Elegance Coral

[SCUBA DUDE]

Can anyone give me advice on keeping an Elegance coral.
Dean

[mtfatwork]

try not to kill it?

[smeese]

leave it in the ocean? J/K They require low flow and mine always did good in the sand at the bottom of the tank out of direct bright light. They are on about a 15 to one death to survival rate IMO

[Superman]

Originally Posted by smeese

leave it in the ocean? J/K They require low flow and mine always did good in the sand at the bottom of the tank out of direct bright light. They are on about a 15 to one death to survival rate IMO

I would even guess that the odds of survival are less than that unfortunately. Bottom line, not a very good candidate for purchase unless you know that it has been in steady aquarium conditions for at least 2 months and is eating and shows no signs of disease. Even after some of the most careful considerations they still can just up and croak. My success is a stroke of luck, NOT due to any special expertise.

[MERCEDES]

Originally Posted by SCUBA DUDE

Can anyone give me advice on keeping an Elegance coral.
Dean

Don't buy it save your money and a coral by leaving it in the ocean. Beautiful coral but horrible survival rates. We had one that did well for several months and then just up and died

[tico mike]

I have a frag of Superman's that has been growing and thriving for about 8 months? Maybe longer. It's like Supe says: More luck than anything.

[David Grigor]

Ditto, I've tried 3 with varying success from just a few weeks to a couple of years however, still I have nothing to show for it today. Even ones that look like the shipped well and you think will do good can turn in just a few weeks and be gone.

I don't plan to get another one unless from a hobbiest who has had it already for 18months or longer ( which probably won't find anyone willing to give it up. ).

[thegrimreefer]

I bought one in about 1992 or so. It was little and kinda scraggly looking.
By the time I sold it back to a store a few years later, it was huge, like a dinner plate fully expanded. Irridescent green with pink tips, and a home to my oscellaris(sp) clown.
By today's standards, that tank was a pit. BB with fairly low flow. I used to pull handfulls of macro-algae out every week or two, light skimming with a home made PVC skimmer, RARE water changes, 4 72" VHOs. The elegance was actually high in the tank, on the rockwork. I rarely fed the tank, and don't recall directly feeding the elegance, though the clown may have.
Seems I kept a flowerpot alive in that tank, too, and it dropped little flowerpots next to it.
Perhaps our tanks are too clean for some corals?

[Superman]

In the 90s there were still very good survivability for elegance corals, it is just within that last 3 years or so that the survivability of newly collected elegance corals has become a rarity (literally!) Eric Borneman has been doing research on why the elegance coral survival rates dropped, maybe we can get some info out of him at his talk next weekend.