Coral Abuse

[StevenSeas]

So I love zoanthids. they are so hardy and take abuse like no other and just rebound from it and look as good as ever now. If anybody else has crazy stories of corals rebounding from conditions that are less than ideal I would like to hear them.

So the background on why I love these guys. Well as some as you know I set up a fluval chi 5 gallon tank as a nano for while I am up at A&M at school. I had been slowly stocking it whenever I came home I would pick up a frag or two. Well over Thanksgiving break where I left Tuesday night and returned late Sunday evening my tank went unwatched.

I had filled it to the top with ato water to help ensure it wouldnt run dry or atleast too dry. I took my light off of manual (only on it because some nights I would stay up late studying and want too look at and others would want to go to bed and the light wouldnt let me) and set up my timer. Also made sure my room temperature was good so that my heater in the tank could keep it at a reasonable temp. (highest it got was about 74.5 maybe, I know a little on the cool side) I had asked one of my buddies to make sure it was filled up when he left on Wednesday night and that the lights were working.

When I got back on Sunday evening the tank light was out, and the zoas were shriveled up, the stalks were about 1/2 as wide as before and they were closed up.
I looked at my thermometer and it read 63.4. Apparently my roommate decided that for one day of the year that he preferred the room colder than I and turned the AC on full blast. Also my heater was unplugged, and my light was off. I think my buddy that made sure the lights were working pulled on the power strip and thats what caused the heater to unplug.

Regardless now as I type almost all of my zoas are fully open and looking healthy again. I find this amazing as my tank temp dropped over 10 degrees to the 60s and they were without light for probably 4 maybe 5 days.

I now have 2 heaters in there for redundancy and because one wasnt enough to bring the tank temp up to 78-80.

[Mr Cob]

That's great news! Zoas can also be darn right sensitive too though. But, yeah i agree....most are hardy.

I recently had a RBTA that I got from Jliu and it managed to get past the panty hose and into one of my K3's!

Half of it was all the way through the K3 and dangling out the exit area. Was crazy! I turned the pump off and over the next 24 hours it managed to escape....all of it. It was a slimy dragging mess!

I left the K3's off for a week and to my surprise it started coming back. It lost all of it's tentacles and was completely white.

I'm happy to report that it now has 30+ tentacles that are red! And is on it's way back to a healthy new life. lol

pretty crazy how some corals can just make a come back.

[Regric25]

I have a story for ya. A whiile back I got a Orange cap moni frag from Eve. I proudly glued it on a rock and it looked sooo good. About 2 months into having it it turned completley white and I thought for sure it was a gonner. I decided to aquascape my tank and in the process I knocked the frag off the rock it was on. I decided to bury it in the sand and forget about it. A month later my giant pistol shrimp dug it up and I guess the water flow carried it over to the front of my tank. I left it there for about a week (kept forgetting to take it out). I took a llok at it and noticed polyps were out and it was turning pinkish red. I left it there and the color seems to be coming back. I have not moved it from its spot. I want to see if it makes a full recovery before I move it. I then realized corals can bounce back. This thing seemed to come back from the dead.

[Europhyllia]

Awesome! Not really a story of abuse -more a story of hope:

I finally got around to checking out the orange rics at a sponsor store here in town. He had sold over 180 of them over the summer and only had a handful left.
They were at that point almost completely white and tiny. Since they really were sort of bottom of the barrel ricordea at that point I got them for $4 a piece.

Even at that price I felt pretty silly for buying them. For a long time they just stayed that way: tiny and almost completely white.
Then they finally turned the corner: colored up and expanded to be as big as my other rics. Took about 2 months though!

I am glad I don't have to live with roommates (other than the family ;) ) - I'd have a fit if somebody hurt my critters!

[StevenSeas]

ya it kinda sucks having to live with a roommate, and its litterally a roommate, we only have 1 room and it would be quicker and easier to count the tiles (if you could see them under his stuff) than to do the math to find out how many sq feet we live in.

But yes luckily all is well with my stuff now.

Great stories guys, Regric I put coral skeletons on the sand or in the rock to forget about them, maybe I should try IN the sand.

[tzhanks]

Your not the only one that had Thanksgiving trouble I left for 9 days and had everything set up so that there would be no trouble, everything on timers and low sg so that it would slowly rise to where I usually keep it. Well the reefing gods had other plans because when I walk in my apartment it was silent. I went to turn on the light and nothing that's when I realized that I had no electricity. I had been with out it for a day and a half the tank was at 67 and the only fish out were gasping for air. Its been 10 days now and all I lost were some candy-canes, even my two sps frags now have full polyp extension.