First coral!

[Leucotome]

Hi Everyone!

A few days ago, I decided to pick up my first coral. az recommended a frogspawn, due to it being one of the more hardy corals.

Here's a video of the coral in its new environment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFgKdm6J8Ok


I have a few questions:

1. I noticed a small green bit floating around my tank that is the same colour as the tips of the coral. Is this something I should worry about?

2. The smaller head: I'm assuming it's going to grow (given the right variables of course), and that it is not dying, is that right?

3. The coral came with a dead head. Should I cut it off? Leave it? Are the benefits to either? I'll likely leave it, but I'm just curious.

4. I noticed in the small head that there is a (what appears to be) harder, circular, open tube in the middle. Is this the coral's mouth?


Thanks for the help!

[NanoSF]

1. Yes it is probably a part of the Frogspawn, but nothing to worry about unless you start to see many of them floating around.

2. Not dying, just not opened yet. Looks normal in the video. Dying frogspawn will probably get mucusy, get covered in brownish slime, or pull of the skelleton. Could take anywhere from one more day to maybe even a week more to open. Probably not much more as it doesn't seem to tightly compacted, and the other head seemed to open quite quickly.

3. The sharp edges of the dead head can injure the tissue of a living head. So if you think the small head will open up to the point of touching the sharp edges of the skeleton then cut it of, otherwise leave it alone. Frogspawn does better with less handling, so trying to cut that dead head off could do it more harm than good if there is no reason.

4. They do have mouths, but I'm not sure what they look like. I'm guessing what you see is a mouth, yes.

[Hookup]

Hehe.  It only takes one....  There like lays potato chips... 

PS, fwiw, I agree with NanoSF's post... 

[gerryo]

Speaking of Potato Chips, there is a coral called Potato Chip that is easier to look after than Frogspawn.

I got mine at Marinescape six months ago, AND IT'S STILL ALIVE.  Wonders never cease.

I believe it's called a Pavona Coral.  It's an SPS.

[martin_jones]

If it does pull out of the skeleton, do not give up hope.

I found one of my frogspawn heads floating in the tank. So, I superglued it onto a frag plug and it lived again. It's grown back to 5 heads now

[Leucotome]

Thanks for all the good info!

One of my hermit crabs is crawling on the skeleton quite a bit... should I be concerned, or is it just eating the algae?

[Cheebs]

Hermits will also pick away dying flesh, but shouldn't bother a healthy coral. I'd just let it do it's thing!

[Leucotome]

Reviving this old thread:

The two large heads' polyps now extend much farther out that they did in this video. However, the smaller one still has just about the same length of polyps, although they have extended slightly more.

Is this a sign of damage in the past, or do the heads normally start out with short polyps and take time to extend (to lengths that are closer to the two other heads in my tank) ?

It's not a big deal, because the two other heads have polyps that are now so long that they make it all the way to the smaller polyps, but I'm just curious!

[Leucotome]

On a side note - seeing the small tentacles come out and "grab" stuff when the polyps are retracted at night/morning is awesome....

[kole18]

mine i was trying to frag one of my green hammer coral accidently break into pcs, which i know it will melt or die. a few weeks ago, i'd just left on top of LR's squees it in we're there's not much flow today im trying to move some of my corals & found out those head is already re-attached together amazing, & i broke so many pcs of my sps most of the time my tri-color valida acro which is really easy to break into pcs. this tri-color a few months ago i've got rtn issue this acro really damaged badly i thought it wouldn't recovering from rtn now seems like nothing happen as well my green stylopora this is size of my hand now.

[salvini55]

Hey can we see a pic of the green stylo? They are my fav

[kole18]

i'll take a pic tomorrow my whole tank sorry to hi-jack this tread, hey justin i'd just thought i could share my experience some of my corals thanks.