1st Coral: Green Bubble Coral

[frankcunnane]

I currently have a 37 gal tank, 1, 65w PC light (installing another this weekend). 1.025 Salinity level, 81F temp. Good water stat's (per my local reef store).

My bubble coral, 1st coral is about 5 days old in my tank now. The bubbles sometimes inflate, then close up. They are nowhere near the size they were in the store.

I'm guilty of not acclimating this guy as good as I could have, I notice a slime or something being discharged every so often.

It sounds like a bad situation, some of the outer edges are flaking off and turning brown. It's doing better than it was the last 2 days. Is there anything more that I can do? I just performed a small water change (5gals or so) yesterday. The water change improved it.

[phistio]

welcome to ReefLounge.com frankcunnane

it sounds ok (except for the "flaking" part)

corals could take as long as a week to acclimate to a new environment.

the bubble should be fine, but keep us posted of the progress!

[James7773]

Frank, your croal hopefully will be fine. Please dont make the same mistake I did, make sure you feed you bubble coral. Mine went about 1 month w/o a feeding. From my research, they should be fed shrimp about once a week. I feed mine mysis shrimp, and it just loves it.

[phistio]

i should apologize...:oops:

in a way i haphazardly posted some advice without fully explaining my reasoning.

LPS corals (in my opinion) are great corals to start out with. provided that water parameters are next to perfect. LPS are probably the most dependent species of "perfect" water conditions than any other corals. if you start out, and can successfully keep LPS, most other species will fall right into place.

SPS, also require excellent water quality! as well they require pretty intense lighting. if the water quality, and experience is already there from the introduction of LPS, (and provided the proper lighting is in order) SPS should prove worthy in a now perfect reef environment. then softies can be added in places of indirect lighting, as the water quality is (again) already there.

corals introduced in this order, generally has a better success rate; especially when it comes to chemical warfare.

back to your questions and health of your bubble...

without knowing the species, it's hard to give the "perfect" advice. the brown and flaking that you describe does give way to some alarm, but hopefully it will pass. the brown may simply be waste expelled from stress of acclimation. it also could be indication of a bacterial disease know as "brown jelly disease." a better explanation of what you're seeing could help. a judgement of good health on bubbles is to take note of the amount of skin that can be seen extended over the skeleton. it looks much like how gum tissue covers teeth in humans. the more "gum tissue" the better.

can you tell us a bit more about your parameters, such as pH, calcium, nitrates, nitrites, and ammonia levels? (you say they are "good water stats per your LFS", but i'd like to know what they are considering good...

however, i still stick with my first advice to you. for now leave the coral in a place of indirect light, until you see an improvement in overall health. also, feeding should be light until the coral is free from signs of malady.

[frankcunnane]

Verified by my LFS, this coral is dying in a bad way. The bubbles that they still have at the store are all doing the same thing, I received a credit.

Since this started I introduced a Fox Coral that is doing great. I acclimated it correctly, and I'm very happy with the results.

[RazerCorals]

I had a bubble, not green. Are you saying that you had a flourscent green bubble? or it was dying and turned green.