wooo got a free bubble coral

[Lance M.]

I was at my lfs today (like I am pretty much everyday of the week lol) and I pointed out some stuff to the guys there, like I saw a frogspawn that fell down into an area between some rocks were you couldnt really get to it but they got it out, a little snowflake moray went over the gravity return and was sitting in the sump, and there was this huge fury black crab with pink eyes eating a coral and they tried to catch it but no luck.

The after the owner got the frogspawn out, he was looking at this buble coral they've had for a couple months that wasnt looking to hot so he said he was going to throw it out and I was standing there so he offered it to me for free so I took it.

He said just to make sure to feed it like mysis/brine shrimp to nurse it back to health and it should be fine. I just set it in my tank for about 20 mins for temperature and now I'm dripping it for two hours. When it was floating in my tank it started to come out in my light so I think once I put it in there it will be open. It looks good and I think it's a green bubble. I'll have to wait and see. Any more suggestions on it? I checked my Ca two days ago and it's 360-380ppm and pH is 8.2, I just bought a alk test kit so I'm gonna test it right now and edit the post with the results in like 5 minutes.

Edit: Ok. I tested it and it's on the low side at 8 dkh. What do you guys recommend to raise it up a little ? My neighbor gay me a bottle of Purple Up a couple months ago because he bought one and didnt realize he already had a bottle. I haven't used it. I think from what I remember reading somewhere it raises both alkalinity and ca. Is this right?

 

[melosu58]

How often are you doing PWC`s. Maybe just frequent PWC`s will raise your calcium and buffer the water. All I`ve ever done. I have never fed mine in the 7 yrs that I have had it. They get what they need from the lights and water column. At first the look kind of bubbly but after several yrs they really grow and show alot of fleshy appearance. Here is mine after I had it a few yrs and after several yrs.
Good luck with yours and I really think he will recover with optimal water conditions.

 

[Lance M.]

wow That's a big difference between the first and second pic.

I do a 20% pwc every week.

I put it in about an hour and a half ago after the two hour drip. Some of it is inflated but some isn't, it might just be acclimating and look better tomorrow. I can really see the hard skeleton on it and I can see the fleshy "mouth". It doesn't look horrible but it does look bad. You can tell from the skeleton that it use to be a lot bigger, prob 5x what it is now. The fleshy part has receded from the edges of the skeleton.

It had been in the lfs for like 3-4 months in their 320 gallon tank that has two 250 MH's (one on each end of the tank) and a 400 watt MH in the middle. Why wasn't it doing good there? Maybe that was too much light?

Would target feeding help it at all right now? Just til it gets back up to healthy?

I dose PhytoPlex and ZooPlex by Kent every other day for the corals in there. Would that be enough? I'm almost out of those and in a week I'm gonna order ZooMax, PhytoMax, ChromaMax, Micro-Vert, Marine Snow, Cyclop-eeze, and brine shrimp and alternate them so the corals get a wide variety of foods. Sound good? Any suggestions?

Well I nursed a bleached out bta back to full health, hopefully I can do this too.

 

[melosu58]

The fact that you do weekly PWC`s will help the most. It almost looks like it did not have enough lighting for that size tank depending on placement where it was. As I said earlier excellent water conditions and lighting and whatever it gets in the water column will make the difference.

 

[Lance M.]

I hope it does well. I turned off the lights about a half an hour ago and I have a little blue LED moonlight positioned over the bubble. I can see the little sweepers have come out. It looks cool. Can't wait til the fleshy part grows back and it expands.

Edit: I was searching around on the forum for more info on bubble corals and I found a link in one topic that went to a wetwebmedia page with hammers/torches/bubble coral Q&A and I found one on bubble coral where the person posing the question says that the tissue has receded on the coral and Anthony Calfo replies that feeding it several times a week will help it. So I guess from what I've been reading bubble corals will do fine without feeding just getting nutrition from the light and water column, but they will grow faster/recover faster with feeding.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/carypropfaqs.htm It's near the bottom of the page

 

[melosu58]

As far as the grow faster by feeding I really dont agree with that. Mine is 6 times the size as when I first got it. I have never target fed mine but that`s not to say you should not feed it. I`m just saying that for good growth you do not have to target feed. Maybe the recover faster part might be right.