Dead heads on candycane

[DaBrowns]

I have a candy cane with what appears to be some "dead heads" They are hard, shriveled, and grey...(no longer the nice bright pink) and they no longer release tentacles @ night.

question is should they be cut off or left alone. Will they cause the rest of them to do the same?

Pix of it can be seen in the General Forum from yesterday.

Thanks

 

[matts125]

they dont look dead to me they just look like something is irritating them maybe excess water flow or a crab (emeral crabs especially) are know for eating those along with fox corals and other lps..
I wouldnt cut them off yet wait and see what they do..

Matt

 

[sihaya]

Maybe it's just that my husband's surgeon-esque "just cut it off" attitude has rubbed off on me, but I'd remove the dead polyps. They might be diseases and if they're truly dead, there's no point to letting them fester in your tank (in my opinion).

 

[vwmoneypit]

Well I wouldnt call my self a pro but I had the same problem awhile back I have came to the assumption it is a combo of light and water movement as allways is with most I recieved it from my budd brett he has a 150 and 2 450 10ks it was on the bottom lets say the water movement is less than it should be it looked dead except for two I put it in mine under one 250 10k about the center up high in tank did ok moved it later closer to heater and lower light and they all came back except for one so with that I say move it around?

 

[vwmoneypit]

what the .....well u wouldnt believe it my candy jumped off the stalk and floated around now on sand bed lookin great in the back corner wierd huh

 

[Anthony Calfo]

sounds like extreme duress... maybe stavation (have you been feeding the polyps?)

It sounds like you are witnessing polyp ejection (do a keyword search for references in the archives here)

It's a survival mechanism... something went very wrong, my friend. Starvation, waning water quality, aggressive coral nearby (GSP, mushrooms, etc), etc

 

[returnofsid]

DaBrowns, have you been feeding your Candy Cane at all? Have you noticed anything irritating it at night? How about flow? Does the particular part that's effected get more or less flow than the rest? If you do opt to cut off the effected heads, I wouldn't get rid of them just yet. Place them somewhere else in your tank or in a refugium if you have one with good enough lighting. See if they come out of it before tossing them.

Will, Candy Cane heads don't just jump off. They may eject their polyps in a last ditch effort to stay alive. If your heads are jumping off...something is seriously wrong.

 

[vwmoneypit]

well they were close to gsp now they are laying (w/o stalk) in a slow moving area and ok during day what is the recommended food for the fellas

 

[returnofsid]

I feed mine frozen brine shrimp, frozen mysid shrimp and frozen Cyclopeeze. I feed them after daylights are out and tentacles are expanded. I target feed them using a turkey baster and very slowly so current doesn't carry it away. If you do it slowly, you can gently push food right onto their tentacles where it'll stick. I have no idea if your heads will grow new skeletal growth or not. It'd be interesting to find out.

 

[vwmoneypit]

yep we will see if it grows new stalk where is the list on thier (crgslist)

 

[returnofsid]

Well, there isn't really a list of tanks. However, if you read through the Pets area or the General for sale area, you'll find quite a few on there. Also checking out Seattle and Portland's Craigslist will be beneficial, if you're willing to travel.

 

[DaBrowns]

Sorry for not updating my progress with the cane here...but here's what happened: about 2 days after my frantic post as to why some of the heads on one side were shriveled and hard resembling more of a skeletal appearance than polyp...they all came back to life but were relatively small compared to the other side of the coral. Well we began counting them only to figure out we had about twice the amount then a few days prior. We waited about another week and the new ones were about the size as the ones on the other (unaffected) side. At this time the entire coral was about the size of a softball and the lowest ones were pointing directly down into the sand. Having never fragged anything before, and not wanting a disaster on my 1st attempt...I called Kevin (Aquatic Dreams) and asked him if they could/would walk me thru it, provided I bring the coral in. What we found I thought was pretty interesting: These things have a slightly unusual "branching" skeleton. Not like an SPS though...and not like a tree branches out. The best way I can describe it is that it looks like a juniper bush. There were 2 main stalks that grew out of the base skeleton at exact 45 degree angles. All heads on one side were connected back to the main stalk. What we chose to do was cut off one stalk which split it in 2. I kept one half which is back in the tank and doing great. The other half we continued to carefully split and ended up with 6 frags with varying head counts of between 4 and 8 each. In about another month or so it will probably be ready to do again. We are totally amazed with the growth potential of this thing. I only wish my frogspawn, torch, and hammer would grow as fast.

 

[returnofsid]

Glad to hear everything worked out so well. If you're interested in getting rid of any of those frags, let me know. I've been a lil' over zealous in fragging my candy cane to supply other new hobbyists with frags....lol. Then it fell and self fragged. Now it's smaller than I ever wanted it to be!!!

 

[Anthony Calfo]

I only wish my frogspawn, torch, and hammer would grow as fast.

lighting has very little influence here (symbiosis with zoox only gets the coral at best to a compensation point). The key to coral growth is feeding. These Euphylliids you speak of are some of the hungriest corals known. They will "get by" under normal aquarium keeping (light feeding). But to grow, they need a very heavy fish load or better - small daily target feeding. Use fine matter too... cyclop-eeze, coral-frenzy, etc