Originally Posted by
petjunkie
From what I understand there's really nothing you can do except keep great water quality and a no stress enviroment. Make sure nothing picks at it and no rocks cut the flesh to cause an infection. How long have you had it and what's your lighting like? If you had done your research before buying you would know this is extremely common in Indo elegances and they shouldn't be purchased.
My water quality is good, but mine definately is not in a "no-stress" environment. My Coral Banded Shrimp dances in it. I had a yellow watchman host it, and he was eaten. My clown fish hosts it now - He rubs all throughout it. When I feed the elegance, the engineer goby will sometimes rip the food from her clutch. HErmits and snails will often cliff-jump off my LR into the elegance, and then rip and crawl their way out. Since the elegance has grown about 2" in the 6 months I've had it, it's skeleton is now 6" long, and when fully opened at full light, it rubs against live rock for hours. Seeing that this tank is only 14 gal, the elegance catches EVERYTHING, the good and the bad.
With all this said, the only "issue" I've ever had is the elly blowng up like a balloon when it ate the watchman, and the right corner of the elly is damaged from live rock falling on it and laying on it for 12hours. This happened 2 months ago, it receded about 1/2", and then stopped. It is a very healthy specimen, most say that nicest they have ever seen.
I tell you all of this because I PROBABLY DO NOT deserve to be one of the lucky ones who have managed to keep this species for >1 yr. However, outside of all the chaos, this tank is maintained meticulously, gravel vac once a week, 1-2gal water change every 4 days, and a varied diet of phyto, mysis, form 1, & raw shrimp.
One hypothesis I have come up with it elegance thrives on water with phosphates. Call me crazy. But the old owner of this tank/coral used to top off with tap water, and the phosphates must have been absorbed into the rock, because to this day, phosphates leech out into the water (I test my water before water change, phos=zero; after in the tank, I test and reads .75-1.0). I managed to get the phosphates down to .15 using PhosGuard, and the elly reacted negatively, secreting some kind of necrotic tissue into the water. I took the 'Guard pouch out of the overflow, phates went back up, and the elegance stopped acting funny.
I know years ago, elegance was VERY common and easy to keep. It was considered a "beginner's coral." Im wondering if that has anything to do with less reefers using RO in the past, and using tap instead. Im wondering if there is some kind of metal in the tap that is also found naturally where elegance thrive, and RO/DI systems remove this metal/nutrient.
This is merely a hypothesis based on experience. But one thing that is fact, is you need a lot of luck with this coral. Below is right after she swallowed my watchman. Notice the CBS is looking for leftovers. He is such a grub.
