Help Pagoda Cup Coral

[BAS Aquariums]

So I just got a cup coral (true pagoda I believe from the Indian Ocean somewhere). My dads had it in his 150 since July and moved it to 55 cube a few weeks ago because it wouldn’t open up. Eventually it made its way into my biocube 32 reef system which is more focused on stony corals while his is mostly softies. Any ideas on getting it open?

Stocking in the tank is 1 maroon clown and a yellow watchman pistol shrimp pair (that won’t go together)

Corals are: duncan, war favia, saint Johns mushrooms, birds nest, red fan, pagoda cup, Xenia (leaving soon) and a Kenyan leather tree (all the macro algae are calerpa species)

My cycle is good and all my corals are doing good. Should I have any trouble on getting it to open? Not much useful information is out about these guys which is a real shame. Things definitely still alive felt slime coat when I placed it on the rock.

 

[stella1979]

Nice tank!! Why is this the first time I'm seeing this??? Wish I had great advice, but my experience is limited. I had a Scroll coral at one time, which is also a Turbineria. It was placed pretty high in the tank, but off near the edge, where it received pretty good flow, but and decent light but not the highest the tank can offer. Seemed a good place to me, as they are not supposed to be very high light corals to my knowledge. Hrmm, tiny polyps sometimes extended, but growth was uber slow if it was there at all. Then, hurricane/power outage/rough days for the tank came along, and a rock flower anemone took a walk right next to the scroll, stinging and killing one side of it. I was scared to further disturb it, but leaving it alone didn't help either. It never thrived and was just a small, ugly, half dead frag for a long time... so I got rid of it.

Now, after some experience under my belt, I think that coral was asking for more light from the get-go. So, I never recommend any quick changes with corals, but I might slowly increase his light over time and see if it helps.

 

[BAS Aquariums]

I think I’m gonna give it a few weeks to get situated before I start changing lighting. The biocube doesn’t have very flexible lights unfortunately I run a few hours of blue about 10 hours of low light and an hour of high (when the picture was taken) can you think of anything I can do to lure them out? I’m gonna try phytoplankton later today

 

[stella1979]

Oops... I don't mean for you to change your lighting, I meant to move the coral to where it would get a little more light. Here is where I worry people will move too quickly though. We can't expect a coral to make an overnight turnaround, so we must give them time with every change we make to really know if the change will be beneficial or not.

Phyto is a part of my coral's favorite meal. It could help.

I'm no lighting expert, but I think more than one hour of higher light might be beneficial. Consider how things are in nature, and how the sun may provide the strongest spectrum for about 4 hours a day. So, my light starts with low blues, and they ramp up.. before blues are at their highest, whites start ramping, and then in the middle of the day for about 3.5 hours, both those channels are at the highest setting I offer my tank. It boils down to low light, then medium, then high, then medium again, then low again, then off for the night. I'm unsure how easily you'll be able to program your lights, but I do think it would be beneficial to the tank overall to give it a longer 'afternoon'. Noteworthy, the highest light I offer isn't my favorite spectrum, and we like our blues at night... so the light schedule starts at 10 am, the strongest photoperiod is between 1:00 & 4:30, and this works out so our preferred spectrum is on during times that we are able to spend enjoying it.

Overall, I'd just recommend giving it time. Corals do things in super slow mo... and I've found that more sensitive species are even slower to react to changes. So, give any changes you make a good amount of time before deciding if another change should be made.

 

[BAS Aquariums]

Yeah I gotta work on patience for sure lol. Low light is inaccurate it’s pretty substantial lighting it’s just the lowest white light setting (there’s only 2) when I ran whites all day I had a bad Cyanobacteria bloom so I took it down to 1 hour and I haven’t seen anything. Plus the tank looks pretty ugly under full white lights. Idk what it is but I hate the way they look. Ended up going to the fish store and buying a ton more freshwater fish and I got too excited and forgot the phytoplankton oops. I’ll have to see if my buddy can pick me up some when he goes tomorrow