Decapitating Candy Cane?

[y-not]

Hey Folks,

I picked up a Candy Cane colony from a member a while back.
My wife thinks it has 75+ heads on it. The heads were splitting when we got it and it just has not stopped.

I've never tried to count but it's large. Among the largest I've seen in a tank.

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About a month ago, I saw what looked like a small Candy Cane head floating along the bottom of the tank.
I picked it up, sat it in a shallow dish and put it in the frag tank.

Last night, there was a larger, almost full sized head floating along the bottom.
I glued it to a rock, tossed it in my son's BioCube.

Both heads are still alive and doing well.

My question is, will a large colony of Candy Cane just pop off heads?

If so, this is pretty darn cool.
A self fragging Candy Cane. :tongue:

If not, what is happening to cause it to do this?

 

[picoreefguy]

not sure the cause of this but i have seen it happen with a lobo before. and with the lobo it was probably because it wasnt healthy and was getting smaller and smaller. so my guess wold be that the ones at the bottom arent getting enough light and so they detach and float around till they can find somewhere better to live. but thats just a guess

Edit: do you have a pic of either of the ones that were floating around?

 

[y-not]

Picoreefguy;911152 wrote: do you have a pic of either of the ones that were floating around?

I've got a lot on my plate today and tomorrow but I'll see if I can grab a quickie of the one that's now in my son's tank.

 

[declanisadog]

Same thing happens with my hammer coral. I find tiny heads blowing around sometimes when I vacuum my sand.

 

[glxtrix]

Polyp bailout....have you checked your ca and alk? This usually happens when the coral is stressed in some way. Sometimes a dip in ca/alk or too much flow...possibly stray voltage.

 

[glxtrix]

I haven't really seen bailout on trumpets in low light or flow. They typically get most of their nutrition through food fed to each polyp. Hard to tell with out parms listed.


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[glxtrix]

Well, meaning food through the water column. Regardless, would still like to know the water parms. My bet something is off.


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[y-not]

glxtrix;911323 wrote: Well, meaning food through the water column. Regardless, would still like to know the water parms. My bet something is off.


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Sorry for the delay in getting back to this. WAAAAAY too many things going on and not enough time to do them all.

The parameters are as follows:

Temp 78.0-78.3
Salinity = 1.025
PH 8.10 - 8.24
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = &lt;0.5ppm
Ammonia = 0
Phosphates = 0
dKH = 9
Calc = 420
Magnesium = 1800 (via Tech M to rid the tank of Bryopsis)

I suspect that the polyp bailout is due to the increase of MA and/or the secret Bryopsis killing ingredient within the Tech M product.

Just last night, my Elegance bailed out/off of it's rock.
I've lost about 4 heads off of my Frog Spawn. The Mushrooms have been hating life. Except for the Green Hairy. He's looking better than ever. I think he may split again.

The Acans are rocking the tank. Looking good as well.

Yesterday, out of sheer frustration, I removed the 4 most infected rocks.
Bleached them. Rinsed them and they are on the second round of soaking in RO/DI water. I'll do two more just to be sure that I've removed/diluted as much of the bleach as possible before putting it back in the tank.

The bleached knocked the wholey crap out of the Bryopsis. Not a thread of it to be seen on those rocks. As expected, it took out the Coraline, pods and any/every other living (desirable and non) on them.

I still have a few patches of Satan's turf left to eradicate.
I've also moved the Candy Cane to the frag tank. I let it drip acclimate for about 4 hours (with heat and circulation of course) so that the radical changes would not stress it even further.

So far, it seems to be happy (happier???).