Elegance makes dirty water???

[mfd574]

My LFS guy has said that he doen't think that we should buy an elegance coral for our 75 gallon reef because they will make the water dirty. Does anyone have any info either way on this.
Thanks

[Ninjapotamus]

Never heard that before...

Indo elegance corals come from somewhat dirty water if im not mistaken, maybe thats what he was trying to say?

[Azurel]

That's a new one.......Elegance in the wild come from tubid water conditions which some think is why when we add them to out tanks with crystal clear water and intense lighting it ends up shocking them and soon after they get BJD.....Aussie are differant as I think they come from shallower waters and less turbid waters so they don't get the photoshock that the Indo one are so septable too.....I could be wrong on the aussie ones though as far as water conditions just what I have read.....

[jd474]

Either there was a misunderstanding, or the LFS employee is a complete idiot. They don't make dirty water, so if you can care for it, then by all means....

[mfd574]

I guess I never really understood it either. They always seem to order them and they always seem to sell so not sure why we're told not to get it. Anyone else have any advice or stories?
Thanks

[Azurel]

If it is an Indo elegance walk away......If it has short fat tentacles walk away.....If it is Aussie and has long stringy tentacles and no signs of dead spots and is full and puffed up, go for it if you think you have a set-up that it can live an thrive....They are beautiful corals for sure.....I had to sell mine cause it got to big for the amount of room I had in my tank.....Remember if you get one they need to be buried in the sand with the Tooth(skeleton) buried up toll the point of the tissue. I kept mine about 1/4" from the sand. I also have sugar grain sand so it wasn't an issue. Some have said that some of the big grain sand can case issues and irritate the thin tissue of elegance....

[Ian]

Ive had quite a few Aussie elegances and they've all thrived. Aussie collection and export is done with a lot more care and in turn the corals coming from there have a much better track record than their Indo counterparts.

Ive kept Aussies in high and low light conditions and they've all thrived :D

I say go for it :thumbsup:

[tate1]

Thanks for starting up this thread. I just got one and have now learned a few things I didn't know before.

[mfd574]

So the majority are saying to go with the Ausie and not the Indo. Is the Indo ones just bad corals or is the Ausie just a better coral and thrive in the aquarium compared to the Indo? Will the Indo make the water bad? Also what is BJD?
Thanks for all the help guys!!

[Ian]

So the majority are saying to go with the Ausie and not the Indo. Is the Indo ones just bad corals or is the Ausie just a better coral and thrive in the aquarium compared to the Indo? Will the Indo make the water bad? Also what is BJD?
Thanks for all the help guys!!

Aussies have a much better track record because they have better collection practices and have a smoother transit to the US.

The Indos have such a poor record in captivity that they really shouldn't even be collected.

Neither will make the water 'bad' but if either die in your aquarium, you'll want to pull it before all of the dead flesh pollutes the water.

BJD= Brown Jelly Disease

Hope that Helps....

[jd474]

So the majority are saying to go with the Ausie and not the Indo. Is the Indo ones just bad corals or is the Ausie just a better coral and thrive in the aquarium compared to the Indo? Will the Indo make the water bad? Also what is BJD?
Thanks for all the help guys!!

It's not the difference in collection techniques, but what over collection (and man's influence) in the indo-pacific area has done to available catalaphyllia. If this were 15 - 20 years ago, this would be a moot point, as any healthy elegance coral is very hardy, regardless of where it is collected from. Indo collected generally don't fare well due to elegance coral syndrome (ECS). You can google the article by Eric Borneman, which goes into a lot more depth, and explains why most are doomed before they reach the LFS. I have had my Indo elegance for over 3 years, so I don't discount them all, but Aussie's eliminate the risk of getting one with ECS.

My Indo-collected:
http://i303.photobucket.com/albums/nn158/saxmansports/elegance2-1.jpg

[elegance coral]

We should not buy Elegance corals unless we can be relatively certain it was collected in Australia. The vast majority of Elegance corals collected in Indonesia will not survive long.

Like jd474 pointed out, years ago Elegance corals from Indonesia were considered to be about bullet proof. Something changed. Back then, all of these corals were collected by natives in small boats with no SCUBA. The only corals we had in the hobby back then were shallow water corals. After a couple of decades of over collecting these corals, in the collection areas around Indonesia, the population of shallow water Elegance corals was devastated. In came SCUBA trained collectors, and the collecting continued. Only now, they are diving much deeper to collect these corals. Sometimes at depths of over 100'. We are all painfully aware of how easy we can damage, or kill, a coral simply by increasing the amount of light it is exposed to. What happens to the PAR a coral is exposed to when you pick it up off the bottom around 100' down, and bring it to the surface near the equator? The symptoms of the over inflated oral disk and shrunken tentacles, that's common in these corals, can be see very soon after collection. If you want to see this effect, all you have to do is go buy an Indonesian Elegance and expose it to light brighter than it is accustom to. Within a short minute or two, the oral disk will begin to inflate, and the tentacles will withdraw. After a coral goes through this, its health is drastically compromised.

The Borneman "research" doesn't tell us anything of substance that we didn't already know. He went into the whole project with the assumption that he knew what the problem was before he ever started. He had one goal in mind. To find a killer microbe he could blame for the problems. He failed to do so. What he found was a wide range of microbes that he couldn't identify. Corals don't just play host to zooxanthellae. Even when healthy, they play host to a wide variety of microbes. Looking at coral tissue under a microscope and finding microbes should not be big news to anyone. Looking at dead or dieing coral tissue and finding microbes surely shouldn't be a surprise. Actually, looking at any dead animal tissue and finding microbes should be expected. Finding these microbes in dead or dieing Elegance corals absolutely does not show cause for the condition. It is clear that these corals suffer from an infection before they die. That's not evidence to show that the infection caused the condition. If a boy gets an infection in a skinned knee, are the microbes that are responsible for the infection, responsible for the skinned knee? Absolutely not. Grinding the knee across the pavement is what caused the skinned knee.

After spending over two years researching this problem and experimenting with more Elegance corals than I would like to admit, It is my humble opinion that these corals suffer tissue damage from oxidative stress, brought on by over exposure to light. Once the cell walls of the coral tissue have been oxidized, opportunistic microbes move in and feed on the damaged tissue.

I don't see this problem with Indonesian Elegance corals getting any better until they stop collecting to give them time to rebuild their population in the shallows. Then enforce strict bag limits so this problem doesn't' happen again. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening until they shut down our hobby all together. Thankfully, Australia has strict bag limits, and I can't see them allowing their natural resources to be destroyed like that.