Caulastrea Furcata - My First Coral

             My Candy Cane Coral is finally in my 20 Gallon Nano Reef Tank. It’s time to put my research to the test and see how this coral holds up in my aquarium. I have a video on my channel here, AquariumsByZero, showing the coral in my aquarium and outlining my experiences with the coral over the first couple days in the tank. We will start by looking at how the coral was acclimated, and then move on to some of my early observations of the coral.



20 Gallon Nano - Caulastrea furcata in PVC holder at bottom of tank.



            So I started out by searching around for guides on how to acclimate corals, turns out there really doesn’t appear to be one. However I did find a bunch of different methods that people have used throughout the hobby, everything from full blow drip acclimations to cut the bag and drop the coral in. I didn’t feel comfortable with the latter method, and wouldn’t mind the drip acclimation but it doesn’t seem to be that popular. So I tried to aim for somewhere in the middle. Also, I found an acclimation method called Photo acclimation. I tried to find a happy medium to acclimate the coral for water chemistry, while including the photo acclimation method.

            I started simply by turning off all the lights in the aquarium, and floating the bag in the water for about 30 minutes. This was simply to equal out the water temperature between the aquarium and the bag. After that, I cut the top of the bag open, and emptied out some of the water in the bag. Then slowly introduced aquarium water into the bag I did this for about 45 minutes. After this, I placed a 1” PVC union fitting in the sand bed and then I grabbed the coral from the base and placed it in the fitting to hold it upright.

            After this, I tried to employ the photo acclimation method. Basically I kept the light off for a couple hours once the coral was in the aquarium. Then I turned the actinic bulbs on for a couple hours before turning the daylights on for only a couple hours then turned them off. I left all the lights off again over night, and then I started my normal light cycle back up.

            So this being my first time acclimating corals, I was trying to be as careful as possible.  I did find a problem with the photo acclimation method I was referencing. Basically, this method called for changing the light cycle whenever a new coral was added to the aquarium, I really don’t see this being an option once multiple corals have been introduced to the aquarium. So I didn’t employ the photo acclimation method on a full scale.

Caulastrea furcata Under Actinic lighting - First day in tank.

            So now, just some quick observations about the coral; I’ve only had it in the aquarium for about a week, and it hasn’t fully opened up yet. I have a feeling the flow of the water where it is currently place is causing it to close up at this time. I have plans to move it closer to the light and further from the direct flow of the power heads.

            The colors are impressive, and they really stand out in the actinic as well as the LED lunar lights. speaking of the lighting, I am also thinking about adjusting the cycle, currently I run the LED’s all night, I might have the lunar lights turn off for 4 hours or so in the middle of the night every night, and see how the coral takes to this change.

            But overall the coral seems to be doing alright, but I imagine it will be a long time before it’s fully adjusted to my aquarium. When the Coral is fully opened, I will definitely have an Update here, as well as a Video on my Youtube about the coral. Hopefully when this is all said and done, I can do a full scale write up on the coral, its requirements and put some info out for people who are looking at this coral for there own Reef setup.

Thanks for reading, and please feel free to leave me a comment.

Zero