Candy Coral Question

[womacj]

I am new to the reef, so I'm not sure if my candy is looking okay. There is one head that is beautiful bright yellow, but all of the others have stayed a dull yellow/green color. Are they just not happy? Are they just new and have not had time to turn bright yellow? I purchased it about 1 1/2 weeks ago and they have not changed. Thank you for you help.

 

[Sniperhank]

It looks to me like most of the heads are happy while one has bleached out.

 

[womacj]

Dumb question...what is bleached out?

 

[Sniperhank]

It has expelled the zoo out of itself. Basically, the green in grass and trees. What makes them photosynthetic. Corals expel the stuff when they are unhapy. This can be caused by several reasons, from not enough light, too much light, not enough flow, too much flow, being stung by another coral, so on.

 

[womacj]

Does that cause the head to die?

 

[Sniperhank]

Sometimes. For whatever reason I've never had the best of luck with candy canes. I have a typical red/green one and a blue one. The red/green has 2 heads that are bleached out. As for the blue, the entire thing had bleached out and I thought it was a goner. It had a great skeleton so I kept it in the tank and...to my surprise, it came back and is doing really well with very few actual deaths of heads. I wish I knew how people kept the entire thing alive. Just my experience with them though.

 

[womacj]

Thank you for your help!