Remarkable transformation by elegance coral

[bruno3047]

In the last few days I’ve witnessed the culmination of a remarkable transformation made by one of my Elegance Corals. Without getting into details, what basically happened is the Elegance transformed itself to adapt from a low-light never-fed environment (the retailer) to a higher-light often-fed environment. Amazing stuff.

 

[blaxsun]

This thread needs pictures!

 

[bruno3047]

This thread needs pictures!

There’s a lot to tell, so I’ll do it a little at a time. I bought this elegance about a month ago. This is a picture from the seller’s website. Note the dark green tentacles.

 

[bruno3047]

This is the Corals first day in my tank after an overnight settling down. I dipped it In Bayer at 5ml/cup of tank water for 10 minutes and then a full dose of Reef Dip for another 10 minutes. And then two separate five minute rinses in tank water.

 

[bruno3047]

The coral did not show any feeding response when I placed food onto the body near one of the mouths. None. On the third day, I noticed that the coral had expelled a black-looking material that was sitting on the sand. I recognized this immediately as zooxanthellae and assumed the coral was adjusting to the new lighting.

 

[bruno3047]

This was a nightly occurrence for about a week, where every morning I would find little “turds” of zooxanthellae on the sand. I noticed during this period that the coral’s tentacles were lightening in color. This is what the coral looked like after a little over a week in my tank.

 

[bruno3047]

Each day I tried to feed the coral directly into one of its mouths, but there was still no reaction from the coral. So what I did during this time was I sprayed newly hatched brine shrimp directly into the tentacles. This did elicit a reaction from the coral’s tentacles as they absorbed the little brine shrimps. In the subsequent period, I noticed that the coral was opening smaller and smaller each day. This concerned me and I started to wonder if the coral was on its way out. However, I still continued feeding the coral with brine shrimp spray directly into the tentacles, and each day the tentacles seemed to respond more obviously to the feeding.

 

[bruno3047]

Eventually, I stopped attempting to feed the coral small chunks of food that it could swallow through one of its mouths, and just sprayed the brine shrimp into the tentacles on feeding days (MWF). After a few weeks, as I was feeding my other corals, including my other Elegance, with mysis, I just put a little bit onto the body of this elegance, and the reaction was immediate and violent. The coral had closed up on the food.

 

[bruno3047]

This surprised me, to say the least. That’s when I realized that the coal had undergone a transformation from relying solely on lighting by inflating and expanding its surface area to absorb as much PAR as it could, to relying on a combination of PAR and food, where it wouldn’t have to inflate as much as previously. The first photo is a photo of the coral closed up on the mysis, and the second picture is the coral at rest. Amazing stuff.

 

[bruno3047]

Here’s the Elegance closed up on tonight’s dinner.

 

[Koty]

My expirience with elegance is that they benefit from large chunks of food. Best is mussels IME. They take it into their mouth but they are very slow unlike anemones. I would not say that it "transformed" as elegance is always ready to take food wether its photons, amino acids/vitamins in the water column, or chunks of food. Only reason not to feed during the day is that fish such as wrasses will still it before it is taken in