sick colt coral

[djlanius]

I recently moved my very large colt coral into my relatively new 7g tank. It has been very healthy since I got it (several months ago) and is the centerpiece of the 7g. In the last few days I noticed that on a few branches, the tips are turning white and the polyps in that area aren't extending. The rest of it looks wonderful still, only a few branch tips are affected.

Well, after a few days I noticed that the affected branches are the ones that sometimes brush lightly over my green star polyps. I didn't find anything in the Sprung & Delbeek books about compatibility problems between these two, but it seems like an interesting coincidence. Anyone have any ideas whether I'm on the right track here? I could move the polyps, but they're in an otherwise ideal spot.

Thanks!

[NanoReefer53]

There's always the idea of trimming and selling =)

[spectre]

I think you are on the right track.  IMO, move the polyps for about a week or 2 and see if the colt comes back. HTH

[fish04]

I have a Young's coral, which is very similar to a colt. I had some stars below it and as the stars grew and spread up the wall of the tank they came in contact with the Young's. The same thing happened. I would either move or trim. I never noticed any tisssue death, just the whitening. That was more of the tissue clamping down in that one area. Once I trimmed the stars everyone was happy again.....I love happy endings! HTH

[djlanius]

I moved the colt a few weeks ago so it's not in contact with the stars and it's now doing much better. The whole thing is expanding better and staying open longer. And the stars actually look better too, maybe it was stressing them both (or maybe not, the stars were relatively new at the time).

Thanks everyone for your comments!

[blindsey]

I have a large Colt Coral that was fine for about two weeks after I bought it home, but over the last 3 days has started shriveling up.  It is under medium light, can touch the glass, is in moderate flow, not near any other corals (but when fully extened may have been able to touch green stars weirdly enough).  There is a yellow clown goby who hangs out in it all the time.  I did about a 10% water change just after I noticed it starting to happen but that did not seem to help.  I have a 120 tank with 30 gallon refugium.  Nitrates are registering high right now at about 150, all other measurements in good range.  Any ideas?

[djlanius]

It may be the goby - I've noticed mine seems to close up whenever anything unusual touches it - fish, crabs, my hand - but it's right up between the glass and the rocks and it expands just fine. And when the green star polyps were bothering it, it only contracted the arms that touched the polyps, yet the whole thing expanded better (and seems less sensitive to other stress) once I got it away from other corals.

Or it could be the nitrates - mine haven't been that high so I can't say how mine reacts to them.

good luck!