chaosfyre
Member
Hi everybody! To summarize, I got my tank Jan 1st. It has already come such a long way and its only 3 months old! This is a story about my adventure with my first coral...
I got my first semi-large zoa colony for $20 at an aquarium store in Houston a couple months ago. It was doing great...Then we got a decorator crab (knowing the risk) and he thinned it out bad. It looked bald. I moved the coral so he would not find it...it seemed to work. Then we had to catch a few fish and had to put the zoas on the sand when we rearranged the rocks in the tank. We left it on the sand for a few days. Then the filter went out and diatoms started growing across the sand.... they covered the poor coral. I moved it up high again but the diatoms would not get off. So I put all my astrea snails on it, and they cleaned it right up. The diatoms were all gone...
But then I started seeing some strange critters on the coral-- nudibranches. I figured if they were ON the coral they were probably EATING the coral. I looked it up and sure enough, I had zoa eating nudibranches. I had recently sold my wrasse, and it was voracious, eating everything that moved. After I got rid of it, these critters started popping up. I caught about 8-12 of them before I stopped seeing them. Every day I would pick up the coral, check very carefully for nudibranches, and use a turkey baster to pull them off. Luckily I caught them quickly-- they were tiny and I haven't seen any more since. I also got another wrasse.
I used some kent coral vitamins and a turkey baster to directly treat the coral with it, weekly, about 4 tsps. The coraline algae has benefited too, huge color explosion. Last week I opened the blinds so some indirect sunlight gets in the tank. I was worried about the sun causing an algae bloom but nothing so far (I use tap water, and still haven't seen any algae). The coral had been bleached from no nutrients from not opening for so long, but with a few days of true sunlight, it darkened up again.
Anyway, caring for the coral is not as hard as I feared with astrea snails and a turkey baster on my side, despite all the disasters! And I've since gotten a new sump pump. The coral looks beautiful now.. can't even tell the decorator crab was on it, and he hasn't touched it since. I guess he is happy with his looks. I'm not sure if the polyps already grew back or what. There was some small ones he'd left behind when he shaved it bald, and maybe once they had space they just grew up. I figured the coral could benefit from a little pruning anyway-- give it room to grow more. It has only been a couple weeks since the diatom disaster and the coral looks better than when I bought it!
The decorator crab looks ridiculous. He was wearing one of the polyps in the center of his forehead like a unicorn horn...I can't stay mad at him.
Plus, with any luck, he'll spread the polyps around.
