Baby bubble coral buds - how long to get of any size?

[Kurt_Nelson]

It's been a bad week for our Bubble Coral. A few months ago, something happened to one it's bubbles and we fought an on/off battle with a little cyano at the injury site. Cyano had taken up residence at the septa tip and the coral tissue was receeding. After a month, we had it licked, but the tissue kept receeding. It seems that it finally receeded on that edge off of the septas, and into the "center" of the skeletal base. (Don't know how else to describe it.) All along, it seemed really happy, expanding as normal but not as much on that side.

Well... last week things got bad quick. Short story is that I can NOT believe how quick the thing disintegrated. I've only got a little bit of green flesh left, the rest has pretty much disintigrated and sloughed off, leaving me with a stark white skeleton.

BUT... the good news (if there's any in this story) is that I have multiple bubble corals "buds" along the lower portion of the original stalk. The biggest one is about 1/4" diameter and I'm starting to see some flourescent green in it's bubble under the actinics. There's also about 6 more buds along the backside of the stalk, still very small.

For those that have had these bubble buds, how long did it take for them to get to be of any size? Am I looking at 6 months for it to get decent sized, or 6 years?

Just curious as I kind of want to move the skeleton to a less prominent spot in my tank as it's a little ugly. BUT... if the conditions at that very spot are good for the little buds, then maybe I should just leave it be if I'll have some new bubbles in the near future.

 

[Devilishturtles]

I've not had this happen with a bubble coral, but have with a frogspawn head that died. My best guess would be...roughly 6 months until it gets large enough for you to do something with.

If the skeleton is that ugly, what about fragging off the buds (leaving some skeleton aroud/under it) and moving them around?

Sorry to hear about your bubble coral

 

[melosu58]

You mentioned that you had cyano on your bubble coral but I would suggest that it was brown jelly disease. I had this on my torch coral and most likely it was on your bubble coral.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Y'know... I wondered about that when it was happening. But it didn't look like the pictures of brown jelly disease that I'd seen. It was just kind of a "fuzzy" black coating on the tip of the exposed septa that almost looked like mold. The only reason I figured it was cyano was because it did seem to generate air bubbles, and I could brush it off easily.