Elegance Coral in trouble - please help!

H

hootond

When I left on 2 weeks vacation, I left my neigbor in charge of feeding the aquarium - when I returned 2 days ago, everything in the aquarium (multiple other corals plus my fish) looked fine except my elegance coral. It's green meaty part looked okay, but its tentacles are withdrawn and it looks like it is just beginning to separate from its skeleton.

I had my water tested and found that my phospates are very high. (5?) The readings were zero before I left on vacation.

I have changed out 15 gallons out of my 70 gallon aquarium this morning and have put in a pack of ROWA Phos in attempt to lower the phospate level ASAP.

Have I missed anything? Is there anything else that I can/should be looking for? Can I salvage this beautiful coral?

Edited: Don could please resize the picture to alot smaller size and then repost so that it does not alter the thread size.
Rick

Don H.
 
In my experience Elegance corals do best under a few normal output fluorescent bulbs, with half of them being actinic 03, and weak to no protein skimming.

back in the 90's that was an easy coral to keep alive in DAS H-39 systems, and I often sold that to customers as a beginners coral, because they were so long lived and grew large quickly.

if yours is peeling off of its skeleton, i believe it will probably die before too long.

how long have you had it in your tank?
 
I've had the coral in my tank for about 2 months. It was doing GREAT - bright colors and really fat up until I left town. I returned 11 days later to find it in this condition . . .
 
Surprised that none of the "experts" here have given you any great advice yet.

The filterless ( no skimmer) tank that will be in my store will have at least one or two thriving elegance corals. Some people will try to tell you that there is a difference in how they collect them or where they have been collecting them the past few years. That's a copout for those that are clueless, and those who believe everything they read from the "experts".

:D
 
Hoot: You might want to give this a read if you haven’t already. Then again this may just be the exact same sort of “expert opinion” Bella is talking about. But the description there sounds a lot like your coral’s symptoms.

Taken from RC
Elegance Coral

Good luck and Please Keep us posted.
This weekend seems to be the Weekend from Hell for disasters.
 
Thanx for the Bourneman write up. His description does seem to describe my Elegance Coral's condition pretty well. From reading his notes, it sounds like it may be more of a generic Elegance Coral problem as opposed to a high phospate problem. (Maybe the high phosphates are part of the root cause of this condition?)

Update: The coral still looks weak(er), however for about 2 hours last evening it opened up pretty well and almost looked like it was recovering. Then, it went back into its more closed position.

Don H.
 
@Matt wrote:
[I]@Bela wrote:[/I][quote="hey sump said:
Great to have another new "expert" on the board. Let us know how those Elegance corals do for you. I would send any and all info you have regarding your experiences to Eric Borneman."]

:)
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