Yellow Fiji Leather: Tips, Tricks, Advice?

[KMG]

Apologies if this has already been covered, but I just acquired a beautiful 3" yellow Fiji leather today, and I want to make sure it stays happy and healthy.

 

I did my research before buying this coral, and decided to gamble with it, since my water parameters have been perfect and everything else in my tank is thriving. The thing is, I kept reading/hearing a lot of conflicting advice on this species. My LFS (which has so far been very reliable and knowledgable; the owner's a marine biologist) says that it does fine with PC lighting and good flow (both of which I have). Some other sources I've consulted say it's slightly more fussy, but not too bad. And still others claim that it's delicate and difficult to keep successfully.

 

Those of you who have kept/keep S. elegans, what's been your experience with it? Any tips or tricks I should know about? It's gorgeous and healthy right now, and I want to make sure it stays that way. I've coveted one of these corals ever since I got my tank. TIA

[SweetCorraline]

Here's mine

 

 

 

I read it likes/is more tolerant of higher light and flow. so for mine i put it up as high as i could and in quite a bit of flow. had it for about 5 months and its doing great so far.

[tinyreef]

imo they're a medium difficult coral due their lighting and flow needs. i don't find them as noxious as other sarcos but they do tend to dominate their environments somehow.

 

i think the difficulty in s. elegans is that it's often not s. elegans. what i mean is that not every bright yellow sarcophyton is necessarily elegans. ime, s. serenei, s. pulchellum, or even s. stolidotum are often mis-identified as elegans. they often have the same coloration, especially serenei, but have slightly different needs. the other three seem to need higher energy flow and the latter two aren't as light loving.

 

if it's the same appearance as sweet's it's elegans. high light needs and intermittent medium flow but be careful of parasites or coralivores. i find they're more suspectible to attacks and illness/infections afterwards. i suspect their natural environment allows for more "cleaners", fish or inverts. but in our setups we need to take on that role.

[yardboy]

I've had good experience with them, from buying a 2" round one that is now about 10", to getting a small frag from Seacrop and it has grown into a nice 3" speciman. I don't have pics (I'm at work) but will post later if needed. I've got them growing under 250W metal halides, 70W metal halides, and 2-65W PC's and are all doing fine.

[chris818]

I had the same issues with this particular coral for a long time. I could keep everything else but this. I now believe that it has to do with parasites coming in with the coral on the base rock that its attached to. I recently obtained a nice specimen from a LFS and I fragged it in three. While fragging I noticed small parasitic worms at the base of the coral where it is attached to rock. After brushing and swirling the coral in SW more seem to release themselves from the rock. After clearing all that I could see I then placed them into three seperate tanks. A large 150 under MH's, a 28g under a HQI, and a 12g under 72w of PC. All are healthy and fine, go figure. It's wierd, I'm embarrassed to say I've tried fiji's about 6 times with no success before this one and can only attribute success to the initial quality of the selection. They seem to be more prone to parasites than other leathers and seem to react more adversely to human touch than others. Good luck

[KMG]

Belated thanks, everyone. Judging from Sweet's beautiful pictures, mine is indeed S. elegans, which I hope is a good start. I've got it as close to the top of the reef as it will fit, and right in the path of the return, which I angled a bit to hit the coral more directly--that seemed to please it, as it opened up more fully. Not all of the polyps are extended--I'd say about 75%--but it hasn't even been in the tank 48 hours, so I reckon it needs time to settle in.

 

One interesting thing I've noticed is that this particular coral has a couple of little nodules, for lack of a better word, protruding from its stalk, right under the head. One is tiny and just starting, The other is much larger, round, and hangs from a thin stalk. They're covered with polyps and obviously a part of the coral. Is this some sort of budding? I've never heard of Sarcophyton doing something like that, but then again I'm a noob.

 

After reading chris818's post, I scrutinized the coral as closely as I could without actually touching it. I didn't see any obvious nasties, but there is a hole in the rock the coral is attached to, with some kind of... tentacles? poking out of it. There are 2 or 3 of them. They're very tiny and thin (about .25" long and thinner than a thread), slightly pointed at the ends, pale beige-ish, and look like they might be banded in brown. I don't see what (if anything) is attached to them, and so far they're all that has emerged from that hole. I don't know if these things are something to worry about or not. Obviously pictures would help a lot, but I don't have a camera at the moment (I really need to join this century).

 

Does that sound like something threatening to my new coral? I do know that my sixline wrasse performed his usual minute inspection of the rock several times and never seemed to notice the little whatevers, despite me coaching him: "There! Take a look at that! Over to the right! No, the right!"

[tinyreef]

the nodules or buds sound like the corals dropping daughter colonies. an uncommon but not unheard of method of reproduction.

 

the six-line probably knows parasites better than we do. so if it's ignoring the tentacles (and they're not bothering the coral) i would say leave them be for now. could be a substrate/rock worm (terrebellid sp.?).