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Hi Eric,
My Caulastrea have been doing great for years. Recently I have noticed what looks like a melt down of a few heads even though they still look to be healthy and many heads near them are doing great. My suspicion is they are dropping babies. What do you think is going on here?
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Absolutely. That is a polyp extrusion, very common in faviids, and in Caulastrea. You will see skeleton start to form, if it hasn't already. The tissue will continue to extend, almost dripping, and eventually sever/pinch loose and the residual tissue with skeletal material will be free. You should make sure that the detached area is secured because they tend to fall into recesses or get moved by currents into places not conducive for survival. You can also manually snip the tissue right before the tearing/pinching off process with a sharp scissors. May I use the photo to add to my records of this behavior? Also, can you keep me updated on the time span it takes to complete, number of polyps undergoing extrusion, and number of daughter colonies that survive? Thanks!
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Eric Borneman
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| Thanks Eric, Yes to all your questions! I don't have the exact start date, but I have been watching this for about a week now. That is near start.(About 1/25/2008). You mentioned the bones formation. I actually see that already in the heads. You can see it in the pictures as well. These actually hang on my tank back wall so I will have to have a look tongiht to see what are my chances of being able to get a clean rock undernear to try and catch the babies. I have some ideas. Right now Zoa's are directly underneath which I would bet would kill my babies, so I will have to do some moving around. I will ask on MARSH and see if anyone with better camera skills will be willing to get some better shots for me.
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Eric here's a couple shots from today.
I counted 9 heads participating in the action.
I also noticed a 2 head behind and to the right starting.
This might have been triggered from mild stress. (Dirty Water)
My nozzle on my skimmer was clogged and the skimmer was not producing what it should have been and I noticed some polyp withdrawal on some acro causing me to notice the skimmer had issues.
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They will fall much farther before separating. Thanks for the pm and the data collection. Let me post a few similar photos for you. I had them all on my website and I am working to get my website back up online. I'll post some Caulastrea ones in the interim here - one is from one of our local expert's here, forestal.
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Eric Borneman
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Group: Moderators
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a few more
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Eric Borneman
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Eric i apologize i never gave u much info on that caul. but it did indeed skeletonize and did just fine, i have fragged it several times (the mother colony fell behind a rock and got buried, but on tank cleaning i found it and is a stressed 3 polyps but recovering now that i can feed it.)
Peace...
Dan
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Thanks for the update! I'll mark that down.
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Eric Borneman
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| Hi Eric, FYI the babies are dorpping now. So the process ran between 3-4 weeks before they actually started dropping. I will try to get a few pictures of it if possible. A long string waves in the flow, and a small piece of calcium works it's way to the end, then it drops with very little tissues attached. I will not be able to do much in the way of trying to save any, but it was neat to see. Based on the rate of calcium drops I will guess this will go on for about another 2-3 weeks.
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