Bubble Coral Wont Inflate

[Dave21]

So I added a bubble coral that I picked up at my LFS. It's be in the tank for a week now and will not fully inflate. 

 

Do they just take a while to adjust or should I try moving it to a lower flow area. The flow is fairly low in the area but I can see the semi inflated bubbles shake a bit in the current. 

[Jakesaw]

 

I have no experience with Bubble corals, but it's a LPS coral and seems like it should be easy to keep.  Do you have any other LPS corals in your aquarium that are doing well? 

 

Have you been doing regular water changes to keep the calcium / magnesium up?  I see your GSP is out, so you have nitrates / phos in the water I presume.

 

https://aquariumstoredepot.com/blogs/news/bubble-coral-care

[Dave21]

Yea I have a candy cane that is doing good and I added a flower pot coral the same day I added this and it's doing good and fully opening. 

 

I have a 29 gallon tank and typically do a 5 gallon change once a week or every other week at most (I typically only go two weeks if my nitrates are 5 when I do my weekly tests). 

 

Nitrates and phosphates, calcium, alkalinity are all good. I do not have a magnesium test kit, but since my other LPSs are good I dont suspect it's too low. 

 

And thanks for the link I'll give it a read.

[burtbollinger]

in experience all you can do is wait...especially if alk is fine and phosphates are something you are tracking. 

keep doing things as normal, placement looks fine where it's at.  Just be patient.  resist temptation to keep moving it. 

 

I have always avoided bubble corals, as I've found them troublesome in my limited experience.  they have never liked my tanks.  sometimes if an LPS like that is damaged, it just tends to die SLOW and no amount of intervention helps...this has been my experience with bubble corals and wall hammers, and very occasionally with torches.  

 

[Jakesaw]

12 minutes ago, burtbollinger said:

  sometimes if an LPS like that is damaged, it just tends to die SLOW and no amount of intervention helps...this has been my experience with bubble corals and wall hammers, and very occasionally with torches.  

 

Good point.  I got a pretty damaged frag of frogspawn last year.  Its been throught my newbie growing pains, but it's always just dragging along.  I have it in frag rack next to hammer that is thriving.  I''m coming to the conclusion that my frogspawn will never be  a thriver. 

 

sometimes it's not worth getting the cheapest frag you can find. 

[Dave21]

I'm wondering if that might be the case with this one. It's been in the tank for two full weeks and still looks the same. It does seem to put out very small sweepers at night, but just doesn't seem to inflate much more than maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the way. 

 

They were not fully inflated in the store, but they said they had just recently got them so I figured they probably hadn't acclimated. Maybe I should have held off on buying it, but I'd been wanting one and it had been months since they had one so I figured I'd better snag it.

 

I did pick up a magnesium test kit since I didnt have one yet and it seems to be about 1380 which i believe is within levels. Calcium, phosphate, PH, alkalinity also all look good. My candy cane and flower pot are also fine and I have small coraline spots popping up all over the tank and glass so i dont think it's a water issue. I might give it another couple weeks and try to move it to a different spot and see what it does.

[jservedio]

Yours was cut on a bandsaw from a big colony that got hacked up not too long ago and is is probably still recovering. That skeleton looks super clean and white - no worms or real algae growth. I second burt in just leaving it be. Also, not fully inflating LPS generally means more light and/or flow than its used to. As long as it doesn't start losing color and bleaching, it just needs to adjust.

[Jakesaw]

1 hour ago, jservedio said:

Yours was cut on a bandsaw from a big colony that got hacked up not too long ago and is is probably still recovering. 

Good point.  I got some red candy cane's on Christmas sale that had the same issue of freshly hacked.  3 heads a middle cut from all sides.  They took several weeks til their polyps started filling out.  After settling in a few weeks they are looking very happy and plump.