Green Nepthea Shedding Phase

Yo, I just wanted to get this out on the net for anyone searching. When my nepthea began acting strange there were few answers for me.

Timeline:

Pic #:

1. My palau green nepthea. This is how it looked the day I got it. Pics under 19000K + 454 nm blue leds.

**no pic** After the addition of a rapidly declining elegance, due to my ignorance and a greedy LFS, the nepthea began to act strange. The elegance declined over 3 weeks to its eventual death. The mucus secreted would get carried by the power head and pushed right into my nepthea. At this time the nepthea became retracted to about 10% it's normal size.

2. The retracted nepthea emerged one day while I was at work. I returned home to find it looking like this. A thick waxy build up made the coral look petrified. I had searched the internet and came to some information saying that this is a normal skin shedding and it should last 3-4 weeks.

3. 6 weeks later the nepthea was looking very sad. It did not appear that it was still coated in wax. Also it had started developing black spots which were consistent with necrosis. At this time I was not going to lose my favorite coral. I removed from the tank and dipped in flat worm exit for 10 minutes, rinsed and dipped in a strong iodine bath for another 10. I then took a soft bristled tooth brush to the black spots. The color started coming right off the coral, the green color not the black! Fearing the worst I put the coral back into the tank to let it die in peace. Within 1 hour I could see waxy sheets coming off the coral. It seems it was not through with it's shedding phase after all. The black spots were just debris from the tank stuck to the wax.

4. Another 3 weeks and the coral emerged fully extended. These pics are from tonight and are under 454 nm blue leds. The coral was a much lighter color; but, was very vibrant.

In all it took 9 weeks to complete this phase, and that was with me helping it out. The key is to be patient, anyone that says 4-5 weeks max for shedding is incorrect. It's however long it takes. I could have killed by coral with bad information. I hope this helps.

 

Nice info, thanks for sharing with such a detailed process!