[FishKid]

after months of barely growing my xenia literally doubled overnight, for some reason placing my colt coral next to it triggered this, i dont know why, but im happy! It literally grew 5-6 inches in hieght overnight, and i see about 10 new stalks, it also seems to be overgrowning aiptasia that is near it

this is cool! all my coral have improved in appearance greatly since i bought them, except for my brain coral which seems stressed by something and is showing its skeleton (ithe colt coral fell on in for about 10 seconds the other day , before it was attached to a rock,and the brain has reacted very poorly to it) its color is ok, but in certain spotts on one side it seems to be pale and im worried as to how i can help it allong, also how do you feed them, i offered a small piece of squid *very small* and tried releasing brine shrimp near the two mouths...


mark

[bongobrian]

Mark- I would try the iodine dip technique with your brain coral. Get a half gallon of your tank water, put 3 drops of iodine (if you're using lugol's, otherwise check the dosage) and soak the brain in it for about an hour. Keep doing this every night for a week or two. Make sure you use new water from the tank each time and dump out the water when you're done. Don't put it back in the tank! I've had good luck with this technique. Good luck.

[FishKid]

i will try that once i get to the lfs, i there anything i can do until then like increase water flow?

[bongobrian]

Brains typically don't need a ton of flow. Low to Medium should do just fine. I think stronger lighting would help more than flow. I know my open brain really likes cooler water temps. One day I accidently forgot to plug my heater back in, a couple hours later my Wellsophyllia brain was open the biggest I had ever seen it. All of the other corals were also open much larger. I now keep my temp between 76-78 which I know is lower than what most people will recommend. I just know it works well for my situation.