Wilsoni Coral Care (avoiding lighting overexposure)

living_tribunal · Dec 30, 2019

gotmesalty77 said:
This is my current light schedule

Which color bars are uv and violet? I also can't see your schedule.

living_tribunal · Dec 30, 2019

Came across a few pics from @ReefBuilderInsta where he has purchased bleached cold water wilsos and revived them. I’m wondering if he could reveal some care tips.

living_tribunal · Dec 30, 2019

Finally found some answers, there is an insta account where they care for a TON of temperate wilsonis. I’m waiting for his response but he does have a lot of interesting info on there.

Daniel@R2R · Dec 30, 2019

living_tribunal said:
Came across a few pics from @ReefBuilderInsta where he has purchased bleached cold water wilsos and revived them. I’m wondering if he could reveal some care tips.

Cool!! Invite him to come join the party here!

living_tribunal · Dec 30, 2019

Daniel@R2R said:
Cool!! Invite him to come join the party here!

Will give it a shot. I'll be sure to relay his answers on here. It looks like he takes care of 10+ temperate wilsonis at any given moment. His pictures are amazing. You can check him at western_aquarium_fish

living_tribunal · Dec 31, 2019

I just randomly stumbled upon a guys channel who got to check out western aquarium fish. They are located in western Australia so basically are exactly where the cold water wilsos are.

Check this out, they have hundreds of them, we need to get this guy on the forum to teach us:

Brian1f1 · Jan 1, 2020

gotmesalty77 said:
Ok so I pulled the trigger and am now going to. Try and bring him back here is my new inhabitant

Super bleached... These are generally difficult corals to begin with, sadly I don’t think this will work out well.

Brian1f1 · Jan 1, 2020

I’ve had several. My rainbow from AquaSD has been with me 9 months. It lost a little tissue, and went pretty much full red despite being in a cave on the bottom. What’s left of it still inflates. They live to eat, but honestly feeding it frequently or not doesn’t seem to impact its observable extension.

I had a purple/blue one from aquaSD that bleached immediately despite being in a cave. It’s had a thin surviving colorless but of flesh surviving on it for almost 9 months. It’s a joke. I don’t know why it’s alive at all. Odd.

My oldest is a green and purple from TSM. I’ve had it nearly two years. Big eater, but I don’t feed it too often anymore because it started its decline while heavily feeding... Cutting back doesn’t seem to change it. Basically for nearly a year it opened massively. It was gorgeous. Then it stopped opening fully. Moving it, changing light, flow, nothing changed that. It continued to open less and less. It lost part of a lobe. It seems like it’s been pretty steady lately, opening to maybe a quarter or less of it’s former glory. I have no idea why it doesn’t inflate fully anymore ever, why it doesn’t finish dying, or start to grow anymore... It’s a bummer.

TSM told me this spring they “haven’t cracked the code on Wilsonis, and we’re no longer selling them at that time.

BeautifuI, tragic, piles of my money burning to death very very very slowly in two out of three of my tries, and very quickly and then very very slowly on try three. I need to be done with them now. When I see them I look away.

living_tribunal · Jan 2, 2020

Brian1f1 said:
Super bleached... These are generally difficult corals to begin with, sadly I don’t think this will work out well.

I disagree. A lot of people purchase very bleached wilsos and with the proper care for temperate wilsonis bring them back.

If you're having a wilso bleach immediately then you're not acclimating them starting at no higher than 72F. They will immediately lose 90% of their zooxanthelle if dropped into a tank higher than this temperature.

Were these temperate wilsonis or warm?

Don't blame the coral, they require proper care.

Brian1f1 · Jan 2, 2020

living_tribunal said:
I disagree. A lot of people purchase very bleached wilsos and with the proper care for temperate wilsonis bring them back.

If you're having a wilso bleach immediately then you're not acclimating them starting at no higher than 72F. They will immediately lose 90% of their zooxanthelle if dropped into a tank higher than this temperature.

Were these temperate wilsonis or warm?

Don't blame the coral, they require proper care.

Friend, two of mine didn’t bleach. Reread my post. One did, it came from aquasd. Two of the three have been in decline for over a year, after thriving for six months to a year. Some folks recover bleached ones, sure... Most go on to decline within a year, and I’ve yet to hear of any still thriving by the three year mark.

andrewkw · Jan 2, 2020

living_tribunal said:
If you're having a wilso bleach immediately then you're not acclimating them starting at no higher than 72F. They will immediately lose 90% of their zooxanthelle if dropped into a tank higher than this temperature.

Wouldn't the damage be done as soon as it hits the LFS tanks?

Mine took a few weeks to bleach and it only spent either 1 or 2 nights at the fish store after arriving from Australia. I don't really know the exact temp but I would assume 77-80. My tank was 78 and I lowered to 76 which was about as low as I could go. IF I ever were to try again and that is a big if since this has been a frustrating coral for me to keep. I would try room temp qt.

living_tribunal · Jan 2, 2020

Brian1f1 said:
Friend, two of mine didn’t bleach. Reread my post. One did, it came from aquasd. Two of the three have been in decline for over a year, after thriving for six months to a year. Some folks recover bleached ones, sure... Most go on to decline within a year, and I’ve yet to hear of any still thriving by the three year mark.

I was referring to the ones
that did. If they are still getting worse but you did acclimate them (if they were temperate) the first things that come to mind are a healthy N/P (below 15x) or aminos which they need.

living_tribunal · Jan 2, 2020

andrewkw said:
Wouldn't the damage be done as soon as it hits the LFS tanks?

Mine took a few weeks to bleach and it only spent either 1 or 2 nights at the fish store after arriving from Australia. I don't really know the exact temp but I would assume 77-80. My tank was 78 and I lowered to 76 which was about as low as I could go. IF I ever were to try again and that is a big if since this has been a frustrating coral for me to keep. I would try room temp qt.

It takes a few weeks for them to bleach out if introduced to tanks higher than 72F.

The zooxanthelle doesn’t disappear over night.

You just need to ask the seller if it’s a temperate wilsoni or not. If it is, ask them if they’ve acclimated it. If they haven’t, it’s up to you and your discretion.

A major source of frustration are shoddy sellers who don’t tell the buyer whether it’s a temperate wilsoni or not. I think that’s why people have vastly different experiences with them.

The guy who I posted about seems to get mad about this often. I’m going to try and reach out to him on fb so he can shed some more light for us.

Brian1f1 · Jan 3, 2020

I don’t think most sellers know where exactly it was sourced from. Again, I‘ve not seen one thriving by year three (again, thriving, as in not smaller than it was initially and not color shifted into oblivion either). This is a big board. I’d love to hear about some actual long-term success if there is any. I expect it to be vanishingly rare.

living_tribunal · Jan 3, 2020

Brian1f1 said:
I don’t think most sellers know where exactly it was sourced from. Again, I‘ve not seen one thriving by year three (again, thriving, as in not smaller than it was initially and not color shifted into oblivion either). This is a big board. I’d love to hear about some actual long-term success if there is any. I expect it to be vanishingly rare.

I suspect the same, they definitely require very specific care that’s quite different from how we typically conduct our reefs.

I’ll see what info I can gather from this guy, I think we all need it :/

gotmesalty77 · Jan 4, 2020

Brian1f1 said:
Super bleached... These are generally difficult corals to begin with, sadly I don’t think this will work out well.

So I do not know much about the origins of this wilsoni but it seemed to respond well to feedings. I know it was at LFS for a couple of weeks before I took it on. There tank is set to 78 and mine is set to 76 now. What are the signs of decline? What are positive the signs? As of now I've seen nothing I would immediately think of as negative. I've got it currently in a small amount of light but mostly in shadows. Bleaching occurs soon after the temperature shock is what you've noticed?

Brian1f1 · Jan 4, 2020

gotmesalty77 said:
So I do not know much about the origins of this wilsoni but it seemed to respond well to feedings. I know it was at LFS for a couple of weeks before I took it on. There tank is set to 78 and mine is set to 76 now. What are the signs of decline? What are positive the signs? As of now I've seen nothing I would immediately think of as negative. I've got it currently in a small amount of light but mostly in shadows. Bleaching occurs soon after the temperature shock is what you've noticed?

Bleaching, and or eventually expanding less and less, and/or tissue loss on all or some of the lobes.