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Let me elaborate a little more on the condition of the "sick" elegance coral I have. The oral disk does not seem to swell up. It does open up but doesn't get "puffy", but the tentacles don't inflate much either. It is like the coral is trying to expand but doesn't fill up with water. I really should take a pic. It doesn't look like the characteristic "sick" ones that look like a water balloon. As for gently blowing off the mucus, it just seemed like the common sense thing to do to allow fresh seawater to get to the polyp.
Regarding amino acids etc, I dose my tank daily with "ecosystems reef solution". I don't know what is in the bottle, but it does seem to have a positive effect on my tank (more polyp extension, better colors, etc). I recently tried dosing Elos amino acids and stopped after a couple days when all my zoas refused to open and the other LPS seemed unhappy. So, that is a mystery there... I don't buy into the pathogen theory either, but I also can't offer an alternative hypothesis. My gut level feeling is that there is just something simple we are all missing that changed somewhere along the line. Just because Borneman says it is a pathogen, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. But, to this date, no one has demonstrated a cause and effect of a pathogen causing the "disease". No pathogen has been isolated, cultured, and then demonstrated to cause the condition when a healthy elegans is exposed to it via a challenge.
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O O o o O O o o o o o o O <º)))>< <º)))>< <º)))>< <º)))>< Jeff |
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Your right. Borenman found several different organisms living in dead and dieing Elegance coral tissue. It would be a lot of work to culture these organisms then expose a healthy coral to them to test the results. Even then I don't believe this would prove that they are the cause of the problem. We have known for a very long time that infections can be contagious in a closed system. In your case and many times in my system there have been very ill corals in with healthy ones. I assume your two large Elegance corals are still doing fine. This problem is not contagious. The only time it becomes contagious is after a coral has developed an infection. The infection is secondary and not the cause of the problem. I think you should trust your gut feeling. There is something simple that changed along the way that many of us have been missing. Including myself. It is the fact that these corals are coming from deeper waters. They have a much harder time adjusting to the brighter lights of our aquariums. They show their distaste for bright lights by swelling up and withdrawing their tentacles. After their tissues have been ravaged by this exposure they shrivel up, discharge these filaments, produce a great deal of slime, and require a very long time to rebuild this damaged tissue. It can be done though. I hope my lfs gets in an appropriate Elegance soon so that I can make the video showing the coral swelling up under bright lights and the rapid decline in health after the fact. Last edited by elegance coral; 07/14/2007 at 08:32 AM. |
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No, not directly. My main tank is consistently 83-84 during the day in the summer. Sometimes it hits 85-86 in the spring when I'm adjusting between using heat and AC and forget to turn on the AC. I would hate to let it get any higher than that. They do appear stressed above 85, but haven't bleached. I do keep a few layers of black fiberglass mesh between the lights and water surface, which act as gentle shading for the corals. This probably keeps the internal temp of the corals down a little bit.
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*Disclaimer: Due to variances in the perception of reality, the words you see may not be the ones I typed. |
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I previously worked as a professional grower at a greenhouse. It is amazing the amount of bugs, diseases, and afflictions that set in when a plant is in less than perfect health, which usually comes from giving it less than ideal care and/or keeping it in a less than ideal environment.
Corals are very similar to plants in this regard.
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*Disclaimer: Due to variances in the perception of reality, the words you see may not be the ones I typed. |
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Ok,
perhaps I should wait until tomorrow but I am really excited about what happened today. I went to the SRC conference in Orlando, hoping to see Eric Borneman, had no luck. I did however bump into a gentleman named Paul Hines, as we struck up some small talk , we began to talk about how I really wanted to see Eric so that I could ask him about his progress on the Elegance Coral Project. Paul told me that he knew of a guy locally that has really done a lot of research on Elegance corals & might have a cure to my issue.... Well, I recently bought a beautiful Elegance that looked awesome in the LFS display, looked good in mine too, for a day or two.... Then as luck would have it, this coral began to really look sick. I thought that my tank might be out of whack or something but it was not at all. So, after finally finding this thread, I read some posts & decided to move the coral out of the light & into a more secluded area of my tank. Within 1 hour of moving it, things were already starting to look better. I will see how it looks tomorrow but I will say that low light & flow are really making a difference thus far. Thank you!
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Cheers & Happy Reefing! "You win some, lose some, and wreck some."- Dale Earnhardt. |
#132
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I'm glad to see things looking up for you. Keep us posted on its condition.
I picked up 3 very sick Elegance corals from my LFS just over a week ago. I picked them up for $25 each because they were on deaths door. Here are pics of the day after placing them in my tank and at one week. Day one week one Day one Week one Week one They still have a long way to go, but as long as they are improving I'm happy. |
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what kind of light are you putting the elegances under ? i picked up a very sick elegance at a LFS over a month & 1/2 ago and it's doing very good so far. I've got it on the sump on some eggcrate, feed it ever 4 days, very loowwww flow, and have it under 130w of 3 year old CF bulbs.
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My lights are listed at the bottom of my posts. The MH is 14K and it only runs for a few hours a day. What are you feeding your Elegance?
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At what point is there not enough light for these corals. I am currently in the process of saving some pennies for a new 180, but there is an elegance(very large) that has been doing outstanding in an LFS around here for about 2 months. I am tempted to buy it, put it in my sump under some actinic PC lighting(2x65 or 1x65) but didnt know if it would be too little? What do you think? My gut tells me to hold off, but this is an unreal specimen that I dont thin kI will see again in an LFS around here for a while. I dont want to buy an elegance off the internet so you see the pickle I am in. There is no way this specimen can be in my display/growout......its a full fledged SPS tank with lots of flow and no room.
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i would say with lots of flow id wait.
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#138
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Flow was mentioned by another poster. The flow in my sump is weak sauce...intentionallly. Thats where it would be residing, definitely not in display. I want to be very careful as this specimen is quite pricey. List price is 250, of course I wont pay this, but will likely be around 200 bucks for it so I dont want to go killing the sucker or having to buy more lighting that would be applicable to the tank I am about to set up. |
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I would go out on a limb and say the specimen I speak of is definitely not a deepwater, but I dont think it came from 4 feet of water either. If i had to guess my t5 lighting would be too much. The area in the tank it is in now is likely much less PAR/PUR than anywhere in the actual display of my system. |
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I feed it mysid and little pieces of silversides. My elegance is doing fine under the 130w CF bulbs,, it's actually grown 2 more mouths while i've had it ....and expands twice the size as when i got it. I'll post some pics tonight
I think we are blasting these corals with too much light and flow. |
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#142
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Did any of that make sense? |
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I got in a sick elegance week before last. I have it in a 24 " tall tank. I'm using 3 250 MH 12K Reeflux and 2 160 VHO actinics. So far the elegance has not recovered any. It s seems to be getting worse. Any advice here?
I have tried feeding it, with no luck. It is not swollen just sunk in looking. |
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I do have a refug I can try to move the elegance to tomorrow evening and see if it will recover.
Yes, I bought it from an online vendor and was told it had been doing very well for close to 2 mos. Thats why I took the chance and bought it. I could tell the day I received it, it was not healthy. . I did contact the vendor since I had a seven day guarantee and I received a credit for the elegance. I don't plan to buy another again online. I'll post here any good or bad news on the elegance after I move it tomorrow. |
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Buying an Elegance from an online vendor is taking a huge risk. Unfortunately these vendors don't know what the problem is with these corals so they expose them to lights that are to bright. They can be damaged so quickly that the pic they show on their web sight may not look anything like the coral you receive. The symptoms of this light exposure occur in stages. A healthy deep water Elegance will swell up and withdraw its tentacles when exposed to bright light. The tissue will be damaged by this exposure causing the coral to withdraw. After the coral begins to withdraw there is a stage where only the area between the mouths and tentacles will swell. When the damage gets severe enough the coral stops swelling up and remains withdrawn. When they reach this stage they are in critical condition. Infection can quickly take over the coral causing its death. Iodine dips seem to really be helping to fight off these infections. They can survive even after such an exposure if they are kept from these bright light environments. My avatar was once completely withdrawn into its skeleton. It has been a long road to recovery and it still has a ways to go, but it is getting much better.
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Ok so should I try an iodine dip to see if it helps? Thanks for the reply.
Also, I have never dipped an elegance, so can you tell me what ratio to use for the dips. And how often. |
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