Coral disintegrated overnight????

I got some new corals... Kenya tree... Xenia... they looked pretty good when I received them in the mail. I acclaimated them and used some gel superglue to attach them to some rock fragments. I placed the new corals and rock fragment on the sand at the bottom of my tank to let them further acclaimate while I decided where to place them permanently in the tank. This was all about 6pm last night.

This morning, only 12 hours later, the coral were basically gone. Disintegrated into a lump of powdery, small chunks around where I had placed the new corals on their LR fragments.

I noticed some crabs picking some algae off them. Did the crabs destroy them? Did the glue dissolve them??

I'd post pictures, but their nothing left.

Can anyone help me understand? What went wrong??

M

 

Sorry to hear. I doubt the crabs had anything to do with it. Xenia and Kenya tree can disintegrate like that at any time. All of the handling may have had something to do with it. The glue might have been the problem. I think most softies prefer to attach themselves to rock.

 

Well.... insert cuss word here....

M

 

In future, rubberband xenia to the rock. Will attach within the week.

Still not 100% sure that is what happened, but can't hurt.

Xenia is one heck of a finicky coral. You can have a huge forest of it and one day later, they are all gone. It is just odd.

 

SO many options;D..... 4 letter words are fun.

sorry for your loss.. i would use some rubber bands next time so that they can attach naturally.

 

I super glued some to a rock and its doing fine but I also used a rubber band and mesh for a couple of days

 

nitrates high?

 

My nitrates were 0 before... I bet they spike now with the dissolved biomass in the water column....

M

 

Sorry to hear.

You aren't missing much. I'm giving all mine away here. Pest corals.

 

Did you expose the xenia to air ?