Elegance Coral theory

[lcstorc]

Just to show you how funny life can be.
I mentioned earlier that I had never seen one iof these corals at my lfs. Well a new LFS just opened and I went to check it out. What did they have? Of course, an elegance coral. It was by far the coral in the worst shape of any he had. Everything else in fact looked quite healthy. He did also have very a very well lit display but I have no idea how long he had the coral or what it looked like when he got it but it did not look good. I was smart for once and didn't buy it. Partially because I doubt myself but partly because it already looked ill.

[cheeks69]

Originally Posted by elegance coral

There is a big difference between this coral and the two corals we posted pics of. I wasn't trying to say that your coral was on deaths door and surely didn't want to offend you. It just had a ways to go before I would call it well expanded and healthy. The polup is small for its skeleton and the tentacles are retracted. Given time and the proper care that coral could have become a very large Elegance with long flowing tentacles.

I'm not easily offended so don't worry about that. AFA the Elegance there are many variations of this coral and mine was still small. The photo you see is full expansion of the coral although the tentacles are quite small but certainly no indication of disease , recession or decline but hey it's just my opinion based on my observation/experience.

[elegance coral]

Originally Posted by mps9506

And definetaly explain the abundance of bleached corals coming in from wholesalers. The fungal filament is very interesting. as well. I can't wait to see the published findings. I think we will see a combination of many factors as opposed to one single explanation as the reasoning for the decline of elegance coral health in the hobby.
Maybe we can get to the point we can propagate these guys so they don't have to be imported.

I can't prove this, but I still believe the problem that starts this off is the corals being exposed to bright sunlight as they are being collected. By the time they reach the wholesalers holding tanks they are allready stressed and burnt. We all get hitch hickers in our tanks. Can you imagine what must be swimming around in these wholesalers tanks? There could be many organisums in these tanks that would take advantage of these corals in their weakened state. Most other corals make it through these tanks unharmed. There must be something that sets these Elegance corals apart from the rest. I believe it is the damage from the strong uv light of the south pacific.
Even after all this I still believe we can keep many, if not most, of these corals alive if they get to us in time and we give them what they need to survive.

[elegance coral]

Originally Posted by cheeks69

I'm not easily offended so don't worry about that. AFA the Elegance there are many variations of this coral and mine was still small. The photo you see is full expansion of the coral although the tentacles are quite small but certainly no indication of disease , recession or decline but hey it's just my opinion based on my observation/experience.

I agree that there is no indication of disease, recession, or decline. I said that your coral could have grown into a very healthy Elegance. The coral looked like it had gone through a rough time at one point. I don't know if this was before you got it or in the early days when you had it. I believe that the pic did show its full expansion for the state of recovery it was in. It was well out of the woods and on its way to full recovery.
The coral that I posted a pic of that looked very much like yours was burnt bad at one point. It would retract completely back into its skeleton. Its tissue recieded from the edges of its skeleton. It was touch and go for quite some time. Eventually it began to expand again, but had no noticeable tentacles. Tentacles slowly began to appear and grow. In the pic the tentacles are less than 1/2 of an inch. Now they are about 5/8 of an inch. In time they will be between 1 and 2 inches long. This will take time but he'll get there.
There are slight variations from one Elegance to another, however, there are no normal healthy Elegance corals with small polups and small tentacles like yours and mine. There are people that disagree with me on this. There are even people that place corals like these into a different species. They are wrong and this theory has grown in popularity because of online dealers passing these corals and others off as healthy corals, and useing this other species as an explanation for the corals appearance. There is but one family Catalaphyllia and one member of that family Jardinei. People should not buy Elegance corals under any other name.

[elegance coral]

Originally Posted by cheeks69

The conversation was in English.

There must be something wrong with my PC or something because every time I pull it up it is in some other language.

[mps9506]

Originally Posted by elegance coral

There must be something wrong with my PC or something because every time I pull it up it is in some other language.

The website is in Portuguese I believe. You have to register to the website to see the thread however, which is in English. It took me two tries to register since I couldn't read most of the instructions I hit a wrong button somewhere and reset myself

[elegance coral]

Thanks. This could be fun.

[boozeman]

speaking of the potuguese forum.....Rob, I believe Jucca has had an elegance in his tank for some time

[Frankie]

Originally Posted by elegance coral

By the time they reach the wholesalers holding tanks they are allready stressed and burnt. We all get hitch hickers in our tanks. Can you imagine what must be swimming around in these wholesalers tanks? There could be many organisums in these tanks that would take advantage of these corals in their weakened state.

I don't think this is the case. I have seen what wholesalers do to keep there systems healthy and i doubt the coral is suffering from pollution in there tanks. I think you could be onto something here though. With all the filtration and UV sterilizers these dealers have on there systems the water could be too sterile. This is the point i was making in my last post here. I am not sold on synthetic seawater being the best water for a reef system. I have used natural seawater in the past on my older system with much better results in coral growth and health. I have been using synthetic salts and ro/di water with my new system and find that i have bigger losses then i did in the pass. There is still a lot in the oceans that we cannot reproduce in a closed microcosm. I do believe were getting better though!
Aqua cultured corals and clams do much better because we have adapted them to our needs and not there natural ones. We would be doing a better job on finding a way to grow these corals then taking them from the ocean.

[mps9506]

Originally Posted by FFrankie

I don't think this is the case. I have seen what wholesalers do to keep there systems healthy and i doubt the coral is suffering from pollution in there tanks. I think you could be onto something here though. With all the filtration and UV sterilizers these dealers have on there systems the water could be too sterile.

You also need to take into account the fact these guys are held in collection tubs for one or two days by collectors and shippers overseas before the wholeseller ever sees them.
I think elegance is worried that the light they receive while sitting in the collection tubs on the beach or enroute to the shippers or while sitting in the tanks at the wholeseller might be too much.
Again without knowing exactly where these guys are being collected at right now, and how much light they are being exposed too, it is difficult to say this is or is not a problem.

[charlesr1958]

"I would not be surprised if what elegance_coral has treated in elegance corals and what Eric is investigating could very well be different things."

The very point I was trying to make all along. Its impossible for a hobbyist through simple observations to be able to determine if a pathogen is at work, or just careless handling / inappropriate care is the culprit. For what has been discussed as put forth in the original post points to simple basic coral care for any species that is not acclimated properly to more intensive light. To claim a theory about skin thickness and then a cure for the elegance coral "disease" all in the same breath was a bit much for me and I tried to make my point as nicely as I know how without sounding like a girly boy.
In Short:

The care and acclimation of larger polyped corals was figured out (again)

The cause and cure of the elegant coral "disease" was NOT figured out.

Now the quandry, do you buy an elegant coral and spur the collection of even more of them? When bought, will it not do well because of the disease or because it was not cared for properly? Are you going to risk it?

Chuck

[elegance coral]

Originally Posted by FFrankie

I don't think this is the case. I have seen what wholesalers do to keep there systems healthy and i doubt the coral is suffering from pollution in there tanks. I think you could be onto something here though. With all the filtration and UV sterilizers these dealers have on there systems the water could be too sterile. This is the point i was making in my last post here. I am not sold on synthetic seawater being the best water for a reef system. I have used natural seawater in the past on my older system with much better results in coral growth and health. I have been using synthetic salts and ro/di water with my new system and find that i have bigger losses then i did in the pass. There is still a lot in the oceans that we cannot reproduce in a closed microcosm. I do believe were getting better though!
Aqua cultured corals and clams do much better because we have adapted them to our needs and not there natural ones. We would be doing a better job on finding a way to grow these corals then taking them from the ocean.

I think you may have misunderstood what i was trying to say. I have this same problem on a different sight. It turns out that I am not the best writer in the world.
I was not trying to say that these tanks were polluted. I would assume that some water must be removed with each animal being removed from these tanks. This water would need to be replaced, so there would be an almost constant water changing cycle taking place. This combined with even poor filtration should provide a very clean system as far as water quality is concerned. I believe that with the large numbers of animals entering and leaving these systems that they must be dropping off a great number and variety of hitch hickers, even with heavy UV sterilization. It is some of these hitch hickers that could pose a problem for a weadened animal.
I don't believe the myth that surrounds Elegance corals and Goniopora, that these corals would do better in water that is poor in quality. Someone earlier in this thread, while disagreeing with the bulk of what I have said, stated that he tested the waters in the wild around these corals and could find no measurable nitrates. In my experience these corals react negatively as the water quality diminishes.
You could not be more correct about aquaculturing these and many other animals that we keep. I believe that there needs to be much more research into these corals reproductave methods. If we want our grandchildern to enjoy these animals as we do, we must find a way to reproduce these animals on a much larger scale.

[cheeks69]

I don't believe the myth that surrounds Elegance corals and Goniopora, that these corals would do better in water that is poor in quality. Someone earlier in this thread, while disagreeing with the bulk of what I have said, stated that he tested the waters in the wild around these corals and could find no measurable nitrates. In my experience these corals react negatively as the water quality diminishes.

Because of the enormous amount of biodiversity, the constant recycling of nutrients, the full water changes that occur throughout the day in a wild reef this isn't surprising, that you don't get measurable nitrate levels, that doesn't mean there isn't alof of food for these corals particularly live foods like zooplankton. I think that a "dirty tank" isn't the proper term to use but these corals tend to do better in tanks that have more dissolved nutrients and the use of powerful skimmers doesn't bode well for them nor other LPS corals in general IME.

You also need to take into account the fact these guys are held in collection tubs for one or two days by collectors and shippers overseas before the wholeseller ever sees them. I think elegance is worried that the light they receive while sitting in the collection tubs on the beach or enroute to the shippers or while sitting in the tanks at the wholeseller might be too much.

I could see this being an issue for longer periods of time but for a couple of days I don't think this would be an issue but I haven't been to these locations, maybe Chuck would be in the best position to say.

[elegance coral]

Originally Posted by charlesr1958

"I would not be surprised if what elegance_coral has treated in elegance corals and what Eric is investigating could very well be different things."

The very point I was trying to make all along. Its impossible for a hobbyist through simple observations to be able to determine if a pathogen is at work, or just careless handling / inappropriate care is the culprit. For what has been discussed as put forth in the original post points to simple basic coral care for any species that is not acclimated properly to more intensive light. To claim a theory about skin thickness and then a cure for the elegance coral "disease" all in the same breath was a bit much for me and I tried to make my point as nicely as I know how without sounding like a girly boy.
In Short:

The care and acclimation of larger polyped corals was figured out (again)

The cause and cure of the elegant coral "disease" was NOT figured out.

Now the quandry, do you buy an elegant coral and spur the collection of even more of them? When bought, will it not do well because of the disease or because it was not cared for properly? Are you going to risk it?

Chuck

My corals, Eric Borenmen's corals, Julian Sprung's corals, and many other corals around this country all suffer from the same symptoms. Is it not safe to say that they are all suffering from the same ailments?
If this was simple LPS care we would not be having this conversation. Corals would not be dieing in the numbers that they are. The big guns like Borenmen and Sprung would not be getting involved if this could be solved with basic LPS care. Did everyone simply forget how to care for LPS corals? People were watching their corals swell up and withdraw their tentacles and had no idea why. Everyone had their own oppinion on the subject but no one, as far as I know, tested the corals to find out why they were doing this. Tests were ran on sick, dead, or dieing coral tissue. They found organisums living in these tissues. If a fish dies in your tank and its flesh is examined they would most likely find a large number of organisums feeding on it. Does this mean that these organisums are responsable for the fishes death? No. They have found several different organisums living in these coral tissues. This does not prove that they killed the coral, or that they were responsable for making the coral ill in the first place.

The skin thickness. Why must you keep beating this dog? Its dead already. I have explained this. The point that I was trying to make was that these corals can be damaged far easier than other LPS's. I should not have to keep going over the same thing again and again. I said that I could not prove this. I never said this was fact. Something is allowing these corals to become damaged very easily. Your guess is as good as mine as to why this is. My question is why would you keep bringing this up after it has been explained more that once?
I have never said that I have the cure for the Elegance coral problem. Not in any breath. Where you got that from is beyond me. I have no magic pill that fixes all the Elegance corals, and never claimed to. After lots of work I have learned how to bring them through this illness. That is far from a cure.

I didn't set out to prove if this was a pathogen or anything else. If you read what I wrote, I set out to find out how to care for these animals. My goal was never to prove what was causing it. These corals were dieing in great numbers. I wanted to find a way to keep them alive. I can do this now. Why people have a problem with this, I will never understand. While Elegance corals are dropping off like flies I have a tank full of them.I must be doing something right. My goal in coming here was to share what I have learned with those that may be interested.

[elegance coral]

Originally Posted by cheeks69

I could see this being an issue for longer periods of time but for a couple of days I don't think this would be an issue but I haven't been to these locations, maybe Chuck would be in the best position to say.

The last coral I lost was fried under a 175W 10K MH. It was only there for a matter of seconds. After this it went down hill and was dead in 2 days. This was a beautiful coral before I did this to it.