant corals? What have they been through?
For those who have chosen to go forward, let me introduce you to a small frag I purchased from an LFS in August of 2005.
This was the original frag and the original color I purchased for 10 dollars. It was my first SPS coral, bought not for its looks but to see if my tiny 15 gallon could support any hard corals. I didn't notice at the time but in this picture this coral has Red bugs. I had just started the tank and didn't even know what those were, but always wondered why I got no polyp extension from that coral.
This next picture was taken two months later in November 2005, and due to the red bugs, and having only a crap BakPak skimmer, and my general newbie-ness at the time, not much had changed.
This is when I noticed the Red Bugs and treated the tank with interceptor. Notice the difference only a few weeks later in the next pic?
Here there is finally polyp extension and the frag has begun to encrust in December of 2005. I had also upgraded from a 15 gallon, to a 20 at this point, and discovered just how important calcium and alkalinity are in Reef tanks! And so the odyssey continues...
The above picture was taken a month later (January 2006) and while not much has grown, I'd change a lot of the tank configuration then and finally put in a sump, so I could finally have a decent skimmer.
This next picture was taken April 2006, after I upgraded to a 29 gallon tank. Not much growth, but it is growing!
Now here things get pretty interesting. In this next shot was taken in April 2006 you can see some other corals around the coral of interest, and they're all different than they were previously. Why?
Chloramine is why.
A couple of months prior to this pic the 29 gallon tank I originally had developed a leak severe enough to require the replacement of the tank. I had a 30 gallon tank with SG 1.025 water filled and aged for a week. I had planned to use my usual RO/DI water, but I had just bought a new Deltec MCE600 skimmer and was testing it on that 30 gallon prior to the 29 gallons leak with tap water, and figured "well, London, Ontario doesn't use Chloramine in the water, just chlorine, and that degasses in a few days, let alone a week through the skimmer, so I'll just add in the salt, heat it up, and use that as my holding tank while I fix the 29 gallon!
Apparently that week London had a run-off problem with the water from some local farms and began introducing Chloramine to the water to sanitize it. Just my luck. So yeah, all my corals, my fish, my snails, etc were all exposed to chloramine for 6 hours while I was out getting the old tank sealed and fixed. Shockingly all my fish survived, but 90% of my snails died, as well as 99% of my corals. This frag was the only coral to survive. How, I don't know.
In fact, in the months later, it began to take off! This next pic is from August 2006.
So now its been through red bugs, and chloramine. What else could possibly go wrong?
AEFW! Acro-eating flat worms! No, I'm not kidding.
While I do quarantine my purchases, when restocking the entire tank I failed to do so on a couple of corals. I noticed our intrepid survivor coral first began to fade, and lost polyp extension again. I observed it closely and finally noticed small bite marks and later, with flatworm-exit treatment at very high dose, was able to blow free some of the pests that I confirmed were AEFW.
*sigh* By the time I noticed I pulled the rock with the coral on it and found not just flatworms, but their eggs as well, laid in the tiniest of crevasses. All I could do was cry and break off any portion of the coral with the AEFW eggs. I also carried out a lot of REALLY high-dose (30x normal concentration) flatworm exit treatments, which themselves dont kill the AEFW, but do irritate them enough for me to blow off the corals and suck up with a hose. This was the result in October 2006:
Thankfully a month later, December 2006, it was beginning to recover:
And finally, this past January I upgraded to a 90 gallon SPS-dominated tank with 6x54 T5s, a recirculating Deltec skimmer, a tunze wavebox and dual Tunze 6000s, as well as a Korallin 1502 Calcium reactor.
The coral has recovered nicely, no?
So there you have it, a coral that started a 1/2 inch frag, that survived Red Bugs, Chloramine and AEFWs! It's gone from a 15 gallon, to a 20L, to a 29, and then finally to a 90g. Who knows what the future will hold for this brave coral?
So what about you guys? Do you have any shockingly-resistant corals? What have they been through?