Green toadstool damage

Brian1f1 · May 28, 2018

Hello,

I received this green toadstool a week ago. There almost appears to be a line crease in the center (more obvious when closed). In addition their is a swath through the center where the polyps appear to have been chewed or cut off. Some of these stumps appear to have new little polyp heads, others are barely visible.

My questions are,

1) What could have caused this (I want to rule out an ongoing pathogen, but I’m thinking maybe a crab or a fish)?

2) Will it survive?

3) If so, will it always be ugly? haha

Live Aquaria credited me a third of it so far, which I think is fair, so long as the consensus is it’s likely to survive. I can always frag it if it’s destined to be ugly.

As ever, Thanks!

cloak · May 28, 2018

Other than the polyps being closed it looks fine to me. That crease your seeing could be an indication that it's trying to reproduce. The link below might help.

https://www.advancedaquarist.com/2013/3/corals

Brian1f1 · May 28, 2018

cloak said:
Other than the polyps being closed it looks fine to me. That crease your seeing could be an indication that it's trying to reproduce. The link below might help.

https://www.advancedaquarist.com/2013/3/corals

Thanks, but they aren’t just not opening, if you look closely you can see some are actually open, they are just extremely short, others appear to be missing their heads and most all of their length. I’ll check out the link for sure!

tdileo · May 28, 2018

Try messing around with flow a bit. My experience with these corals is certain polyps will open more or less depending on flow. If it gets a little more or less flow, it may be inclined to open up all the way.

Brian1f1 · May 28, 2018

tdileo said:
Try messing around with flow a bit. My experience with these corals is certain polyps will open more or less depending on flow. If it gets a little more or less flow, it may be inclined to open up all the way.

Thanks, I’ve moved it three times. It always re-opens with the exact same configuration of missing polyps. I’ve been taking photos to make sure, and it seems they just are absent or damaged in certain spots. I’ll try again, hopefully you are right!