Elegance Coral's blog

[Elegance Coral]

Who is Elegance Coral?

[Elegance Coral]

My name is Darrell. I was born on an Army base in 1966. I would spend the next 7 years bouncing from one base to another.

My fascination/obsession with nature began at a very early age. Literally, from the time I could read. My parents and teachers would try to steer my attention away form animals, and more towards the three R's. It was obviously unsuccessful. The first time I got in trouble in school was for reading a book on dinosaurs and not fallowing along with the class.

Just a note to any parents that may be reading this. If you have a child that shows a particular interest in a given subject, FEED IT! Don't attempt to discourage them, even if it's not a subject you feel is worthwhile.

Growing up in the Army did have its perks for someone like myself. Each new home brought a whole new group of animals to study. One time, I got in trouble for smuggling a horny toad lizard from California to Pennsylvania in my pocket.

My introduction into the aquatic world started when I was probably around 5. We had aquariums before then, but I was probably to young to do much with them. My Father liked to fish. He built a large dip net to catch bait. From the first time I saw him push that net through the weeds in the Okefenokee swamp, I was hooked. I had no idea what most of the critters were he was catching, but I was determined to find out. Eventually I started drawing pictures of the different fish and other aquatic life he would catch and took them to my library at school to look them up. And yes.......I would get in trouble for wandering off with my Fathers dip net to do a little netting of my own.

My Father retired from the Army and we moved to Florida when I was 7. By then I was very much involved with the aquariums at home. We had two tanks. An old 10gl and one that was about the size of the standard 29gl today. Both of them had those old stainless steel frames. The 10gl was full of critters that came form the dip net. The 29gl was store bought fish. Any money I earned would go to fish or books on fish. I still have some books that were copyrighted in the 70's.

When I turned 18 I left home. My older sister gave me here 55gl under gravel salt water aquarium. I thought I was in heaven. We didn't have any local SW stores, so my sister told me I would have to drive to the Key's to buy livestock. I went to the Key's but didn't buy any critters. When I dove into the water, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like swimming through the worlds largest aquarium, only everything was much more colorful. Everything I ever dreamed of was right there at my finger tips. I started filling 5gl buckets with anything I could catch. This is how I stocked my first tank. Many of the animals would perish on the trip home, or shortly after placing them in my tank. At the time I knew nothing about keeping a SW tank. I bought Martin Moe's first book and read it religiously. I took it with me everywhere. It became my bible. I also subscribed to FAMA and read it cover to cover every month.

I continued my collection trips to the Key's until I got caught. It was after a week of collecting. I had a 4'x8' utility trailer full of 5gl buckets. A 12v air compressor in the trunk feeding air stones in all the buckets. It was a horrifying experience! We were stoped right next to the mangrove swamps near Key Largo. The officer didn't know if we had anything illegal or not so he called for a game Worden. He informed us that we (my wife and I) would go to jail, our Sheltie would go to the pound, and our vehicle would be permanently impounded, if we had things like live coral. I acted stupid, even though I knew precisely what I had. My wife sat there on the guard rail, holding our Sheltie, crying, and telling me that she can't go to jail. There was nothing I could do about it at the time. What a helpless feeling. After about 20 minutes the Worden showed up. He began going through the buckets and saying things like, "You're not allowed to have this, or this." I just knew we were going to jail. I think the Worden felt sorry for us. He said, "I'll make a deal with you. If you help me put all this stuff back in the ocean, I will write you a ticket for fishing without a license, and let you go on your way." Needless to say, I started grabbing buckets. A weeks work down the drain, but it was worth it. I will NEVER EVER collect anything from the wild again!

That's enough for now. I'll get into why I call myself Elegance Coral a little later.

If you read this and have any comments, please feel free to PM me.

[Elegance Coral]

So........What next? How bout I talk about my first tank and how I became Elegance Coral.

At first my tank was stocked with critters from the Keys. Then I found a LFS that sold corals and fish from over seas. I didn't know what most of it was, or how to care for it. This was a long time ago and they didn't have near as many different types of coral as we do today. All we had was LPS corals like Elegance, Bubble, Goniopora, brain, and Euphyllia. No acans, no dunkens, no SPS, not much of anything. I bought a few and killed them. After that I remember a conversation I had with a very nice LFS employee. I explained to him that I killed a couple of corals and felt that it was because I didn't know what I was doing. He said, "That's okay, that's what we're here for." Something about the way he said that just rubbed me wrong. It was as if he wanted to keep me in the dark so that I would be forced to take his advice. I didn't like the position I was in so I subscribed to FAMA (Freshwater and Marine Aquarium magazine. In it I found an advertisement for Martin Moe's first book. That's where the obsession really took off. With the help of Mr. Moe and mail ordering supplies through FAMA, I got pretty good at keeping these critters alive.

Here's a couple of old pics from my first tank. You can see my first Elegance, a Goniopora, flower anemones (they actually spawned and the larvae survived in this tank), a few SPS corals, gobs of caulerpa, and a few other critters.

Here's a close up of the Goniopora.

I learned how to care for the Goniopora quite by accident. I knew that it would begin to withdraw if I didn't feed it every day. I was planning a week long trip to the Keys, and needed a way to feed it while I was gone. Back then they had a product like those white fresh water feeder block you drop in the tank to feed the fish while you're away, only these were larger and designed for filter feeding corals. I dropped one in the tank before I left and I just knew the coral would be half dead by the time I got back. To my surprise, when I got home it was larger than I had ever seen it. From then on, I kept one of those blocks in the tank. The Goniopora would let me know when the block had devolved by shrinking in size. It grew to about the size of half a basket ball and kept dropping little "Goniophytes".

[Elegance Coral]

I was fascinated by Elegance corals above all the others. I thought it was cool to watch it eat. Back then almost no one in my small little town had ever seen or heard of such an animal. I would feed it live minnows and my friends would just be amazed.
For the first few years I had it, it didn't grow much at all. I finally added a Kalk doser and built a 6' tall skimmer. After that, the Elegance took off. It started growing like a weed. This is a pic after it started its growing spurt, but does not show how big it actually got. It was even withdrawn a bit in the pic because of the clowns. Once I took them back to the LFS the elegance exploded. I had it at about a 45 degree angle in a 55gl tank. It's polyp went up the back glass and curled up the front. At one point that nice LFS employee came to the house to deliver a new stand. When we saw my Elegance I thought he was going to fall over. He just kept going on about how he didn't know they got that big. The next time I walked into the LFS, he shouted out, "Hay Elegance Coral!" I've been Elegance Coral ever since.
For size reference at the time of this photo, that is an adult pair of ocellaris living in it.


I was already hooked and just fascinated by this coral. Then one day it did something strange. (I can't go into details) I didn't know what it was doing at first. Then I realized it had spawned. It spawned that one time then just stopped. I figured there had to have been something that caused it to spawn. It was not exposed to the moon, so it didn't have anything to do with the lunar cycle. I started experimenting. I had to figure out how to get this thing to spawn again. After lots of trial and error, it spawned again. This time it's secrets were exposed. I gave it a little bit of time after the spawn and tested to see if I could cause it to spawn again. It worked! I could cause it to spawn just about any time I wanted. I was a nut case after that. I bought more Elegance corals, but none of them were mature enough or healthy enough to spawn. I started spending all my free time looking at larvae under my microscope and trying everything I could think of to get the larvae to survive. No matter what I did, I couldn't get them to survive much longer than about a week. At the time, even the scientists didn't know anything about raising coral larvae.

With all my time being dedicated to work or Elegance Corals, it didn't leave much time for my wife. Eventually we went through a very nasty divorce. She was fighting me for everything. The dogs, my aquarium stuff, even the front door mat and the refrigerator magnets. I couldn't allow her to get my Elegance Corals. I knew she would mail their skeletons back to me in a shoe box. I had a coworker that had a large SW aquarium so I simply gave him all my corals. I didn't know what else to do. I'm sure they're all dead by now. In the end, the divorce didn't turn out as bad as I thought it would. I was able to keep the house and my aquarium stuff. For a couple of years I just kept a few fish and some flower anemones. Then I decided it was time to get back to work on my dream of raising Elegance Corals from larvae. I upgraded my equipment then entered my LFS for the first time in a long time. That same LFS employee flipped out when he saw me again for the first time. I asked him when he thought he would be getting more Elegance Corals in. He said there was some kind of disease killing them all off so he doesn't carry them anymore. Well.....That just didn't make any sense at all. I asked him to order me an Elegance. He said, if anyone can keep it alive you should be able to, so he ordered me one. I killed it in no time flat. Man I was pissed! This can't be happening. I got to where I thought I was on the brink of accomplishing my goal and I had to give away my corals. Now There are no healthy corals to be had. I almost threw in the towel, but I was just to angry. I decided I would find a way to pull these corals through this problem and continue my work. I set up a system just for EC's and started experimenting. After about a year of putting these corals through everything imaginable, I started to see a pattern. I developed a theory. I was still unsure but I started to wonder, what if I am successful at improving the odds for these corals. How could I tell others? I had never been on the Internet or even heard of an online forum.


Gotta take a break. More to come soon.