candy cap coral - should I replace it?

[dominikos]

I have a candy cap coral that suffered some damage in the past and has never recovered. You can see on the picture below that the edges are doing fine but algae is growing in the middle. I was wondering if I should give it some time or should I give up and replace it? Also, should I try to pluck the algae from the middle, would that help? The snails and crabs don't pick them up.

 

I would appreciate any thoughts or suggestions

[PiscesFish]

If that's another name for Montipora Cap. then i would cut the parts off with the flesh, dont cut into it, and see what happens and throw away the pieces of skeleton that has algae on it. And if it continues to go downhill, then check all of the chemicals and make sure nothing would be killing it and if everything is where it should be and it is still declining, i would get a replacement.

[opaquelace]

I would do daily dips in something like Coral Rx to get rid of the nuisance algae. Once the algae is gone and water conditions are good you should start to see it reencrust over the dead skeleton and grow. If the dipping doesn't work frag off the live pieces and glue to a new frag plag. I would definitely dip in Coral Rx no matter what you do though.

[dominikos]

Thank you, appreciate the advice. I ordered Coral Rx and will give it a try first.

[opaquelace]

Thank you, appreciate the advice. I ordered Coral Rx and will give it a try first.

Coral Rx is great to dip new corals in, struggling corals in, etc. I had a chalice I manhandled a little too much and it started to lose some tissue. Took one dip and the tissue loss stopped and now it's completely grown back a few weeks later. I love it.

[clownfitch]

Any ideas on what killed the dead parts? Montipora nudi or alkalinity swing? You need to try to figure out what happened to it to help heal it also.

[opaquelace]

Oh yea what clownfitch said.