R.I.P. My first SPS success :(

[Serk]

I got my first SPS frag that I was able to keep longer than a week at the frag swap just under a year ago. It was an approx 1 inch orange Montipora Capricornis.

After about 9 months, it looks like this:

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After the cracked MH bulb incident viewtopic.php?t=19470 it developed a small bleached area like many other corals. However, most of the others appear to be (Knock on wood!) recovering. This coral was directly below the cracked bulb. The white spot on this one was growing, with flesh peeling off. Last night I made a desperate attempt at saving it, removing all of the dead area, and had about half the colony to put back into place.

This evening, the STN was spreading even quicker, appears to have been switching into RTN mode. Instead of a "Cut out the dead part, save the colony" strategy, I switched to a "The colonies dead, Jim. Cut out as many living areas as you can to share frags" strategy... I cut out 5 or 6 frags that appear to be healthy right now. If they're still healthy by the frag swap, I'll be bringing them.

I know Monti Cap is about as close to "Reef Weed" status as an SPS can get, but dangit, I was proud of that one! Oh well... I've got 3 other colonies of the same stuff that I started from small bits I'd accidentally broken off this colony, so I can't complain too much, just needed to vent...

I moved the Green Birds Nest frag I got from Blide into the "Place of Honor" on the rock island that my cap had occupied... Hopefully it grows as fast as the Monti Cap there, but lasts longer!

Anyway, thanks for letting me vent a bit...

 

[Jaguar]

AWw. . . at least it's not all gone. I lost my purple gorgonian today ::whimper:: . I cried earlier today for it. Some of Vanessa's yellow gorgonian is showing small polyping so it's not a total loss. My gorgonian isn't though :sad: Perhaps if I save some of hers when it grows stronger I can get a frag of hers. It's a bad coral day. . . I'm staying awake until 8:30 to go by the post office and pick up another 2 gorgonian frags that have been in mail for a week. I just know they can't be alive, but I'm hoping for the best. I've already emailed the sender and he will send new frags if I can not rececitate them within a week. I'm going to hand feed these polyps so that they can get stronger.

Jaguar's Lesson #1 Do not put corals in uncycled tanks. No they look like plants, but really they aren't. (Tinnie Tiny Xenia death, and fear of killing more tinnie tiny frags gained.)

Jaguar's Lesson #2 Gorgonians really are difficult to care for sometimes. (They must all be female. Death of 2nd coral purple cactus gorgonian.)

At least I'm just past n00b status.

R.I.P. both corals.

 

[waterbeing]

Serk,
Sorry to hear the bulb problem continued to worsen after fixing it. I'm a bit surprised to see it as it was a very nice looking/formed monti. Well, at least the frags may continue on again. Good luck,

Jaguar,
Don't feel too badly as we've tried to raise the gorgonians a couple of times when the tanks were younger and finally decided that it just wasn't gonna happen for us until sometime later (if at all). I've seen some nice ones since then and have been tempted, but decided they just needed somewhere different than we had for them to go. :?

Doug

 

[TGamel]

@Jaguar wrote:

Sorry to hear about your gorgonian's, my wife's currently seem to be recovering from their shipment from about two weeks ago and the red have been extending their polyps more each day even though they shed some of the outer red layer during the transport. My yellow hasn't begun to extend any polyps at this time and it may be alost cause, but it does not look like it is deteriating at this time. Unfortuantly, the sea whip didn't make it, I guess the tramua of the tansport was just too much for it and we had to remove it form the tank.