Leather question.. opinions?

T

Tasty Burger

AC Members
Mar 24, 2010
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Theresa, NY
Maybe I'm jumping the gun on this, but here's the situation:

I bought this leather coral about two weeks ago; maybe a little less. It has been absolutely beautiful until two days ago. It retracted all it's polyps, and appears to be molting (I hope).

The only changes to my tank were such:

Water change (10 gallons in a 90 gallon system)
Got my skimmer working again
Separated ont of the three stalks from the other two to "spread the love a little"

I'm not sure if maybe it was just a bit much for it all at once, or I should be genuinely worried.. My tank is over three years old, so it's mature. The only other thing was a recent bulb change, but this was before the leather's introduction to the tank.

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I believe you've likely already figured the situation out, as I also suspect molting. Try to gently increase the level of water motion around the coral to potentially aid it in shedding. If the condition continues to worsen or just not get any better, we'll look into other potential causes. In the meantime, just to cover all bases, what are all your applicable water parameters?
 
Perhaps well known Sloughing period of some soft corals, possibly due to cutting.??

Ive seen such behavior even without cutting on colt, fingers, toad stool, etc. Sometimes for many weeks before perking up again..
 
When I had my large yellow fiji leather it would close up like clockwork for 3 days out of every month. On my neon green toadstool it went through a molting period that lasted about 2 weeks once. I didn't see any polyps coming out and quite a bit of algae growing on it so someone recommended that I use my finger and gently rub away all the algae/skin. I did that and sure enough, within 24 hours all the polyps started coming back out.
 
"I'll be Back!" Mine does it on a regular basis. Kinda like Hibernating. It comes back Bigger and Stronger.
 
It appears my worries were unwarranted..
A full recovery is abound! Even the smaller leather in the front (second picture) that looked like it was ROTTING AWAY was just going through an extra nasty molt.

Here's some shots of the my two grief makers, starting to open back up after a few days of baster hosings and finger rubs..

Good lord.. I thought aquariums were supposed to promote peaceful feelings! XD

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