Injured Bubble Coral

Squishie89 · Sep 20, 2015

I got a gorgeous splatter bubble coral at MACNA. It has been doing great except for the past week or so. Trying to find it the right placement in the tank. Today I noticed while it was contracted due to a water change that a number of septa are now exposed with no flesh covering. What can I do to save it?

Other information. Tank is a coral quarantine tank, 40B, lit with 2 Kessil 360's, gyre 130, 200w heater, HOB filter with sponge and carbon, 10lbs of rock, small amount of sand. Tested parameters today; pH 7.8, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate 0, been dosing Microbacter7 daily. Skimmer broke last week, waiting on repair and new one to arrive. Did a 50% WC today due to skimmer being offline (I know, parameters did not warrant such a large WC, did not put that together until typing this up). No fish, only inverts are stomatella snails. Other corals: mushrooms, wellso, scoly, acros, lepto, octospawn, fungias, duncan, zoa all doing great. Nothing fell on it, it didn't fall over as far as I remember. I was feeding it Fauna Marin pellets until the skimmer went offline.

Edit: I believe I know what happened. I took it out last week and put it in a container as I needed to scrub the glass in the tank (bare bottom tank), I had taken all the corals out. I think it laid down on its bubbles in the container and possibly pierced through the flesh.

I still need help figuring out how to fix this, please. I gave it some food and it looks already a smidge better.

This was it not too long ago.

RareEarthCorals · Sep 20, 2015

They are pretty resilient and bounce back... Haha bubble coral bounce back... seriously I to had one fall into the abyss thinking it was a goner, stuck it in the back of the tank with minimal flow and month and a half later it was back. Keep your parameters in check and hold on for the ride cause your gonna want to throw something at it. My advice dont!!

thenissantech · Sep 20, 2015

As you can see from my avatar I have a huge bubble coral. Over a foot across! They are pretty resilient and can deal with a wide range of parameters. Too much flow seems to be what mine doesn't like. Over the pat five years I have figured this out.

Squishie89 · Sep 20, 2015

RareEarthCorals said:
They are pretty resilient and bounce back... Haha bubble coral bounce back... seriously I to had one fall into the abyss thinking it was a goner, stuck it in the back of the tank with minimal flow and month and a half later it was back. Keep your parameters in check and hold on for the ride cause your gonna want to throw something at it. My advice dont!!

Thank you so much! I am WAY too obsessed with my tank inhabitants and I have been fretting non-stop. I already sort of want to throw something at it haha! But thanks for the reassurance, I found some threads on-line supporting what you said. Going to feed it relatively frequently (just the BC, no one else so parameters stay in check) and hope for the best.

thenissantech said:
As you can see from my avatar I have a huge bubble coral. Over a foot across! They are pretty resilient and can deal with a wide range of parameters. Too much flow seems to be what mine doesn't like. Over the pat five years I have figured this out.

Thanks so much for the reassurance, really appreciate it!

RareEarthCorals · Sep 21, 2015

Your welcome, I have found doing nothing more than lowering flow and/or isolating corals is way more effective. It will start looking worse before it gets better, don't let it surprise you. Let it get its food from the food column versus directly feeding.

Squishie89 · Sep 21, 2015

RareEarthCorals said:
Your welcome, I have found doing nothing more than lowering flow and/or isolating corals is way more effective. It will start looking worse before it gets better, don't let it surprise you. Let it get its food from the food column versus directly feeding.

Well the tank doesn't get fed except for some acropower. There are no fish or inverts in the tank. So maybe use some more micro foods like phyto or like reef roids/phytoplan/goniopower?