First coral!

[AlexKilpatrick]

I have had about 4 or 5 saltwater tanks over the years, but my last tank has been set up the longest before getting corals. I didn't intend for it to work this way, but the tank was set up for about 3 months before I got my first coral, and it was set up with cured live rock.

Anyhow, waiting must have done some good because my first coral it thriving. This is a bubble coral that I gor from a fellow MAAST'er

http://www.hcitraining.com/tadpole/aquarium/bubble.png

This is also one of the first pictures with a new camera, a digital rebel XT for all you camera geeks out there. I have been really happy with the results so fair with this camera. Now I just need a macro lens to be able to take better coral pictures.

[Polkster13]

Nice octo-bubble coral. These are extremely hardy corals and live in a wide variety of conditions. You can feed it small pieces of shrimp or silversides from once a week to once a month and they will get really big. They will color up nice under bright lights. At night the bubbles will tend to disappear and long sweeper tenticles will form. Keep this away from most other organisms as this is a very aggressive coral and can sting anything within 8 to 10 inches of the coral. It will sting you as well, espeically on any soft parts like the undersides of your forearms so avaoid coming into contact with it while you are clean your tank, rearranging rockwork, et cetera.

[AlexKilpatrick]

Thanks for ths info. I have always been partial to bubble corals. But I wish you would have told me that this one is very sensitve and can only live under the most perfect tank conditions. Then I would have more confidence in my setup. :-)

At night it shrinks really quickly, and for a while it looks like a deflated balloon. It freaked me out the first few times I saw it, but it seems to be coming back.

You can't see it in the picture, but it seems to be essentially a three-lobed colony. The lobe at the bottom is just dead skeleton right now, and the two lobes at the top are what you see in the picture. Do you think there is any chance the coral will grow over the old dead skeleton?

[Polkster13]

The inflating during the day and deflating at night is normal. Don't sweat that. The dead part will over grow in time.

When my 135 crashed last year, my bubble that I had had for 7 years lost one whole side. I thought I had lost the enitre coral. I put it in my hospital tank on the faint hope it would somehow survive and a couple of months ago I moved it back to the main display tank. Other than it is about a third smaller than before, it has completely healed (around 4 months time).

One thing I do when I feed mine, is I mash the shrimp up between my fingers (after removing the carpiece) to soften it up before dropping it onto the tentacles. If you don't, then it may take the food in, but sometimes, usually when you are not looking, it will spit it back out and it is covered in some sort of mucus and stinks a lot. That stuff will then a foul a tank very quickly. So you need to keep an eye on it and make sure that it digests all of the food you feed it. I also do this same thing with my BTA as they will sometimes expel the shrimp if it is whole as well.

[Reef69]

They are cool corals..the first coral i ever had was a bubble like that one..easy to keep..should be ok..