Elegance Coral theory

[charlesr1958]

You are totaly confusing improper care of the corals / reactions to stress with the "elegance coral disease". In short, you have figured out how to properly care for an "LPS", and thats nice. But have nothing you can say is research or a reason for the disease. In fact, I would not even use the word theory, besides it being way off the mark and incorrect, one has to be able to provide reasonable facts to lead one into a theory. Just guessing that a coral has "skin" or a thicker one at that, is meaningless.
Again, its nice that you have taken good care of some corals, its a shame you had to figure it out the hard way though when such information is readily available. And with that, I'll leave it at that.

Chuck

[cheeks69]

I had never seen these symptoms eather. Until I started this research. If these corals are left in the environment that caused them to become ill they will die very quickly. If the exposure is great enough and held long enough even after the coral is removed it may still die. If you would have kept your PC's your Elegance may still be alive today.

My Elegance died a slow death and didn't show any of the symptoms which have become common to this coral. I believe that it starved to death as I was only feeding my tank a couple of times a week and not target feeding my corals whereas in my old tank it was small with alot of fish and a very poor skimmer. These corals like many of the LPS and softies come from nutrient rich water and NEED to be fed but you have to find a healthy one which isn't easy.

[elegance coral]

Originally Posted by charlesr1958

You are totaly confusing improper care of the corals / reactions to stress with the "elegance coral disease". In short, you have figured out how to properly care for an "LPS", and thats nice. But have nothing you can say is research or a reason for the disease. In fact, I would not even use the word theory, besides it being way off the mark and incorrect, one has to be able to provide reasonable facts to lead one into a theory. Just guessing that a coral has "skin" or a thicker one at that, is meaningless.
Again, its nice that you have taken good care of some corals, its a shame you had to figure it out the hard way though when such information is readily available. And with that, I'll leave it at that.

Chuck

I'm glad to hear it and hope that you do "leave it at that". You have not tried to be helpful, You have ignored the obvious, and have made every attempt to be argumentative. I have been caring for LPS's for over 20 years. This is far from normal LPS care. If there were an Elegance coral disease or protazoans eating them alive it would not matter what light you placed them under. They would die if a cure is not found. They will survive if placed in the proper environment.

[cheeks69]

Originally Posted by elegance coral

I have been caring for LPS's for over 20 years. This is far from normal LPS care. If there were an Elegance coral disease or protazoans eating them alive it would not matter what light you placed them under. They would die if a cure is not found. They will survive if placed in the proper environment.

There is no cure yet and they ARE dieing that's the whole point of the Elegance coral project !!!
Also just an FYI most people don't take proper care of LPS and many of them do very poorly in captivity.

[elegance coral]

I came to this sight in the hopes of helping people that have problems with their corals, and maybe learn a little something allong the way. Unfortunately it seems that in order to get to those people that need help or have something intelligent to say, one must first wade through all the people that are here just for the opertunity of a confrontation. I am to old and tired to be a part of all this fighting. I will be leaving this sight now. Good luck to all.

[Dentoid]

Cheeks, did you scare off Elegance! He'll never get anywhere with his scientific theory if he is so sensitive. All scientific theories are subject to criticism, even those that have been proven.

[boozeman]

Purely by deffinition, a theory should always be vigorously challenged before it is ever considered as fact.
A brilliant man named Albert Einstein once exclaimed ''If at first an idea isn't absurd then there is no hope for it'' ...I hope that you always keep that quote in mind as you continue on your endeavours.


PS. Reef Central Online Community - Elegance Coral theory
couldn't resist...I am Linkman :

[Dentoid]

Sorry to see you go!

[mps9506]

Originally Posted by elegance coral

I came to this sight in the hopes of helping people that have problems with their corals, and maybe learn a little something allong the way. Unfortunately it seems that in order to get to those people that need help or have something intelligent to say, one must first wade through all the people that are here just for the opertunity of a confrontation. I am to old and tired to be a part of all this fighting. I will be leaving this sight now. Good luck to all.

Hate to hear this as this is a good discussion.
I think the main issue here is there is not much known right now on where a majority of these guys are actually being collected right now compared to where they were collected 15 or 20 years ago.
It really wouldn't be to difficult to measure light intensity differences in collection areas for a season or two.
The other variable is differences in the actual handling of the corals from collector, to shipper to wholesaler to retailer to reef tank. How has this changed in the last 20 years? Are holding tanks at the shippers to blame, holding tanks at wholesalers? Is it something to do with the actual collection?
Many elegance corals are coming in with the mentioned symptoms. IS this a direct result of bleaching from too much light or can it be caused by something else.

I am by no means trying to discredit your lilght theory. In fact I think, and I believe everyone else believes it is totally correct. Decreasing light when these corals are showing stress is very important as is feeding when the coral accepts it is important.

What I do feel however is that more testing and research needs to be done on other variables, especially on the collection and shipping of these corals that has a huge impact of the survival rate of these corals.

[Frankie]

Thats to bad elegance coral gave up on this. I know he's getting the emails for this thread still so i will post. There are going to be people that will argue the facts with you when you post questions or statements. "text is a poor form of communication" someone once stated, (panda from chat) and i have learned to except that. If i don't like whats being said i just ignore it now and plug along. In the end you might learn something or you might not. But others who read it will learn and to me that is awesome. I think you have started a great thread here and have been following it from the beginning.
I have some theory's of my own about this coral and wanted to share it. I hope it continues.
My thinking is the water itself. Synthetic vs. natural sea water and the nutrient environment these corals come from.

[lcstorc]

Sorry to see you go.
We do have some spirited debates on RS but that is all they are spirited debates and should not be taken as insults.
We are all here for the same reason. We love the animals of the sea and want to learn how to best care for them.
Your theory is interresting and I would love to hear more as you continue to keep these beautiful animals.
We may never know what has been harming them, but it does seem as if stronger light is not good for them. Whether it is the cause of all the problems is a question, but regardless people have something to try if their coral looks unhappy.
Since there would be no way to treat for the possible disease, moving them to lower the light would certainly be worth a try IMO if the coral is displaying signs of damage.

[elegance coral]

Okay, it has been mentioned that more research needs to be done on this subject. I agree, but by whom? I don't see scientists lining up to take a crack at this. I don't believe it is enough to tell people not to buy them because they don't do well in captivity. People have been saying that for many years about many of the animals we keep and yet people still buy them and they are still being collected. With many of these animals it has been the hobbyist that have made great strides in the care of these animals. Through hobbyist sharing their experiances with these animals we have become much better at caring for them. It has been said that people reading what I have written may go out and buy an Elegance coral With the hopes of keeping it alive. I hope they do. I would rather a hobbyist buy the coral and make an effort to keep it alive than to allow it to die in the LFS. How many Goniapora have you seen melt away in your LFS only to come back a week later and there are 3 new ones to take its place? The reality is that they are not going to stop collecting Elegance corals just because you or I say they should. So, we can't expect the scientist to fix this problem for us. We can't expect the collecters to stop collecting them. The only thing we can do is to learn how to care for them. This is all I am trying to do.


It has been mentioned more than once that these corals do not show these symptoms in the wild. This is what I would expect. These corals have spent most of their lives adapting to the environment they are in. They don't run into problems until someone removes them from that environment.

It has been said that all I have learned over the past year and a half is basic LPS care. This is far from the truth. In LPS corals like open brains we can see that they will expand greatly when the light is insufficient. The reaction is completely opposite in Elegance corals. I could see where even an experiances hobbyist would get these signs mixed up. When I first witnessed this behavior in these corals, I had never heard of this before. After posting what I had seen an expert (at least that is what I would call him) on Goniapora told me of a simular symptom with these corals.

I keep reading about this whole skin thickness thing. I posted it in a theory, I stated that I could not prove it, and I have never made an attempt to present this as fact. The point of me bringing it up in the first place is to inform people that they can be damaged far easier than corals like brains, Euphyllia species, and the Elegance corals of old. I'm not sure why this is. All I can do is guess and I have made that clear.

I am here to give this another shot because I don't think its fair to judge the whole sight on the comments of a few, and because of some of the nice comments of some others. Hopefully we can turn this into an educational experance for all of us.

[lcstorc]

I'm all about learning to care for the animals we keep.
One thing to keep in mind though is if we band together we can make a difference on what is collected by voting with our wallets. This is something I do in many parts of my life. If the LFS has them and they keep dying without being purchased they will eventually stop buying them. If the LFS are not buying them than the collectors will stop collecting them.
I'm not saying that should be done in this case because I know nothing about this coral except what I have read in this thread and the one on RC which have convinced me that I do not have enough experience at this point to try one in my reef.
It is great that you have had success keeping these corals and great that you are sharing your experiences.
Read the Bluespot thread and you will see another project we have going here where we are trying to determine why these guys are so hard to keep. It is certainly not a scientific study but a group of people who love the animals who are sharing their experinces.

[elegance coral]

How do I find the blue spot thread?

[sasquatch]

Darrell, for those others like me (Ha ha) who have never seen an Elegance coral heres a pic, its probably wrong and feel free to post your own, so? whats the next step? are you dosing anything as a supplement or vitamin? Steve