open brain

[Live Rock Ricky]

appears to be dead...

last night i saw a peppermint shrimp picking at it... it did not open at all yesterday or today.... i noticed a hole in it today....

are they normally difficult to keep?

it is funny that it died right after a 20% water change...

it was added to my tank on 11/2/208...

should i wait a few days and see what happens????

[zhenya]

Ricky,
Don't be on such a hurry to toss it. Some of this corals are extremely resilient and may comeback.
On th eother hand, can you post a picture of it? It is much easier to judge how far the coral is "gone" when you can actually see it with your own eyes.
I had an Acantastrea coral that I thought was pretty much dead, so I put it in a shady spot just in case it may decide to comeback to the world of leaving... It did and is now a thriving colony.
Which exact open brain coral did you get? There are few that are called with this common name.

[Live Rock Ricky]

Here you go. The pictures are horrible... I just bout a new camerca for xmas sooooooo for the kids (yeah right - lo) so this is all I could get for now...

It hasn't opened at all... the inside is turning white and it appears there's a hole in the middle. The peppermint shrimp seem to be picking at it in the evening...

I think it may be totally gone... IMO

[zhenya]

Hi Ricky,

Yeah, it doesn't look good but it certainly not dead.
Trachyphyllia corals do extremely well in some tanks and in some they perish quickly, like in your tank. I know you said that peppermint shrimp is picking at it, it is probably cleaning out decaying tissue or simply trying to finish the job...
If you want to prevent it from going into the coral, you can find suitable (sizewise) berries basket to make a cage. Place coral in it and give it a chance to maybe recover.
Did anything changed in your system? NO3 spike or other things?
I know you had some issues with the Nitrates before, were it resolved?
Corals like this should be kept a little bit off the sand because these corals have really hard time (and lots of energy) getting rid of sand if gets on top of it. Tissue starts to die very quickly if left unresolved.

For what it;s worth, don't throw it in the garbage just yet.

[Live Rock Ricky]

my stats are way off now... not sure why but i am backing off feeding bigtime.. and doing 20% water changes weekly...