Rescue Corals

[MechEng99]

Nice job breakdanc3! (I especially love the smiley face!)

[GXPKY]

Anyone have any ideas how that fungia I posted on page 4 will color up? not to derail the thread....looooove this thread btw.

[MechEng99]

Originally Posted by GXPKY

Anyone have any ideas how that fungia I posted on page 4 will color up? not to derail the thread....looooove this thread btw.

My guess is a tealish-green. A lot of the hitchhiker ones end up that color (and yours is looking that way.)

[breakdanc3]

This is my torch which was almost lost..

[GXPKY]

Gotta love a corals ability to regenerate even with 90 pct tissue loss its possible to come back. They take a huge beating in the wild and thrive for the most part.

[MechEng99]

Ok, here are the two new ones (the one on the left in the first pic isn't new). They were each part of a much larger lobo that was stung nearly to death. The damage was cut off, and I think each of these looks pretty great now. The pink/purple one isn't eating yet, but hopefully it will soon. The dark purple/green one is acting like it's almost healed. Ok, these seem to be easy ones.

[breakdanc3]

i was real close to buying a sickly looking open brain this last weekend.. bout the size a computer mouse. it was red pink with a yellow/green mouth.. it was listed for $69 and it was becoming transparent, and showing skeleton that didn't have purple algae on it meaning its tissue is receding quickly.. i've never owned one i wanna go back and buy it ...

i would pay good money for a coral if it looks amazing..
but if i can tell its dieing im not gunna buy it unless dirt cheap..
I gotta think of a haggling plan and go back there..

[MechEng99]

I don't blame you - if I'm going to pay full price for something it'd better be in good condition!

[orgtizz]

Originally Posted by breakdanc3

This is my torch which was almost lost..

Looks good, what did you do to bring it back?

[breakdanc3]

Well... that coral was in a 55g tank in my basement. my tank then was probably the worst example of a saltwater tank u can imagine.. i was excited about it at first till i realized all the problems i had in my setup. I learned the hardway. all i had was a seaclone hang on the back skimmer(not all that great). No RO filtered water. No reliable lighting schedule(cuz i didn't use a timer). anyways...

I remember buying a lawnmower blenny and it dissapeared behind a rock and i never saw it again and thats when my tank went sour. Over feeding, dead fish, and tap-water brought in all the undesirable chemicals that caused every coral in my tank to shrink/hide/melt/disappear. I was lazy on the maintenance.

i decided to step it down and get a tank half the size of my 55. i believed it would be easier to manage. i got a jbj nano cube 28g with compact fluorecents. I got a warner marine hang on the back skimmer rated for 55g. Most importantly i got a reverse osmosis water filter. If your doing salt water tanks off of tap water its like your setting yourself up for future failure. The water evaporates, nitrates/phosphates/otherchemicals stay in and each freshwater evaporation replacement adds more of those chemicals. Also i placed the tank in a place i would see it everyday; in the living room. That was probably the best decision.

My practices for that tank included ...
12-9 light schedule on timer,
feed nickel sized chunk of frzn mysis to my3fish(clown, yellow wrasse, blue damsel) once a day.
Clean skimmer cup every day or two with toothbrush/empty cup out.
Bi-weekly 1/3rd volume waterchange with RO filtered water. And i would add Iodine, Coral Vite, and Alkalinity buffer a cap full of each after the water change and once a week and Purple Up at night just whenever i felt like it .. like a capfull everyother night.

in the picture above where it says "old tank" thats actually my 28g biocube it was in there for a year. Just recently i moved it into a 29g rectangle aquarium with 10g sump and DIY LED lighting. those biocubes are hard to work with and clean being that they have no sump and u have to special order the fluorescent bulb every 8 months or the intensity and color begins to die..

[andrewk529]

Originally Posted by andrewk529

I had a large chalice colony fall onto my prized bleeding apple scolymia while on vacation. Needless to say, upon my arrival a week later there wasn't much left. About 85% of the coral was gone. I have been nursing it back to health the past 5 months. It has almost completely recovered.

Originally Posted by MechEng99

We definitely need pics of that!

[Johnny C]

Awesome thread!

[ReefRescue]

Allright gang just picked up 44 pieces yesterday will be posting pics soon. Yeah had a moment of elapse for a few mins.... would be interested to part with some L.A. socal area pm me if interested

[breakdanc3]

So .. . this is actually my first sickly coral buy .. i also bought that green montipora to the left there ... i've always wanted to own a colorful red lobophyllia.. so im going to take extra special care of this one..

15 bux !!


and after acclimation under my led lights. a little more poofy ..



it still looks pretty good .. i think it will make a great comeback.

[jc-reef]

I have another rescue coral.

[09/2010] This is a 'tiny chip' of a frogsporn that a friend of mine got back in September 2010 that was accidently broken off the main frag. It was really tiny and had a little piece of skeleton on it (barely)...so I gave it a shot and glued to to a piece of marble to see if it would survive. The piece of marble you see here in photo is only 1"x1" and the 'chip' of frogsporn was no bigger than my pinky nail!!!!



[01/2011] And now you can see this thing did indeed survive and has really grown!!! It has also turned out to be a very colorful piece with neon green body with bright purple tips!!! Looks superb under actinics!! The pic here is under FULL LIGHTING and you can see even still, the green looks like it is 'glowing'....

[breakdanc3]

I want one of those frogspawns .. looks amazing

[flipit13]

absolutely awesome thread. i have to take a pic of a tyree war coral that i am saving. i sold it to a friend and went by his house and only one head left i sold him almost a 3" piece. after about 2 weeks i now have 5 heads and the feeders are extending. no more corals for him.

[stackrat]

Fantastic thread. You have really inspired me to try and save a tiny Candy Cane and a small 3 head Duncan.
Keep the pics and stories coming.

[MechEng99]

Andrew - beautiful beautiful beautiful! I'd love to save one of those!

breakdanc3 - nice find! It looks like it'll come back quickly with some good lovin'! The green monti looks to be doing well too (just check it well for Montipora-eating nudibranchs...those are the devil!)

Ashkan - 44 pieces?!?! Yeeeeesh! If I were out in LA I'd definitely split some of that with you. Best of luck!!!

jc - love how the frogspawn turned out!

Everyone - As, stackrat said, keep the pics & stories coming! If anyone has any advice, we'd love to hear it!

[MechEng99]

Thought of some more advice:

In my experience, LPS seem to prefer Formula Two fish pellets over Spectrum fish pellets. Not sure why. Corals that won't give a feeding response with Spectrum will with Formula Two.

If the coral refuses to eat...even after dropping fish pellets into the mouths, add the recommended amounts of amino acids to the water and then turn off all flow and the lights. I don't leave the water flow off longer than an hour (you might not want to do it even that long.)

[Johnny C]

This thread has been nominated for February 2011 Thread of the Month! You may vote here... Good luck!

[inigomontoya]

Mech- great to see the recovery on these, I found this thread because I am attempting the same thing with a newly acquired scoly. I had a question about how much to trim on the skeleton (will post a pic later, know that will help). The scoly outer rim was entirely covered in hair algae which had caused significant detoriation, exposing the enire outer rim of skeleton.

The mouth and about a half inch diameter (still circular) is fine and there are patches of color in the exposed skeleton. I removed all the hair alage and have dipped in Coral RX. I also did some light trimming of the outer skeleton and tried to take just the tips off from the top where there is some tissue underneath the exposed portion.

How aggressive do you get in trimming the skeleton back? I am wondering about letting it be for a while, or whether to cut the entire outer portion back only leaving the truly intact "inner" ring around the mouth.
The statement about the skeleton impeding growth made me wonder if it was better to remove entirely versus hoping small patches of live tissue within that exposed skeleton would recover.
thanks for any advice.

[MedRed]

Not as dramatic, but picked up a fully bleached acan colony for $15. You can see it at the top right...

[img]http://i25.*******.com/2uj1axf.jpg[/img]

1 month later, it was looking pretty snazzy...
[IMG]http://i27.*******.com/2ezic03.jpg[/IMG]

[GXPKY]

Another I'm working on right now

[schriss]

Any advice on rescuing this:
uploadfromtaptalk1298665512475.jpg
It's like this for about 4 days. No idea what happened but I suspect Clownfish as it tried to host.
I noticed that the flesh was more loose before and closer to the edge, freely floating, while now it somehow positioned itself in the center of the skeleton.