Will my Dendro make it...? Any advice?

BBestvin · Feb 24, 2022

I'm worried about my Fathead Dendro, one of my favorite corals. Unfortunately it's been through a lot in the last couple weeks, but I'm hoping it recovers. About 2 weeks ago I performed a water change and watched the Dendro recede down to the skeleton. It looked bad, really bad. I found out my "new" saltwater had a salinity of 1.030, and in a 13g tank, that water change was a shock to the system. After getting that back in-line, a few days later, the Dendro tentacles appeared again, but not fully extended.

Now, I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm fairly certain I overfed it when it started opening back up. Seeing some life in it, I got too excited and dumped a bunch of mysis onto it. Could this have caused gut rot? I'm not sure, but maybe someone here will have some experience. This was roughly 3-4 days ago, and this is what the coral looks like now. There seems to be more "flesh" on the inside than there was during the salinity issue, so I'm hopeful, but still nervous.

Any suggestions on how to encourage it to come back? Should I try to feed it or just let it be a few more days?

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: ~2.5
Phosphate: ~0
Salinity 1.025

Tamberav · Feb 24, 2022

if you overfeed, they regurgitate. They can make incredible comebacks when fed regularly. Reef roids is good at getting them to open.

vetteguy53081 · Feb 24, 2022

These are very similar to sun coral and need very shaded area with Low light and feed at night/dark. Best foods are mysis shrimp and important they eat 3x a day or they will recede and starve. These specimens can be trained (persuaded) to feed in low light.
They dont do well with high nitrates and salinity also

BBestvin · Feb 24, 2022

vetteguy53081 said:
These are very similar to sun coral and need very shaded area with Low light and feed at night/dark. Best foods are mysis shrimp and important they eat 3x a day or they will recede and starve. These specimens can be trained (persuaded) to feed in low light.
They dont do well with high nitrates and salinity also

The nitrate thing may make sense. It's not that my nitrates are high, but possibly they shot up to that number quickly. Much like my salinity problem that upswing of nitrates may have upset the dendro. A little too much churning of sand and blowing out rocks at one time maybe...