what is normal for a candy cane coral?

[BustytheSnowMaam]

My candy coral is a hand-shaped frag with about 6 stalks growing out. The polyps at the ends of some of the stalks are turning white around the base- one of the polyps is completely white. Does this mean it's on it's way out? Is it normal for this coral to produce sort of wispy webs of stuff? I have 2x32 PC lights in a 10 gallon, the coral is positioned towards the top and receives indirect current.

 

I feel like such a schmuck- I didn't do my research on this coral and now I don't know what the heck I'm doing with it. We drove 1 1/2 hours to the LFS and kind of felt like after the drive we should buy something, so I decided to try an LPS coral. Anyhow, lesson learned.

Tasha

[Dave ESPI]

here comes the chlorox speach

 

its bleaching... try to put it in a more shaded area and check yer tank water.. do a W/C perhapsthere is some "interferance chemicals" in the water from other corals affecting it badly.

[MKramer]

The white webby things are a stress reaction. The question is, is it bleachign because it's stressed, or stressed because it's bleaching?

 

When I bought my candycane, it came with a hitchhiker ricordia. The shroom quickly expanded far enoguh that its outer tentacles were hitting the open candycan polyps. The polyps chrivelled up, turned white, and released those webs. After removing the ricordia, some grew back, some just died off.

 

Not that I suspect yours is getting stung, but I would suspect that it is being agrivated by something in the new tank. As hardy as candycanes are (it's survived conditions that killed my xenia), I would suspect either something was aggrivating it before oyu bought it, or there's something wrong with the tank conditions now.

 

Yeah, lots of help I am. I don't really have a suggestion. My point is that it's a hardy coral, and don't let this bad experience turn you off from LPSes. There's something specifically at odds with your candycane, most likely. And once you figure out what that is, you can rest easy and adopt more LPS. candycanes, brains, torches, hammers, etc. are all quite tolerant critters.

 

As for the lighitng being a factor, since we have very similar tanks, my happy and splitting candycane is on the sand towards the side of my tank (no shade cover). Which is a 10g with 2x32W smartlights 4" from the water's surface.

[BustytheSnowMaam]

Ok, I think the "being stung" theory makes sense. Yesterday or the day before one of my hermits knocked it over into my GBPs, and it is the polyps that fell into the GBPs that are turning white. It wasn't turning white before this. Last night I moved my bigger hermits out for awhile and glued the frag down, away from the other corals. We'll see how it does the next couple of days.

 

Thanks,

Tasha