Soft coral problems

Alexander

Reef enthusiast
So I have a Kenya tree coral that has grown really fast over the last few months and now it does not seem to be doing so well. The trunk of it is fading in color and that does not seem normal. I have no idea what is causing this. My filter did stop running for a couple days when i was out of town and my roommate is clueless so it didnt get started till i got home. but my fish didnt seem to suffer at all from it and soft corals are pretty harty from what i have been told . As you can see by the pictures, i do have a bad hair alge problem. I dont know if that has effected it or if it is too big for the trunk to support. Any suggestions and knowledge would be greatly appreciated.This is my first coral and i have no idea what to do.
kenya2.jpg


kenya1.jpg
 
how exactly do I go about cleaning the alge around the coral since I am assuming I can't really take this piece out and scrub it with old water during a water change since the coral is there. also I did a water change lwss than a week ago.
 
try using a turkey baster to blast some off. then take a tooth brush and scrub around the area. of course it is best to do this right before a water change to suck out all of the debris you will be knocking loose.
 
You can pull it out during a water change and scrub in the old water.
even with the coral on there? do you think the coral is too big at top too. is there something I need to do there? and if it starts doing better will that discoloration go away or is it dying at the bottom and no way to get it back?
 
What do you mean too big at top? Just shake it softly in the tnak and it will shrink up then just take it out. It looks like its spliting to me but I cant say for sure. It might be streching to get passed the algae I dont know for sure.
 
If it is spliting just let it that is natural fragging. When it splits you will then have two corals.
 
Actually Kenyas dont split.They drop branches.
Kenyas will also take spells where they dont look good.At least mine did.
Just use a tooth brush to clean the algae out from around the trunk right before you do a water change.
Kenyas are one of hardiest corals there is.So its probably just the algae causeing the discoloration.
 
PS
When that thing starts dropping those branches,your gonna end up with 15 or 20 new kenya trees,lol.
 
Yote kenyas do split. I had one with two braches attached at the bottom and now its split and two trees. They do drop stuff to make babys but as they get bigger they can split. It took it a bit to split at first there was a chunck holding them together and then it got thinner and thinner till there was two seperate corals.
 
Cool,Learned something new.Mine never did split,but it was dropping limbs at the rate of 7 or 8 a day.Every time I did a water change,it was shrink up for about 2 days,then open up and start spitting out babys.
The last bunch I took to the LFS,there was about 25 or 30.I just gave em away to get rid of em.
 
I have had mine split but hav'nt had them drop babys yet. I'm waiting paitenly for them to. LOL
 
well I just hope its okay. ill clean around it with a brush... and maybe ill get a split out of it, who knows! thanks guys
 
If the bottom of it looks "diseased" or unhealthy, you can always take a razor blade, cut it off in the middle of the trunk (cut off the unhealthy part) and just stick the rest of the coral in a rock somewhere, it will reattach itself and grow back again. It's pretty much impossible to kill those things...
 
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