Is my coral sick?

[chigggger]

Hi

I have a question about my toadstool leather coral (forgive me if this isn't the right name for it). Recently put it in my tank and it seems to have taken a turn for the worse. I have before and after pictures of how it's been for the last four days. When i got it on Sunday I drip aclimated it for two hours and then placed it on the bottom of the tank and understood that it may take some time for the spores to show up again and maybe it's the lighting or flow. That's not my concern, it's reltated to the thin film that formed and I read up and thought that this was due to the shedding but then that was blown away with a turkey baster and now it's leaning quite awkwardly and has for two days.

Today there were what looked like lil wisps of smoke or clouds flowing from it and it stopped but i was wondering if this is normal or if there's something wrong with my new lil buddy? The params of my tank are as follows: 60 gallon deep or high tank with 75 pounds of LR, 72 degrees, NO3 is 0, NO2 is 0, ammonia is between 0 and 0.25, salinity is 29 and specific gravity is 1.021 with 196 watts power compacts running on a timer for 8 hours a day with a small clown, two BTAs, a small yellow tang, a damsel and a scooter blenny.

Any help would really be appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[steve-s]

Welcome to AquariumAdvice.com

First and foremost, this is quite common in newly added leather corals. They will as you described above "slough" where they shrink back, eventually shed and return to normal. This can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

The water parameters of your tank are not helping matters though. Invertebrates need more attention paid to the details of the water specs. 72° is far too cold and should be slowly increased over the next week or so to 78-80° mark. The salinity is also too low. Invertebrates of all types will do much better in a 35 ppt salinity (1.025 SG). The continued low environment will shorten the lifespan of most invertebrates.

You might also want to increase the photoperiod another 2-3 hrs/day. 8 is not quite enough although it won't be the problem with your leather depending on the actual depth of the tank. How did you get 196w of light?

Cheers
Steve

 

[EL Diablo]

my toadstool does this daily, usually after the light go out.
Not too long after the lights come back up it props up and expands