carnation coral

[beano]

I know I am not supposed to impulse buy at the fish store, but:

I saw this pretty coral mixed in with mushrooms and leathers (actually my girlfriend saw it so you know I didn't have much choice). I assumed it would be easy cause it was with softies, and I asked LFS guy about it he said it's low light easy coral it's called a carnation.

so we bought it. it did fine for a few months actually. then slowly started melting. it's a small rock with maybe a half dozen "trees". they really started out great for probably 4 months so thought I had no problem but when they started to melt I did my research and found out carnations are an expert only coral. the parts that looked bad are all gone and I'm left the remaining trees, which look fine but I'm not sure how to make sure they stay healthy, maybe even grow.

I was going to move the from the bottom of the tank into a shaded cave, good idea?
anything else I can do? I try to keep temps just below 80, nitrates 0, weakly water changes, but I don't suupliment anything, nor test for much more than calcium and testes and stuff once in a while. tank has been going for a couple years and is pretty stable.

any advice please?

so

 

[Bifferwine]

They are non-photosynthetic and shouldn't be in the light, period. Try putting it in the shade, and maybe it can come back. But other than that, I don't really know -- they are very difficult corals to keep no matter what you try to do!

 

[yote]

From what I understand about those,they really need nutrient rich water with lots of live zooplankton to survive.But other than that,I dont have any idea.:dunno:

 

[Smitty]

Try placing it under an overhang cave in the shade with low flow like Biff suggested and see how it does.

 

[Chris_150G]

I think you can hang it from the rock. So its dropping into the cave/overhang. That is a natural position for them. I was told that, by I think Winyfrog?

 

[Jenna09]

About 4 years ago I had a beautiful orange and pink carnation. It lived for about 6 months underneath of a rock cave I specifically built for it. It had good water flow still but little to no light.

Unfortunately they are very difficult to keep and mine only lasted 6 months before perishing very quickly. It appeared to be healthy but obviously was lacking something.

Jenna

 

[winyfrog]

everyone has you covered. Hopefully it will turn around for you but chances are slim.

 

[dcantucson]

:( :( :(

 

[yvr]

Keeping Dendronephthya is quite tricky because they are filter feeding and keeping them adequately fed is tough. You can try a commercial coral diet. I have one carnation coral in my tank which I have had for over 2 yearsI feed it (the whole tank) twice a week with both TM Pro-Coral Phyton and Pro-Coral Zooton as well as oyster eggs and live baby brine shrimp every few week. I recall reading in Reef Aquarium vol. 2 that a European hobbyist had great success keeping carnation corals by stirring up his sand bed, causing the detritus to become suspended in the water.