Candy Cane - any other names and care please

J

Jeff

Membership Expired
I bought a small candy cane frag yesterday from Tranquil Scapes (nice store and nice guys). It came out of the $15 frag tank. It has three heads and one head seems to be bleaching and RTNing on one side.

I have it in moderate flow, my light is fairly strong (27 watt PC about 8-10 inches away). I don't know if this coral extends polyps but I haven't seen it do so yet. My params. are:
Temp: 78.6
pH 7.8
Am 0
NO2 0
NO3 20
CA 440
ALK 8dkh/143.2ppm
PO4 0
SG 1.023

The ricordias, zoas, mushrooms, chalise and daisy polyps are all thriving but I'm not sure about the candy cane care and what's it's scientific classification? I'll research more on it but I don't know what to call it.
 
This is a picture from another site but it looks a lot like this and the name on the photo is Caulastrea echinulata. Anyone have experience with this coral?
 
Candy Cane is one of those corals that does great and needs virtually nothing. Since it is in the LPS family, it doesn't like a lot of flow. You can feed it after the lights have been out for an hour, but you'll have to kill all the flow in your tank to feed them. They'll eat Cyclop-Eeze, Mysis, even chopped up krill.

Enjoy your new coral.
 
Thanks Marc. I mounted it on a disk last night and moved it out of the main flow. One head seems to be almost gone but we'll see what happens to the others.
 
Yep, low flow and moderate light. Virtually a plug and forget coral once you find the right spot for it. As Marc said, it will open up to feed after lights out like most LPS do, so if you have a bunch of LPS, consider dropping in some cyclopeze or feed mixture in a few hours after lights out.
 
Question on cyclopese - I've seen it come in multiple forms, is it just a brand name? I've seen powdered and I think liquid, maybe frozen? What's the 'standard' and is there a certain company I should be looking for?
 
@DheereCrossing wrote:
Question on cyclopese - I've seen it come in multiple forms said:
Its a brand name.. though there are similar products like Coral Frenzy (which I happen to use). It comes in powder (freeze dried) and frozen. There are other brands and its basically the same thing, though some of them have additional stuff in it.

If you want to get creative.. take a blender and put mysis, cyclopeaze or coral frenzy in with some spiralina and oyster eggs. Blend it up and use a turkey baster to squirt it over the coral.

Just make sure to turn the powerheads off when you do that...
Click to expand...
 
That's a good receipe. I only have frozen mysis and I've been target feeding that to the corals about 1-2 times per week.

I moved the candy cane to a dimmer, lower flow area of the tank (not much area and it's all fairly high flow) last night after lights out. I think one of the heads is dead (bleached and crumbling). Should I cut it off or hope it recovers with the rest of the frag?
 
Just leave it be for now. I use frozen Cyclop-eeze.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top