How long does it take for a leather to shed

mattnano · #1 09/08/2006, 06:18 PM

I think my toadstool is dieing but cant tell, i need to know how long it takes for leathers to shed and what they look like when they do. thanks - Matt

drowningdreamer · #2 09/08/2006, 06:56 PM

If it has shrunk and has a darker coloration to it then it is in the process of shedding. You can tell if you shine a light on it at night and the whole body has a shiney film on it. The time it takes to shed varies, I had a devil's hand that would take a few weeks to finish growing/shedding.

Ken668 · #3 09/08/2006, 11:32 PM

With the proper flow, it should completely shed in a few days. With my low flow toadstool, it takes about 2-3 days after the polyps retract. For my med. flow toadstool, it takes about 1-2 days. As a note, my med. flow toadstool started out about 1/3 the size of the low flow, and now it's 50% larger than the low flow after ~6 months. So the sooner you can get it to shed, the sooner it's polyps will come back out and continue to grow in size.

Be careful what other corals are around the toadstool, because the shedding tissue is extremely toxic. If it happens to come in contact, it will most likely chemically burn the other coral.

jbittner · #4 09/09/2006, 10:20 AM

I have one that is taking about 3 wks now. Once in a while mine seem to take a long time to shed, most of the time it just takes a couple days. I have a Seio 820 about 4 inches from it pointing indirectly at it. Sometimes it just takes longer.

gflat65 · #5 09/10/2006, 09:36 AM

My sarco's can take weeks to finish shedding, so don't give up on it. Until it starts disintegrating, I wouldn't worry about it.

mattnano · #6 09/11/2006, 05:52 PM

thanks for the replys, unfortunatly it just kept decaying untill it was about 1/5th its normal size, thats when I pulled it from my tank. All corals in my tank looked like they were suffering from it and it smelled really bad when I removied it. 15% h2o change and 1 day later all of my corals look happy again. I learned not to put to many corals in at one time, this was my first coral death

I think it died b/c I tryed to push its base into a hole in my LR and I guess I pushed it to hard after drip accliumation, as i said b4 it was also one of 5 pieces of coral I introduced that day. You live and learn.