Some worker at a lfs told me 15yrs ago that these were hard to keep and almost always die over time. That stuck with me and I've never bought one. Are they any harder than other lps or sps corals?
My experience is variable. Many years ago, I kept them easily, no problem, under metal halides. When I got back into the hobby more recently, I just couldn't keep them alive. One after another, they'd first contract into their skeleton and then lose tissue and die. While other corals were doing fine. I sought answers but as often the case in this hobby, definitive answers were nowhere to be found.
I found older articles about Elegance Coral Syndrome, and if you search this forum you'll find my thread on the topic. No solid answers there either. I had reason to think that individual corals with a conical base, typically from Indonesia, and typically from lower current habitats, might be more likely to arrive with ECS. While frags taken from a larger colony, typically from Australia and typically from higher current areas, were more likely to be healthy. However, some people discount this, and there are examples of conical bases Elegance corals that have done great, so as usual it's impossible to know the actual truth of the matter.
I believed it possible that the alleged organism that allegedly causes ECS had gotten into my tanks! So I stopped trying to keep
Catalaphyllia jardinei. But then sometime later, I saw what were advertised as bulletproof Elegance frags, got one and to my amazement it has done really well. (Please see my previous post in this thread.) Many things had changed, so I'm not sure if the ECS organism, if real, was now gone, or if it was something else, like adding T5 bulbs to my LED lights. I later added two elegance corals from different sources to a different tank, and they've also done fine.
All of my elegance that have done great are the squared-off frag type, not the conical base type. Again, I have no proof that this makes any difference, just anecdotal experience. All the conical base ones I bought died, but one of the ones that died on me was the frag type, so at the very least that difference is not the whole answer.
