Anyone have long term success with an indo elegance coral?

[carriej]

Hi Folks,

Picked up this beauty of a thing from the bus station (oh the joys of living in the woods with NO LFS!!) the other day and while I poked around slightly before getting it; it was really a last minute add to my order and now I am wondering if it's just going to up and die on me as I have read indo elegance often don't live very long (several weeks). It seems ok to me for now; any advice or suggestions appreciated.

Here it is.

[slakker]

What a beaut! I've had luck with a few in the past living for well into the years... 1 died after eating a small sea hare and the other was small tank crash...

I have one now and it's doing very well, got it a few months ago. The one thing I found help is to feed them with mysis or coral frenzy/reef roids every so often. And I read is that they don't like pristine water (ie; 0 nitrates) which is not a problem for me cause I can't ever get much better than 10 ppm...

[carriej]

hmmm.. I have 0 nitrates (or atleast undetectable with a salifert and elos test).. It seems ok though.. It curled up a bit this morning; but its fine now.

But they are expensive.. lol.. This one is huge; almost football sized.. So I was a bit nervous it was doomed.

And I hope mine doesn't decide to eat anything. I chased my clowns out of it already!

[Gizmoh]

I had a lot of luck with mine, lasted a number of years until it was so large it would no longer allow me to keep anything on the left side of my 50 gallon and had to be sold. I didn't do much special, but mine came in already a very aggressive eater. I just made sure to stay up on my water changes and target fed it 1-3 times a week. It would suck back large amounts of food without mucus expulsion. My biggest issue was my cleaner and coral banded getting in there and pulling the food back out of his mouth. They are easy to keep unfortunately in the early 90's they discovered a conditon (the name escapes me ATM) that had infected most of the elegance in the trade. This leaves us with a hit to miss situation, depebding on its age it could be fine! Leaving you with an easy to care for beauty!

Good luck, stunning coral when large!

[Gizmoh]

My clowns also hosted it with no issue

[RuGlu6]

Zero No3 is not a problem as long as it's being fed.
Some of them also like to have their hard part of the sckeleton being placed in the sand, you can try and see yours will appreciate it as well.

Not too much flow, just enough to bring the food and wash away waste.
Get cyclopeze and other similar food like oister eggs and it will be fine.
Or target feed paste mix of many different foods.

Nice coral!

[slakker]

I'm hoping our 2 clowns hosts with it actually... I love anemones, but hate that they don't stay put, so having something that "looks" like an anemone for the clowns to host would be great!

I've seen people frag them with a fragging band saw when they get huge...if you're adventurous, this would be a colourful specimen to divide...

[asylumdown]

The bad reputation that elegance corals have acquired in the past decade or so appears to be the result of a specific disease with an as yet unknown causative agent. Whether or not your elegance will survive long term depends very much on whether or not it's been exposed to the pathogen that causes 'Elegance Coral Syndrome' somewhere along it's chain of custody. There's a great article on it in reefkeeping magazine, which can be found here: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-01/eb/index.php

Unfortunately, elegances from the Indo-region are far more likely to have been exposed to this disease to begin with, and if it's been transported/housed in tanks holding other Indo-elegance corals at some point before you purchased it, it could very well have contracted it. You will know whether it's going to make it in a few weeks, a couple months at the most.

I can attest to the level of contagion of this disease - I had an Australian elegance for over a year, first as a very small specimen in a pico tank, then when it was larger, it lived in my 275. It was extremely healthy, inflating fully every day, and always exhibiting a healthy feeding response for just the time I had it. It tripled in size in the time I owned it. However, it wasn't as incredibly coloured as some of the fancier Indonesian elegances I kept seeing show up in stores, so one day I purchased another much nicer looking specimen from Wai's here in Calgary. At that point I knew nothing about Elegance Coral Syndrome (ECS). The new elegance began exhibiting symptoms of what I now know was ECS within a week of being in my tank, though at the time I thought it was a reaction to a new environment/lighting regime. The new elegance was completely dead 3 weeks later. I naively hoped that the new elegance would only partially die but still leave a mouth or two, so I left it in the tank until it was a bare skeleton. Shortly thereafter, my established elegance began to decline.

Here's some pics of the progression:
Brand new in the pico tank, scale is hard to gauge, but this was a 5 gallon tank, so you can imagine how small it was. This was January 16th, 2012


It was one of the first corals in my 275 and I bleached it a little right at the beginning because I didn't know how to program my lights properly - this was it nearly recovered on August 25th, 2012


This was it on December 28th, 2012. This is what this coral looked like every day, fully inflated, deeply coloured, always a great feeding response. It's 3 times larger here than in the first image. Unfortunately, this was also the day the last of the tissue of the new Indonesian elegance sloughed off.


Another pic from the same day (December 28th). You can see the skeleton of the new elegance in the bottom right


This photo is from January 6th, 9 days later. I thought the elegance was having a multi-day tantrum. I still didn't know what ECS was, or that this was the beginning of an inevitable end (it's the coral in the bottom right)


And finally, January 23rd, 2012

This was when I started doing some serious research in to elegance coral disease and realized what I had done. This coral followed the exact same progression as the Indonesian specimen, and started exhibiting symptoms 9 days after the new Indonesian specimen had completely died, after being vigorous and healthy for a year.

If your coral has been exposed, it's first symptoms will look a lot like the second last picture, it's tentacles will stay small and uninflated, and the oral disc will clamp, or generally not inflate. Then the tentacles will start to literally melt down to little nubs, and the oral disc will begin to take on a very unhealthy, swollen look. Finally, the oral disc will bleach completely, and eventually the tissue will begin to slough off. If this starts to happen, there's nothing you can do to stop it, and any other elegances you have in the tank are probably toast as well.

The good news is that if your coral has not been exposed to this disease and doesn't have it, it will likely be very robust and healthy for a very long time. You saw how quickly mine deteriorated once it had been exposed, so if yours makes it a month without declining I'd wager a good bet that it will be fine. If that's the case, I would never allow another elegance coral anywhere near the water that beauty is kept in unless it spent a couple of months in quarantine and was guaranteed to be clean.

Hope that helps.

[asylumdown]

I should add, a sign of a healthy elegance is one that eats all your snails. You can see in the third last pic the graveyard of mexican turbo shells that had accumulated around the coral.

[Bblinks]

Good to know, thanks for the info. I also have an aussie piece and its doing awesome for over a year.