Candy Cane Losing Its Heads

johnnyjtaylor

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My candy cane is losing its heads and I wonder if there is any way to save it. Its had a rather rough time of late, we moved about three weeks ago and I have gone from a 125l tank to a 180l which I set up in the new house with with just water a few days before the move(got up to temp etc) and as we were only moving about 5 miles I decided to move everything from the tank in water over several trips(in big 30l buckets with lids). I moved the LR and majority of the sand first then fish,shrimps,snails,crabs etc and finaly the corals with their bases pushed into a bit of sand in the buckets to stop them falling over and moving about. The candy cane was epoxyed to a large piece of live rock and when I lifted it out it snapped off at the base and fell heads first onto the carpet in 3 bits :no: . I pushed the bottom of the skeletons into the sand in the new tank and crossed my fingers,it seemed to be recovering slowly and the heads have been expanding but then they started to come loose on the skeleton and fall off. The heads that have fallen still expand and are laying on the bottom ,is there anything I can do to save them like attach them to LR or are they done for?
cheers Johnny
 
So there's no skeleton left on the underside of the head? If so your best bet is to leave it be, cross your fingers, and hope it regrows. Sometimes LPS can re-grow skeleton and recover from this kind polyp bail-out. Acans are well known for being able to do this as are some Blastomussa. Never really heard of it happening to Caulastrea (candycane) though so your guess is as good as mine. Try and keep the flowrate low so it doesn't blow around, don't stir up the tank too much for the next week or two (don't want detritus accumulating on it), and make SURE alkalinity and calcium levels stay high (~11dKH and 450ppm respectively) in order to encourage calcification of new skeleton. If it does grow a new skeleton, once it's of sufficient size you can superglue or epoxy to your hearts content.
 
A picture of two of the heads with the underside of one where it has detached visible
poorcoral002.jpg
 

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