Help with Elegance Corals

[Bear Necessities]

This is all great info thank you, I was unaware about how Dino's and the bio filter were linked. I know some Coral and or clams prefer more established tanks but I thought 4-6 months would be good enough. Blah I'll try to see what I can do about the bacteria and nutrients.

 

[Diesel]

The squad got it right on nutrients.
Target feed instead of dose feeding.
It will help with your slight elevated algae issue.
Elegances like it dirty, the more dirty the sexier they look

Btw, if you start a thread about showing off your elegance you’ll find out there aren’t many older than a year, of course there are exceptions but many perish due to not being held dirty

 

[Retro Reefer]

Anytime you have algae growth on the skeletal portion near the flesh of any stony coral it will aggravate the coral and prevent it from fully opening.. not much of a clean up crew for a 125 and no hermits? I would throw a dozen hermits of different species in there and and a couple dozen or more snails of various species

 

[Bear Necessities]

Anytime you have algae growth on the skeletal portion near the flesh of any stony coral it will aggravate the coral and prevent it from fully opening.. not much of a clean up crew for a 125 and no hermits? I would throw a dozen hermits of different species in there and and a couple dozen or more snails of various species

Okay i always worried about adding too much, I'm still fairly new to SW and this is the largest tank I've had. I'll see what I can do about the CUC. Any concerns of the hermits being picked off by the emerald crabs or other stock?

 

[Diesel]

I advice you to pick out some snails from https://www.reefcleaners.org/ Instead hermits.
Hermits are destroyers and besides that they will go after your snails.

 

[tweeter]

I advice you to pick out some snails from https://www.reefcleaners.org/ Instead hermits.
Hermits are destroyers and besides that they will go after your snails.

Totally! I got hermits one time and they killed my snails for their shells!

 

[Bear Necessities]

I advice you to pick out some snails from https://www.reefcleaners.org/ Instead hermits.
Hermits are destroyers and besides that they will go after your snails.

Thanks! I was worried about that and or them getting picked off by other things.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Mid to lower tank for location and low to moderate water flow and feed 2-3X per week. That is what has been best for mine which is 3+ years in my tank

 

[User1]

Previous tank had a Elegance. Sandy bottom and nutrient rich water. In short, it didn't like LPS/SPS water quality but rather mixed reef with a leaning more towards soft corals. Dirty is one way of saying it I guess but that is worked for mine and placing it directly on the sand bed. I only had a sea swirl for movement so it would float/flutter if you will but not peel back from the base skeleton if that makes sense. I also would feed it shrimp from the butcher or silversides and use a turkey baster with brine shrimp. Great corals once you understand the water quality and where they come from.

 

[Rispa]

How is it doing?

 

[Bear Necessities]

How is it doing?

It was toast. It just continued to deteriorate and became a pile of goo so I removed it. The Aussie is doing great and I have continued to work on the turf algae issues which has helped the Aussie a lot. It's opened up quite a bit and I have been target feeding it more frequently as well.

Thanks again for everyone's help. I am still not sure what the issue ended up being.

One thing I will note is I ended up picking up a Hanna Alk Checker. Compared to my Red Sea test kit, it read much lower than what I thought it was. Red Sea was reading around 9-10 dkh but Hanna was coming up at like 7-.7.5. I have slowly increased it up to 9 over the course of the past few weeks. Not sure that would have been the root cause but I did read that Turf Alage can show up in lower alk systems.

Any ways thanks again and better luck next time if there is one.

 

[Medical_Reef]

It was toast. It just continued to deteriorate and became a pile of goo so I removed it. The Aussie is doing great and I have continued to work on the turf algae issues which has helped the Aussie a lot. It's opened up quite a bit and I have been target feeding it more frequently as well.

Thanks again for everyone's help. I am still not sure what the issue ended up being.

One thing I will note is I ended up picking up a Hanna Alk Checker. Compared to my Red Sea test kit, it read much lower than what I thought it was. Red Sea was reading around 9-10 dkh but Hanna was coming up at like 7-.7.5. I have slowly increased it up to 9 over the course of the past few weeks. Not sure that would have been the root cause but I did read that Turf Alage can show up in lower alk systems.

Any ways thanks again and better luck next time if there is one.

Looking into researching elegance corals and wanted to see how your Aussie ended up?

 

[robert]

Sorry to hear you lost it.

I know everyone has different experiences - I currently have six elegance of different colors and tips ranging in size. I know they readily take direct feeding, but in the past I noticed that a few would decline in the same way yours did shortly after feeding - so I quit and have been much more successful with them. Some are hosted by clowns which may feed them but I don't. I also let them fall over and let the flesh remain in contact with the sandbed. They seem to prefer it. I know this isn't the general consensus - but I've kept many and this seems to work the best for me.

They all go into a funk periodically and a day or two later they're back to full glory. Anything longer and I look for pests (flatworms) and treat the tank if I find them in any numbers. The clowns will actually eat the flatworms as they scramble about from the flatworm exit - this surprised me. Once the elegance gets used to the clowns - the elegance doesn't seem to mind being hosted despite being punched around like an anemone. Pretty cool actually.

Whatever this disease is, it looks to be communicable. The stubby fat tentacles is the first sign, then the flesh balloons like they've lost control of their osmotic equilibrium. They go through repeated cycles and eventually die.
I've seen a few recover but most don't. The ones I've seen that did survive never got their long tentacles back.

I don't even feed anemones and I've had literally hundreds of splits. I have no answers - just a different experience than others. In general I've found target feeding can do more harm than good -