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DIYreefer

Octopus Coral Migrating?

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by
DIYreefer
, 03-03-2010 at 09:14 PM (2308 Views)
Okay this is my first post in any reef blog. I just enjoy reading what other people are doing and taking in the info most of the time. Most things I run into I can find something already written about it. The cause of this blog has me completely baffled. I came home today to find one of my two branches of octopus coral missing from it's usual happy place. The Base was still present. The second branch of the coral was still fully inflated and happy as usual. But one was simply missing. Only a bare base remained. It was there this morning when I left for work when I turned off the fuge light and added water from last nights evap.

I thought maybee it had been eaten but my tank is populated by a Clarkii clown, Royal Gramma Basslet, Green Mandarin Dragonet, and a Peppermint Shrimp. My wife has taken a shining to Zoanithids and we have 5 different frag colonies, and a Mushroom colony that keeps growing like mad. There are also about 15 very small hermits, a turbo snail, and a slew of baby seriths that came in on some live rock. The Octopus coral was (with the exclusion of the hermits and the turbo) my tanks first inhabitant. Up until now the Octopus has been very happy and worry free as the center piece of my tank. It has almost tripled in size since I purchase it initially.

The tank is a 55 gallon with about 50 lbs of LR. I have a dual level 20 gallon fuge. Besides the usual battles with cyano, aptasia, and other little growing pains after the leap to reefs, the tank has been remarkably stable. PH 8.0 , Ammonia 0ppm, Nitrite 0ppm, Nitrate 5ppm, Phosphate 0ppm, Calcium 520ppm, DKH 7 as of last testing. Lighting is supplied by 4*20 watt 50/50 PC bulbs.

So where did my coral go? After a mad search of the tank I found the missing coral inflated and seemingly happy on the substrate. Now that I have found the half of my missing baby. A lot of questions are now coming to mind. Why did it "abandon" its branch? Will the fallen half survive this ordeal? I will be carefully monitoring the escapee. After all he is my favorite.

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Updated 03-03-2010 at 10:24 PM by DIYreefer

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‎ NEED HELP STAT!

Comments

  1. VitalApparatuz's Avatar
    Wow 520 calcium!
    Good luck with the octopus
  2. DIYreefer's Avatar
    Thank you, I found it today free floating in the current. So I placed him i a cup shaped rock in the tank and he seems content there. If it reattaches and makes a new skeleton I'll have two for the price of one.
  3. Trido's Avatar
    What exactlly is an Octopus coral? Ive never heard of such a thing.
  4. DIYreefer's Avatar
    It looks very similar to frog spawn, but has longer "Tentacles" with more white dots.
  5. DIYreefer's Avatar
    Update. 1. My second head of frog spawn has blown the popsickle stand.
    2. This is a known issue with this species as yet no one knows for sure the cause. A lfs that I frequent says they see this alot with new frags that they get. As such they tend to keep them in quarantine for some time before sale to the public.
  6. Jessy's Avatar
    Are you talking about an octospawn? What you have here is called polyp bail out and it is usually caused by stress on the animal. At first glance I would say that it is MAYBE your water quality. Your DKH is a low by my standards and your CA is high. Try raising your DKH and let your CA lower naturally by not adding more to the tank for a short period of time. Keep an eye on your pH during this time to make sure it doesn't spike. Polyp bail out is not a usual thing with a happy specimen of euphyllia (frogspawn/octospawn) so don't listen to your LFS. That's like saying that a fish with ich is a normal thing. It means its sick and you need to do something to take care of it better.

    If you fix the water chemistry and you're still having a problem with bail out, it may be that the flow is too heavy in the area or it didn't like a change in lighting.