Question For People Who Have Raised Elegance Coral

[Sasha T]

So a question for those who have both successfully and unsuccessfully raised elegance coral;

Here is my (presumably Australian, purchased in August) elegance coral about a month and a half ago.

Here it is a week and a half ago. It had been and stayed in this or a more withdrawn and darker condition for just under two weeks

and here it is today, substantially larger with "plumper" flesh and short, plump tentacles.


I did have a large nutrient spike (20-25 nitrate from my usual 10-15), but only after it had started staying withdrawn and with a darker, green color (agreed, it could have been slowly responding to the slow nitrate creep, but it was a QUICK shift in shape and color). I also had been slowly lowering my salinity from 1.0255 to 1.0245 over the course of a month. No other coral had issues, all SPS, LPS and soft coral remained happy. So here's the question:

Have you ever had an elegance coral do a marked color shift at the same time as withdrawing the flesh, and did you at the time or later tie it to a change in salinity, a change in nutrients, or something else? I'm not just looking for research material, since I really enjoy having this coral in my tank I'd like to hear some personal experience from others so that I can do my best to give this beauty a long, colorful life.

 

[teebone110]

First- ensure your params stay stable and everything is in check
Are you feeding it? My elegance has done well in a spot where I regularly feed my fish. It gets any food that makes it to the bottom as well as another waste that gets dropped from the fish during this time. These corals are found on sandbeds in their natural environment- sometimes in murky water. I find that my EC looks better after I take a turkey baster to my sandbed and stir up some detritus. Lastly, I have had success with placement in low flow, lower light areas. Good luck- these corals are awesome when fully expanded and happy!

 

[Sasha T]

First- ensure your params stay stable and everything is in check
Are you feeding it? My elegance has done well in a spot where I regularly feed my fish. It gets any food that makes it to the bottom as well as another waste that gets dropped from the fish during this time. These corals are found on sandbeds in their natural environment- sometimes in murky water. I find that my EC looks better after I take a turkey baster to my sandbed and stir up some detritus. Lastly, I have had success with placement in low flow, lower light areas. Good luck- these corals are awesome when fully expanded and happy!

Apart from my nitrates being a bit of a gentle rollercoaster everything holds pretty well (recently sold a bunch of macro algae so my Nitrate uptake is stabilizing again), although ALK is a bit of an issue since I only have the means to manually dose and test, no dosing pump and no alkalinity monitor. PH is fairly stable 8.2-8.4. Ammonia and Nitrates hold at nil, I check for any dead snails or rotting matter and scoop them regularly. Mag at 1280, Calc holds well, on the high end (430-450) as my ALK is 9.0 after a water change but drops to 7.5-8 over the course of the two week period between water changes with Kent Marine reef salt. No test kits for trace elements (strontium, iodine, silicates)

Everything in the tank gets fed at some point through the week, the type of food and who gets it changes based on the day. The elegance only seems to care for mysis shrimp and table shrimp pieces (pieces fed are half the size of the orifice), one piece per two "mouths" which it happily grabs and stuffs in every other day. Other foods used are Vitalis LPS pellets (euphilia, favia and acans love them) and Reef Roids mixed with AquaVitro Fuel for amino acids spot fed to pretty much everything (not a fan of broadcast feeding, so I just make thick Reef Roid paste and turn off all the flow in the tank for an hour after feeding). Fish all eat on the light side, so a small pinch of flake in the morning, some Omega pellets in the evening, not much hits the bottom and that which does is pounced on by the CUC.

I originally had it positioned in the middle of the tank but after I re 'scaped it I think I opened the field too much and now (after it "recovered") it gets too much flow, so I'm thinking of re 'scaping again to give it a more low-flow area and space to grow, just unfortunately not in the middle of the tank.

 

[Sasha T]

Little bit of information to add in case someone has something similar:

The elegance started withdrawing and darkening over the past couple of days. I watched my parameters, ANN was 0/0/5, salinity stable at 1.0255, alk low at 7.8, phosphates not reading on a non LR phosphate titration kit.

So I took a shot in the dark and cleaned out my filter, in the process I also switched my GFO and carbon, and twelve hours later it's back to its best condition. While phosphate creep is possible, since I can't test in the low range, I'm going out on a limb and guessing that it was the result of some chemical warfare, which the carbon will keep on top of. I'll see if it goes through the same process in 3-4 weeks and if it does that will suggest to me that it is indeed getting harassed by the other coral.