Elegance Coral Syndrome - Anything new to be said?

[OrionN]

One of the infection of Elegance Coral is Elegance Coral Syndrome (ECS). In this infection the Elegance is healthy then developed retraction in one area. This slowly extended to other area of the coral. The retraction worse as the day go on. Bright light seem to worsen the condition. The coral secrete mucus from the damage and injured tissue.
If this is the case, you can treat this elegance coral with a 15 min fresh water dip and chances are that you can cure it. Here is a picture of pre and post treatment of an Elegance coral suffered with this infection.

Pre-treatment

Post treatment, well on it's way to healing

 

[James w Lewis]

I had two elegance corals that seemed like they were dying. I lowered the light and put them in a shady spot and they are doing well. They went from a 1 and 4 mouth to being about 8-10 inches across. I would keep my tank just to keep these two corals

 

[Saltyanimals]

After a number of years in the hobby i decided to finally pull the elegance trigger. I held off because of my high flow tank and the lower flow needs as I've read. I did see a few SPS tank post that seem to support them like above and couldn't resist this piece for $100 at a LFS. It's about 4-5" in the picture below.

I apologize if I'm high jacking this thread, but this is the most active and recent thread I've seen on elegance corals. Here's mine that has been in the tank for about 2 weeks. Looking for opinions on how happy or healthy it looks. The rock in the bottom center was a frag rock I put to prop it up a bit and it's in the most low flow and non direct light I can find however it's just not those big long waving tentacles I've seen. It kind of looks just like this the entire time so I can't tell if I should make a change in location. Water is SPS grade with mature and growing colonies.

 

[Daniel92481]

After a number of years in the hobby i decided to finally pull the elegance trigger. I held off because of my high flow tank and the lower flow needs as I've read. I did see a few SPS tank post that seem to support them like above and couldn't resist this piece for $100 at a LFS. It's about 4-5" in the picture below.

I apologize if I'm high jacking this thread, but this is the most active and recent thread I've seen on elegance corals. Here's mine that has been in the tank for about 2 weeks. Looking for opinions on how happy or healthy it looks. The rock in the bottom center was a frag rock I put to prop it up a bit and it's in the most low flow and non direct light I can find however it's just not those big long waving tentacles I've seen. It kind of looks just like this the entire time so I can't tell if I should make a change in location. Water is SPS grade with mature and growing colonies.

Maybe try more light and flow.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I have one that went from 6- 9” and is always Full!! Moderate light and water flow. I do add iron, iodine and potassium which are a must

 

[H3rm1tCr@b]

I also own an Aussie Elegance. Mine seems to be cut from a larger colony, and has a blocky base. It is the hardiest coral I have right now, and is doing really well considering a pugnacious anemone shrimp and clownfish beat it up on a daily basis. The theory with the Aussies doing better makes sense to me, but this is my first and only Elegance so I cannot confirm the theory is correct. I’m wondering if you are having issues with your nutrients. Mine seems to appreciate a high nutrient level. Hope you solve the problem soon!

 

[Saltyanimals]

I also own an Aussie Elegance. Mine seems to be cut from a larger colony, and has a blocky base. It is the hardiest coral I have right now, and is doing really well considering a pugnacious anemone shrimp and clownfish beat it up on a daily basis. The theory with the Aussies doing better makes sense to me, but this is my first and only Elegance so I cannot confirm the theory is correct. I’m wondering if you are having issues with your nutrients. Mine seems to appreciate a high nutrient level. Hope you solve the problem soon!

Same here. Mine has a long blocky base. Almost like a wall hammer when closed, but no way of telling if it's aussie or indo. Assuming aussie because the majority of elegances collected today seem to be from aussie. I've heard of the nutrient issue too. Namely those low nutrient SPS tanks. I struggle with detectable NO3 and started dosing NO3 couple weeks back.

Haven't heard anyone say it looks sick yet so maybe it is okay.

 

[rkpetersen]

After a number of years in the hobby i decided to finally pull the elegance trigger. I held off because of my high flow tank and the lower flow needs as I've read. I did see a few SPS tank post that seem to support them like above and couldn't resist this piece for $100 at a LFS. It's about 4-5" in the picture below.

I apologize if I'm high jacking this thread, but this is the most active and recent thread I've seen on elegance corals. Here's mine that has been in the tank for about 2 weeks. Looking for opinions on how happy or healthy it looks. The rock in the bottom center was a frag rock I put to prop it up a bit and it's in the most low flow and non direct light I can find however it's just not those big long waving tentacles I've seen. It kind of looks just like this the entire time so I can't tell if I should make a change in location. Water is SPS grade with mature and growing colonies.

It looks somewhat unhappy but not dying.
It's very hard to give advice on what to change, when it's not at all obvious what's bothering them when they look like this.
I've seen them occasionally shrink up like this for awhile, sometimes after a water change or after adding fresh GAC to the carbon reactor.
I've also seen them like this when something was decaying nearby and I hadn't yet noticed it.
They shouldn't require high flow or high light to thrive.

 

[Rainblood]

One of the infection of Elegance Coral is Elegance Coral Syndrome (ECS). In this infection the Elegance is healthy then developed retraction in one area. This slowly extended to other area of the coral. The retraction worse as the day go on. Bright light seem to worsen the condition. The coral secrete mucus from the damage and injured tissue.
If this is the case, you can treat this elegance coral with a 15 min fresh water dip and chances are that you can cure it. Here is a picture of pre and post treatment of an Elegance coral suffered with this infection.

Pre-treatment

Post treatment, well on it's way to healing

Bump

Did your freshwater dip work for you? Any updates?

I have a conical elegance which is starting to recede in one spot. The receding area seems to be getting bigger. Mine has 3 mouths and the receding area is right in the middle. Has anyone tried fragging to save their elegance?

 

[OrionN]

Bump

Did your freshwater dip work for you? Any updates?

I have a conical elegance which is starting to recede in one spot. The receding area seems to be getting bigger. Mine has 3 mouths and the receding area is right in the middle. Has anyone tried fragging to save their elegance?

The Elegance coral is actually belong to @alton . I will let him answer. Last I heard, it was doing well.

 

[Fishf00d]

i took mine to a wet saw when i thought it had a deat spot. ended up with 4 frags and the main colony. All doung well.

 

[SamiTANKS]

Does anyone have experience fragging a cone skeleton elegance? My elegance has outgrown this tank over the last year and I would like to try fragging it. Would you cut in-between mouths? Should every cut in the skeleton go all the way to the tip of the cone? What is an appropriate number of cuts? The coral has a 3.5" skeleton, 8" of tissue when fully extended, and 5 mouths, 2 of which are really small

 

[vetteguy53081]

you can flip the coral over and crack the base with a chisel but not all the way through to the tissue. With the skeleton cracked the tissue will split naturally if you spread the skeleton apart a little, then cut the pieces into frags from each half. Kind of what would happen in the wild if a rock fell on it. Or Some people use a frag band saw to cut it. Even then with this coral you never know so it is a risky thing to try.

 

[SamiTANKS]

you can flip the coral over and crack the base with a chisel but not all the way through to the tissue. With the skeleton cracked the tissue will split naturally if you spread the skeleton apart a little, then cut the pieces into frags from each half. Kind of what would happen in the wild if a rock fell on it. Or Some people use a frag band saw to cut it. Even then with this coral you never know so it is a risky thing to try.

Thanks, that's all really good advice. Do you have any links to threads where people have used that chisel method?

 

[vetteguy53081]

fragging elegans

I was curios how big an elegans should be to frag it. And how you do it.anyone with opinions or experience?

www.reef2reef.com

Fragging Elegance

So I've been reading a lot into fragging elegance coral since I would like to but it does still make me nervous. I would like to see if anybody here has attempted it, successfully or not. And if not, what went wrong? I have only been able to find VERY limited info on the subject so any input at...

www.reef2reef.com

Fragging my ultra blue Elegance coral...the journey begins... - Reef Central Online Community

Fragging my ultra blue Elegance coral...the journey begins... LPS Keepers

www.reefcentral.com

 

[WizzWolfe]

Thirty years ago, when I had my first reef aquarium, I bought one (and only one) Elegance, and it lived for the entire 4 years I had that tank. Started off large and grew even larger, over 16" expanded, and it stayed expanded all the time, greedily grabbing bits of food and stuffing them into its multiple mouths. It was amazing.

But then I had to then leave the hobby, for work reasons. I just got back into it. A lot has changed, mostly for the better. I've had a 100g tank set up for about 6 months, keeping many animals successfully (so far) that would have been nearly impossible back then. But I'm already on my third elegance, which is dying just like the last two.

This is pretty obviously ECS, a condition I had not heard of when I bought the first Elegance for this tank. In fact nobody at the local store mentioned it either, they were more than happy to sell me the coral. It wasn't until the second supposedly hardier one from Australia also took ill and died for no good reason that I actually did some online research and quickly encountered this miserable condition. The third (currently dying) one is supposedly Australian too. Articles on ECS (particularly Borneman 2008) suggest that this malady is due to an environmentally persistent infectious agent. However, as Borneman himself points out, he did not culture a specific organism and then produce the same disease in a healthy coral by infecting it with that organism. Without doing this (satisfying Koch's Postulates), all the evidence, even his microscopic findings, is just circumstantial and could be secondary infection. I mean, this disease could even be viral, and you won't prove that without sophisticated isolation and culture techniques.

So my question is this - Is there ANY progress being made with this condition? Do we have any more knowledge than we did 9 years ago? New information on the causative organism? Are we even sure it's infectious, could it be an undetected toxin? Any effective treatment? Role of other factors, like lighting and water flow? Duration of environmental persistence of the causative agent in the absence of elegance corals?

I suspect the answer to all of these questions still is: We don't know. Googling it brings up little. Searching this forum, the last time someone asked about this, there were no responses at all. But it's worth a shot asking again. That last question, in particular, would be nice to have answered, for those of us who might one day want to keep this gorgeous coral again.

I had one Elegance that was not healthy but surviving. The other was healthy. Soon whatever it was spread within a week to the new healthy one and they both died quickly, flesh falling off. Heartbreaking.

 

[pigmo]

you can flip the coral over and crack the base with a chisel but not all the way through to the tissue. With the skeleton cracked the tissue will split naturally if you spread the skeleton apart a little, then cut the pieces into frags from each half. Kind of what would happen in the wild if a rock fell on it.

huh, have you actually done this vette? sounds completely whacko.

 

[vetteguy53081]

huh, have you actually done this vette? sounds completely whacko.

I know two who have. Me- I’d be deadly afraid