frustrated with coral

i've got two trumpet/candycane corals (one green and one purple and teal). for some reason i can not keep these things from starving. i target feed oce to twice a week with either Rods or Mysis and i dose Phyto (which i'm becoming convinced that is unnessecary) and all my parameters are within acceptable bounds. my green was doing oustading under my old supercrap pc/t5 lighting but started to fuss under my new halide. so i tried moving the corals down for a week and they looked worst, i tried working them up and still no dice, and then finally just sticking them on the sand 30 inches away from the light. the purple has stopped receeding but the green looks worst than ever. my other corals look good and are growing so why can't i keep freaking candycane?

 

Yeah, that is weird. Sometimes it is just that you need to find the exact perfect spot for a certain coral. Changing lights will change the position many times if a articular type of coral is not happy.

Sometimes, I have seen that a particular LPS will just be on it's way out, and there is not much you can do about it. Candy canes are a little funky that way, some like a ton of light, others hate that amount of light and like shadows.

You said your old lights were PC/ t5? I am taking that they were only PC, right? While PC's are 5/8" diameter as well, there are a lot of differences between t5s and PC's.

 

The only thing I can think of is maybe your strontium levels levels aren't good enough for it.

 

You're not touching the flesh of the coral when you're moving them around are you?

 

I have the same problems with the purple striped candy canes. A friend of mine gave me a nice 6 headed frag and its just looking awful. Whats really frustrating it I also have teal trumpets and neon green candy canes thriving in the same tank.

~Will.

 

I have the same problem with green candy candes....they slowly recede. I've had mine near the bottom and it seems to do the worse. I placed a single head on my frag rack up high and it is starting to look better.

 

I never feed mine and they are doing great I started with 2 heads on my candy cane now have 6 in about 4 months.

 

They should not need heavy feedings like that. And looking at your signature you do not even have any corals capable of consuming phyto
My guess is either you handled the fleshy part of the corals or they got exposed to air at time of acclimation or when you were moving them around.

 

i had both an orbit power compact fixture and a nova extreme t5 fixture on the tank, trying to work with the weird dimensions and some bad LFS advice.

as for touching the coral, its very possible i have since i've moved these things a bunch. if i did, do you think they'll get over it and forgive me?

 

Possibly. Have you considered giving them an iodine dip?