Chili Coral dying?

[sauncha]

I've had this chili coral for about a month that I bought here at saltwaterfish.com. It was droopy just like in the picture since day one but I read about others' who said they had the same experience for up to a month or two before the coral perked up, so I decided to just give it time. The polyps never opened up. A few days ago I noted what looked like a tear started to form at the base of the coral. It has grown and now fibery looking material is being exposed by the tear.
Is the coral dead, dying, or is there still hope of recovery and if so what should I do?

 

[miaheatlvr]

Originally Posted by sauncha
I've had this chili coral for about a month that I bought here at saltwaterfish.com. It was droopy just like in the picture since day one but I read about others' who said they had the same experience for up to a month or two before the coral perked up, so I decided to just give it time. The polyps never opened up. A few days ago I noted what looked like a tear started to form at the base of the coral. It has grown and now fibery looking material is being exposed by the tear.
Is the coral dead, dying, or is there still hope of recovery and if so what should I do?
Looks bad,, how long have you had your tank-up? do you have and established tank?
What are your tank parameters?? SIZE? NITRATES? lighting? etc etc

 

[kainex]

I beleave I was in one of the treads you read. IMO it looks like it may be not doing so great. When mine looked at its worst it still remained dark red. Yours looks like it has quite a bit of sedament on it. I would try giving it a little more flow over it. Chilli corals dont need light to live they get all there food from filter feeding. this is why they do best under a ledge out of direct lighting with a slight flow over them.

 

[sauncha]

Yeah, it does have "stuff" on it. It was compleatly covered in brown mucus when I got it and every night when I target fed marine snow I would use the target feeder and blow water from the aquarium over it for more than 10 mins. Some nights I got a few spots to blow off, but mostly the stuff is holding on.
It's under a ledge right now since it's non-photosynthetic, but my lighting is 5.1 watts per gallon on compact florescent lighting. Tank testing tonight was 20 nitrate, 0 nitrite, 0 ammonia, ph 8.2, phosphate 0, alkinity mid range (my test kit for this sucks and I only get low, mid, and high options), calcium 350 (a little low, I haven't been agressivly adding my calcium suppliment since I didn't have a hard coral untill yesterday that I got at a frag swap). I have a 10 gallon refugium with cheato and 20 mangroves. I have a current usa nano-skimmer. A 3x turbu twist uv sterlizer. The tank is a 29 gallon biocube with redone lighting.
My tanks been up for 6 months, but I've been using 2 part reef supliments the whole time. I am able to breed and raise lettuce nudibranches in the aquarium if that's any indicator, 4 ribbons worth.
I got this coral as my first coral because many online stores said it was an "easy" coral. When I ordered this coral, my lighting upgrade was still on the way. I was hopeing that the non-photosynthetic nature of this coral would be a good beginner coral with my then low lighting. However, once I saw the state mine was in I did even further research on message boards and found out this was not the case.

 

[reefforbrains]

The poor guy looks sad, I would definatly increase flow and use phyto. Chili's can look dreadful when they are limp down and have it mean nothing. Other times it means they are on ther way out. They are fickle. I would be concerned that the polyps never opened. Without opeing they wont feed. When limp they shouldnt be loosing mass beyond water expansion. If looking deflated to a certain point its ok, but it they look like they are losing weight and wrinkly its a bad sign. Does it smell? Bring it to the surface and smell it.