Candy Cane Ejected Polyp

shornik · Sep 17, 2014

So i've been nursing this Candy Cane for a few months now, the polyps never really opened, it looked like this around when I first got it (apologies in advance for iPhone pics):

Today and this must have just happened one of the polyps "ejected" from the coral - I doubt thats the right terminology but as you'll see its just not there (and it was probably 30 minutes ago):

And I can see the polyp wedged (for now I suppose) in my rock (this is the worst of the bad pictures):

So my question is, is the coral with the intact polyp still viable? Is the "ejected" polyp able to survive? Anyone know why it might do this?

TruRacr314x · Sep 17, 2014

Bump in hope that it gets you some answers!

I cannot say because I don't have any experience with candy canes...but I'm going to say that it is not good when this happens. The coral skeleton is typically an important part of the coral and I can't imagine the flesh being able to survive by itself. I could be totally wrong though...

tyler1503 · Sep 17, 2014

It's called polyp bailout. I haven't heard of it with candy canes before, mainly duncans and euphyllia. It happens when the coral is stressed and as a last survival effort in hopes that the detached polyp will settle and form a new colony.
This is just my understanding of it, so that may not be 100% accurate. I've only experienced it with once with a duncan colony and the detached polyps didn't survive