What is wrong with my leather?
 

I got this leather about two weeks ago and this is how it has looked since I put it in my tank. Everything else in my tank is thriving except this. I have tried to put it low, mid, and high in the tank with different waterflows and nothing has helped. What am I doing wrong here? Everything is normal in the tank and like I said, everything else is doing good. I also got a kenya tree that is doing very well too. And I got it at the same time as this one. Please help.

[IMG]http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t292/tonynewlin/Saltwater%20Tanks/RandomPics142.jpg[/IMG]

I would just leave it alone for a week or so in that same spot and it should be ok.

Leathers are some of the fussier corals. They can close up for weeks, only to re-emerge to former glory like they never skipped a beat. Like cloak recommends, leave it on one spot for a little while and see what it does. Don't get too concerned until it starts melting or dropping arms (in a bad way;)). If everything is in check, it'll likely be fine in a week or so.

What type of leather was it sold to you as?

In this pic it looks almost like an unhappy colt, cladellia, or something along those lines.

What are your water parameters like? Especially PH, Alk, Calcium, Temp, and Specific Gravity?

I was told finger leather I think, I got a lot of coral and can't remember.

Ph 8.3
alk 268.5 (if this is KH?)
Calcium 400-415
Temp 80
SG 1.025

I tested my nitrates and they where at 10 so I'm trying to get them down. This is the highest they have been in over a year and I don't know why. Prolly the bioballs that I was told by the LFS was good for the tank. Then I got on here :D. They will be coming out when I figure out how to shut up the sound of the water hitting the bottom. Ammonia was at .25 as well. It's usually at 0. There was no Nitrite.

You may be right about it being a colt though, if so, what kind is it? Thanks for all the help guys.

yea its a colt. i ordered a 2 singularias,a yellow fiji leather and a colt. they came in on last friday. the fiji opened that day. the singularias are getting there as well as the colt. i dont expect them to be to there full glory until acouple of weeks. nothing to worry about though man just leave them alone

Lol, I would but I have a snail that likes to knock things over. I had to pick the "colt" up out of the sand this morning. Along with other stuff. I'm going to put him on the frag rack and see how he does there. When I got him, he was about to split, and the other half of him is doing really well.

sometimes my colt will occasionaly shrivel up like that in the evening,doesn,t last long.

Let it sit a for a bit and stop moving it...give it a little bit of time to really adjust and get settled into its new ocean :)

Let me ask you all this, what kind of lighting does this need? I had 3 T5's about 1.5 feet above the water and I have now built another holder with smaller sockets where I can get all 4 of them in there. So, the light is more intense than it was. I just did this tonight so I don't know how the tank will take it right now.

well, if you're greatly increasing the intensity and amount of light you're pumping into your tank, then be sure you don't put any of your corals into shock (many corals need to be acclimated to significantly more powerful light sources to prevent bleaching and the such). A colt coral does well in moderate lighting in my experience.

Thanks Ant, I put about 4 layers of screen on there and I'm taking one off a day till I get back down to the first one.

I used to have a colt that looked like that and it was a nudibranch attack. The small criters live in the base of the coral. You can check that.