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Purple Tort Question, Help please

Reefdad

Reefdad

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I bought a purple tort at the market this weekend, but it is looking alot different in my tank right now. It's polyps have not extended since it his been in my tank. I have it in a good flow area. (next to two other Acro's that are happy) But it lost all its color. It is like a light greenish color. Do these take a while to get acclimated? Is it just stressed? Or is it dying? what does color loss mean for this coral. I have a surf & turf next to it that has some of the same green coloration to its tissue, light greenish but it is thriving. My water quality is good but by po4 is a little high. other wise all is good. It is high in the tank under T5. Any thoughts?
 
Lower it down and bring it up slowly, sometimes even if a coral has been under high light you still need to acclimate it to your lighting scheme. It's better to have not enough light in the beginning than too much IMO, corals take a long time to recover from bleaching.
 
Now it was under MH at the show and I run T5. Huh dont get it!!!! how do I know when or if it is dead? Dead sections turn White? And will I get polyp extention when its bleached? And lastly if I dont get PE how will it feed?
 
Sometimes the stress of transport makes it difficult for a craol to instantly acclimate to a new environment rapidly. Remember most of the corals at the BACFM were trucked in from outside the area, all of the corals I got yesterday are on the bottom of my tank off to the side, eventually they will make their way to the top of the tank. AFA knowing when a coral is dead, if it's a situation like yours I wait until algae grows on the skeleton, it's amazing how deep tissue can be buried in the skeleton. If the coral is bleached it may take time for the polyps to show or they may appear to be tiny. In regards to feeding, don't be too concerned with that right now, just get the coral to a lower light area and be very patient.
 
Yeah, absolutely do NOT take polyp extension as a sign of health for a coral. While yes that is a way the eat, the way corals normally extend is at night.

"Tort" type corals can very easily get a greenish base on the inside, I've heard reasons being shading, to nutrient issues. Also, different spectrums of light might not trigger and fluorescence. One coral I got a frag swap "The Jim Coral" looked a super deep purple under the lighting there, when I threw it in my tank under "normal" tank lighting, it was more a blue... as it's grown it's gotten green near the center too... i.e. it's behaving like most all other torts.

As Jeremy says, patience is a key, your water parameters and lighting and flow and.... most likely are not the same as where the coral came from, it's just a matter of getting used to it. You will know when it's dead, look for algae growth, look for white skeleton. Corals are fairly resilient too, just because a part is dead doesn't mean the whole coral will be, remember a coral isn't an organism, but the coral is a colony of organisms working together. (One reason why you can just chop a branch off and the coral doesn't know any better :D)
 
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