Trachyphyllia Colors and Growth

[maxtek]

Can anyone give me some advice for how to improve color and encourage growth for my trachyphyllia specimen?

I feed this tank a cube of mysis and reef chili daily, and water parameters seem excellent with some macro algae growth in the sump and some hair algae growth in a scrubber. He started fading a bit when I moved him higher up in the tank. He’s currently about 18 inches deep, and I light with T5s and Kessils running at about 50% (peak).

I’d like to do well with this specimen and eventually get more...

 

[Toxic727]

I’ve only had one and Others will chime in...

My experience with Trachys is they like medium light and medium to medium-low flow. More importantly, my trachy had an absolutely furotious appetite. I had best luck with making a reefroids paste and added in mysis.

My experience is limited with them. Mine only made it about 6 months because my DT shattered while I was at work.

 

[DeniseAndy]

Nice animal you got there. I have had quite a few of these guys over the years. First off, make sure you have no fish that will eat them. I lost quite a few to that before discovering my darn copperbanded doing it.

Anyway, Trachys grow slowly. The best environment, FME, is to have them on the sandbed or is lower light. They actually do well with filtered light of overhangs, etc. They like very little flow directly at them. My colors have washed out when too high light.

Feeding them is necessary, but it can mean having many fish around for waste, some type of coral food broadcast a few times a week, feeding directly after dark some mysis or brine. They will need a stable environment, but do like the water to be more nutrient filled (some no3 and po4 is necessary).

 

[maxtek]

Thanks!!

 

[CindyKz]

Mine is under an overhang at the edge of the tank so it's not getting much light or flow. I target feed it tiny chopped meaty pieces once a week or so, and a variety of other coral food (Reef Roids, Reef Chili, Oyster Feast, etc) a couple times a week as well. It hasn't grown much since I got it in October but the colors are good.

 

[Firefenex]

Old thread, but id thought I'd put in a comment asking how everyone's is doing qnd advice on mine. I bought this guy from a relatively new vendor who often doesn't know the strain name of corals and sells things relatively cheap. I got mine thinking it was a lobo but after watching tidal garden videos of lobos and trachys I realized mine had the pinstripe texture and pattern of a trachy.

My question is has yours changed color and loss flourecent teal? Mine has slowly started to lose that teal and instead have deeper orange and maroon. I cant tell if its good or bad.

Low flow, direct light is probably 120 par
I was running the brs ai prime 16hd settings at 100% but I cranked it down to 70% today so par is a mystery now.

The pic is while its eating so you can see the different colors.