Elegance Coral Care Tips
Coral has an unique place in my heart because of its elegance. The elegance drew my eye right away when I initially started the hobby. It quickly became an aspirational piece that I had to have in my reef. Everything about it was fantastic. When the striping on the coral’s body caught the light just right, it looked iridescent. It moved in a smooth and calming manner.
Anyway, let’s discuss about elegances without further ado. Elegance corals can be found all throughout the Pacific. These corals were once harvested in Indonesia, but now the majority of those used in the hobby come from Australia. The provenance of the specimen was a serious concern because there was a significant difference in the survivorship of elegances taken in Australia versus those collected in Indonesia.
It wasn’t always like this. A beginner’s coral a few years ago was an Indonesian beauty coral. It required modest illumination, was easy to feed, and was incredibly resilient.
I recall one of my specimens getting stuck in the suction of a powerhead by accident. It was fully expanded the next day and appeared to be in good condition.
Then something unexpected happened. Indonesian elegances were exceedingly sensitive and prone to infection all of a sudden. Before dying, they would develop a cotton-like substance and withdraw. Worse, the illness would spread to other elegances, including those that were not Indonesian. We had ceased acquiring elegant corals for years, and it was only when they became accessible from Australia that we decided to bring them back into our business.
For the most part, the Australian elegances have served us well. If you’re looking for a piece of elegance for your aquarium and are concerned about its provenance. I wouldn’t be too concerned.
On the one hand, determining one’s origins alone by looking at it is quite difficult. Elegance corals have modest differences, and there is a lot of visual overlap between those from Indonesia and those from Australia. Having said that, there’s a strong possibility it’s Australian.
Indonesia had had an export embargo in place for about a year at the time of this recording. That leaves only Australia, though it’s likely that a small number of Indonesian elegance corals are still circulating in the market. If that changes in the future, the only way to tell is to inquire about the provenance with the vendor, who should be able to tell you where it was imported from. Let’s go over some care advice now that we’ve covered some information on elegance corals.
Elegance corals aren’t fussy about lighting because they’re adaptable to a wide range of conditions. Maintain a constant appearance regardless of the lighting. We’ve kept them in aquariums with low light (about 50 PAR). And tanks with higher light (approximately 150 PAR) with no discernible difference in growth or colour. To be safe, I propose moderate lighting settings of roughly 100 PAR, but there is plenty of room here. The major aim is not to startle a new addition by exposing them to too much light right away. Almost all newly added corals fall into this category.
Initial overexposure to light causes far more damage than too little light. If you have a high-intensity lit tank, such as one with an average of 200+ PAR, you can still maintain elegance by taking the necessary steps to allow the coral to gradually adapt to the new lighting conditions. Find an area under an overhand low in the tank or a spot off axis from the source of light where the intensity is reduced if you notice it starting to fade or worse, bleach. Elegance corals fluoresce a lot when it comes to fluorescence. Their bodies glow a combination of blue and green under full actinic lights. While the tips of their tentacles illuminate a color based on the color morph you have.
Some feature pink tips, purple tips, green tips, and even yellow tips in rare cases. There are very uncommon color morphs that incorporate reds and blacks every now. I’ve only seen images of them, never seen one in person,probably seen over 100,000. If they exist, they are quite rare.
Let’s move on to water chemistry for a moment. Elegance corals are stony corals, which means that they need stable levels of calcium, alkalinity, and to a lesser extent magnesium to grow their calcium carbonate skeleton. I wouldn’t be concerned about these levels if your stony coral load is low or if an elegance coral is one of the only stony corals in your aquarium.
The amount of calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium supplements required varies greatly depending on the size and development rate of the stony corals in your tank. Although elegance corals can grow to enormous sizes. Their skeleton is shockingly small in comparison to the amount of flesh they consume. I’ve seen elegance corals that are over a foot long with only a 4″ skeleton beneath them. It’s possible that agonizing over these levels is mental overkill for this coral. It’s still a good idea to test on a regular basis to ensure that everything is in the ballpark of natural sea water levels.
Nitrate and phosphate are two characteristics worth paying special attention to.
LPS corals are vulnerable to poor water quality, and increased nitrate and phosphate levels are a sign of poor water quality. Low nitrate levels of 5-10ppm are actually beneficial to large polyp stony corals, whereas levels of 30-40ppm may cause tissue recession. You might see an elegance go through full-fledged polyp bailout in extreme situations. If you want to learn more about polyp bailout, I made a movie on it that you may watch. If your tank’s nitrates or phosphates are high. I recommend increasing nutrient removal with more vigorous protein skimming, detritus removal, and more regular water changes.
Limiting nutrient input is another option. I like to focus on removal over reduction. This is a decision you’ll have to make in the context of your specific system. Depending on a variety of characteristics, such as system size, filtration capacity, and bio-processing capacities, different systems will behave differently. Again, your results may differ. Elegance corals, like other corals in the reef aquarium hobby, are photosynthetic. This coral will derive most of its sustenance from the zooxanthellae dinoflagellates that live in its tissue as long as it is giving enough light.
They do, however, benefit from direct feeding in our experience. There are a number of frozen fish foods available that make excellent Catalaphyllia dinners. We prefer to feed shrimp, fish, and squid as well as a variety of other meaty things. As a side aside, this coral is a skilled snail killer. If you have snails in your tank, be aware that this LPS may fully eliminate them from the equation.
In terms of flow, we’ve retained elegances under a variety of settings ranging from barely moving to nearly crashing waves. Elegance corals tend to be less impacted by flow. Yet a stronger flow proved useful in carrying more food to the coral’s tentacles. Water movement, like light, is not something with which I would go insane. It is suggested that you move around in the water in a moderate manner.
Too much flow causes the coral to become top-heavy, especially as it becomes larger and swells. There’s a chance they’ll plummet off their perch on the cliff and land on a coral below. Elegance corals are not suitable for aquaculture at this moment. It is possible to cut them with a band saw. This is risky because one or both parts may be lost.
In my experience, it was never worth the risk. Because vast colonies of corals can found on reefs, and collectors can make more money cutting them into “hobby sized” pieces, these corals often come in cut from overseas.
This is possibly the superior technique, but it takes time and I’ve only ever seen an elegant perform it once. This elegance was enormous, unlike a branching frogspawn, where buds formed very quickly on each stalk. An elegance is about the size of a little puppy, therefore it will take years for it to mature enough to bud. That’s all there is to say about elegant corals.
