help with shrinking Favities brain coral

[Gerard V]

Anthony, I have your books and find them to be very helpful.
l need your advice . I have a beautiful Favities brain coral given to me a month ago. My 250 reeftank with refugium is very stable and all coral show signs of growth. I have 3 hqi 250's and 2 actinics 6 ft long The problem is the underside tissue of the ball shape is shrinking away exposing a little more of the skeleton every few days. There is no visible sign of white or dark band disease. My chemistry is good. I am having trouble keeping the pH high. It stays around 8.0 to 8.1 despite buffer addition and the steady use of a Nilson reactor. I add iodine, have few fish and the water is never more than 79.5 degrees.
I would greatly appreciate any help. it is my favorite piece.
Gerard

[MCsaxmaster]

Would it be possible to post a photo? Also, these tend to depend heavily upon heterotrophy (feeding) for all forms of nutrition. I'd try to coax out the tentacles and give it a good feeding of very fine, meaty foods everynight. Usually I just dump food in the tank, and the corals grab it from the water column, but this one may need a little "extra" to recover. Starvation is pretty common with these IME.

Best,

Chris

[Anthony Calfo]

cheers, Gerard... thank you for your very kind words my friend.

And I should say that I completely agree with Chris. Attrition is the most common suffrage by such LPS corals. I recommend target feeding 3-5 times weekly with fine meats of marine origin (mysids, cyclop-eeze, pacifica plankton as whole foods go... soaked in Selcon better yet!). Unless you have an obscene bioload of large, messy fishes... such corals will starve in a matter of months. They will hang in for a year or two at most.

Anthony :)

[Gerard V]

Thanks Chris and Anthony for your replies. I have great photos but do not know how to post them. Could you please give me the info so I can .
I have never fed this coral and I feel certain you both are correct. The tentacles have never been out. If anything there is a slight raising of the ridges but not much more. I routinely feed my corals at night when their tentacles are out. Any suggestions? The "mouths" are very small and the only time I have seen them open was a few days ago when they expelled dark threads I assumed was zooxanthellae.
Thanks very much, Gerard

[Gerard V]

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/3379205-05_orchids_018__WinCE_.jpg
I think this will give you the picture . Please let me know if I have figures it out. This is my first picture post. Gerard

[Gerard V]

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/500/3379205-05_orchids_017__WinCE_.jpg
Here is a view of the whole coral. Could you also give me an ID? Thanks again. Gerard

[Anthony Calfo]

It's impossible to ID to species most corals by photo.

This coral does have the trait of shared walls/septae that is indicative of Favites versus Favia, FWIW though :p

[Gerard V]

What do you think about the tentacles not being exposed at night? How should I try and feed it? Is is a good or bad sign if it is expelling thin dark threads I assume to be Zooxanthellae?
Thanks again, Gerard

[Anthony Calfo]

the dark threads could be zoox... or they could simply be excrement.

As for the feeding tentacles... its not uncommon for them to not extend them after long/prolonged periods of starvation (especially so with Tubastrea imports for example).

You simply need to put a little bit of meaty thawed frozen food juice in the tank the same time each night after the lights go out... night after night for some days/weeks until the feeding response is elicited. It will occur in time. Then you can begin to target feed. Be diligent my friend :)

[Gerard V]

I will do it. Thanks so much for your time. I will let you know how it turns out. Gerard

[Anthony Calfo]

looking forward to hearing of your progress!

thanks kindly, Anthony

[dean1977]

Good luck with that!