need some advice

I recently got my first elegance coral and it's in my 55g reef. I have a 5x54w T5 fixture and it's doing wonderfully. I run 4 ATI's & a Fiji Purple so I'm getting good PAR out of the bulbs & the fixture has individual reflectors. I would think you could definitely support an elegance on a 4-bulb fixture if you had decent bulbs and good reflectors.

Mine is on my sandbed & is from Australia. I have researched a bit on the coral and it's recommended to buy the Australian harvested ones as they do better in the home tank.

 

+1 on above

other things I have learned about Elegance corals
check that the coral covers the skeleton fully before agreeing to purchase it
if you see any areas where the flesh has retracted , you dont want that one IMHO

Handling , dont touch the bare flesh and dont let the LFS touch the bare flesh
a hand or tongs wafted above the coral until it fully retracted and then the hand but prefferably tongs should be used to lift the coral out of the tank ( tongs located on rear of coral, the hard calcium skeleton)

positioning - on the sand bed, angled slightly upwards with the rear calcium skeleton part partially submerged
try to avoid positioning it so that the flesh when expanded/ inflated would touch surrounding rockwork, they are fleshy creatures and easily damaged

things that sometimes panic newcomers to these corals
1) they expell waste , a long string of brown mucus comes out of the oral slot ( fish will often chase and eat this IME)
2) they can deflate and then over inflate giving them a ballon like appearance and the tenticles almost dissapear as the body mass has swollen up they loose their form. - this happens infrequently as the coral just takes in extra fluid , but later ejects the excess and returns to normal shape and form
3) they can retract almost fully into their skeleton after lights out and may occasionaly do this during daytime , not often, but they can do if something upset them (fish or hermit got to inquisitive etc)


Hope that helps

Steve