Shriveled Heliofungia

[StrongHandsMcGee]

Ok, I've had this Helio since mid-February and until a couple of days ago it had been doing great--expanding, eating silversides twice a week, etc. A couple of days ago I came home to find it shriveled smaller than I'd ever seen it before, with some of the tentacles looking like they were disintigrating. Today it still looks the same, and I'm worried that I'm gonna lose it. Anybody with a similar experience have some kind of advice to send my way?

[Blastomussaman]

It's dying, probably from starvation or slowly deteriorating from poor shipping. Eating silversides were a mirage, they don't take meaty foods well at all. They take them in but most always spit them out. Most die in weeks/months, others last over a year or so and die all of a sudden.

IME, I've never seen a dying helio make a comeback. They brown jelly out and it's quick.

[Steven Pro]

I would try feeding it a shotgun of much smaller foods: Cyclop-Eeze, SweetWater Zooplankton (daphnia), LiquidLife Coral Plankton (rotifers), and maybe even some DT's Phytoplankon. About the largest food offering I would try is mysis shrimp and Pacifica plankton. Even then, it maybe too late for your specimen. Heliofungia's are challenging.

[Narkon]

You know I am really glad I read RC today, or I might have actually got a Heliofungia, but after hearing from multiple people they have a bad track record, I think I will hold off on such a beautiful coral.

[Steven Pro]

Yeah, they are beautiful and tempting with their long swaying tentacles. They are too attractive for their own good in that regard (much like Goniopora).

[Narkon]

Originally posted by StevenPro
Yeah, they are beautiful and tempting with their long swaying tentacles. They are too attractive for their own good in that regard (much like Goniopora).

Another my wife has a hard time restraining from buying. Luckly neither are really fragable either, which is why we don't already have either.

[Steven Pro]

If you are interested in Goniopora, there are some success stories. The pink ones seem to do better (I have had one for over a year now). So, do captive raised babies. Both Alveopora and Goniopora drop daughter colonies when large, happy, and healthy. I have a beautiful (in my eyes, at least) Alveopora that I got at the end of last summer. It was smaller than a marble contracted. It is now somwhere in between a racketball and a tennis ball, fully extended larger than a baseball.

[Narkon]

Send me a pic of that Alvepora, like to see it. And if it ever has a baby let me know.