sick flowerpot coral

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coastiepowell

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
Sep 12, 2004
Messages
14
Location
virginia
i think my flowerpot coral is sick. it used to seem very happy and was always in full bloom unless disturbed. now, it hardly has come out in the past 2 weeks or so. the water quality is the same as usual, everything fine. the salinity is a tad high, but it normally digs that. help!
 
Is this a gonipora? Can you describe what is wrong or post a pic? Flowerpot corals are extrememly difficult to keep in captivity. They genneraly end up decomposing from the bottom up for no apparent reason. How long have you had it?
 
I bought one and it took appx 2 weeks to fully decompose and lose all it's polyps. After a week I removed to the qt hoping to save it without compromising the water quality in the main, but it proceeded to cover over in white mucous and rot. :( :cry:
 
flowerpot demise

I hear about this all of the time. Why are flowerpots so hard to take care of? Are they possibly diet specific or light wave specific or is it just impossible to keep your water quality that good? I know this is a relatively new hobby, but I would have thought somebody would have figures them out by now. Just hate to see these corals being bought then flushed a few weeks/months later. :cry:
 
Re: flowerpot demise

got bait? said:
I hear about this all of the time. Why are flowerpots so hard to take care of? Are they possibly diet specific or light wave specific or is it just impossible to keep your water quality that good? I know this is a relatively new hobby, but I would have thought somebody would have figures them out by now. Just hate to see these corals being bought then flushed a few weeks/months later. :cry:

apparently they like to have a lot of food floating around in the water that unless it gets eaten will mess your water up. Then since it doesn't get eaten it does mess the water up and it dies anyways.

some of them aren't like that though and will live for a really long time.
 
I think a lot of the problems experienced with sick coral have a lot to do with shipping and handling. These are stress factors and stress lowers immunity. We see this in fish. They become vunerable to disease, especially if they've been handled too rough and injured.

There is always the chance of the coral harboring a disease causing bacteria upon collection or came into contact with an infected coral and became suseptible to an outbreak due to the stress the coral's been exposed to through (and it goes exactly like this) being handled, transhipped, handled again, bagged, transported, and handled again, acclimated to a captive environment, handled again, put in a bag, transported, handled again, and finally being acclimated to hopefully a final resting place until it dies. Be very watchful of the way the people at your LFS handle coral. Even if someone accidently hits the side of the tank with the coral like a flower pot, it can cause a fatal injury.
 
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