Who Gives A Fish Forums

I've been struggling with my meat coral for a couple of months now - it's been expanding and shrinking randomly. One minute it's full, a couple of hours later it's shrunk down to the skeleton, and then it'll stay like that for days before filling back up again. I've been feeding it either Rod's food or Fauna Marin LPS pellets when it's full. I also have a brain coral in the tank that's always full, and I've even swapped their spots to see if that made a difference - but no luck.

My water parameters are all good and stable: temp 78°F, calcium 410, magnesium 1400, alkalinity 9.2, salinity 1.025, iodine 0.06, pH 8.2, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, and nitrate 0. The rest of my corals - LPS and mushrooms - are all doing well.

I've got low flow in the tank since most of my corals prefer it that way. I'm using Marineland LEDs and ecoxotic magenta/blue LEDs for lighting. I've tried covering some of the LEDs to reduce the light, but maybe I need to take it a step further and completely shade the area around the meat coral? I had it in a shadier spot before, but that didn't seem to make a difference.

I'm stumped - the only things I can think of are that the meat coral might like subpar water parameters, it needs silversides, or maybe I should stop feeding it? I've attached some pics - any advice would be great.

That skeleton showing through the flesh isn't a good sign, had it happen to mine and it didn't end well - it can't inflate or eat properly when that's going on. Good luck, hopefully you can turn it around.

felinxo wrote: ↑Thu Jan 26, 2023 1:38 am That skeleton showing through the flesh isn't a good sign, had it happen to mine and it didn't end well - it can't inflate or eat properly when that's going on. Good luck, hopefully you can turn it around.

I've been dealing with this issue since I got the coral, and it's just been randomly inflating on its own. I did notice that when it arrived, there was some algae on the skeleton - I'm wondering if that could be causing the problem. Maybe if I blackout the area, it would kill the algae and help the coral out. Just throwing some ideas out there in case anyone has experienced something similar.

I think the algae's just a symptom of the issue, not the cause. It's likely the coral's flesh got ripped during collection or shipping, and that's when the algae took hold. With meat corals, they're just so fleshy with those spikes underneath, it's a setup for problems.