Help! difficulty in keeping blastos

[moron_clown]

i cant seem to keep blastos in my tank(sps dominated).multiple good healthy specimens lost tissue over a few months. lost some full heads. I have no problems with other LPS(lobos,brains,candycane,frogspawn) and Sps. any ideas?

[TayHongSiang]

i cant seem to keep blastos in my tank(sps dominated).multiple good healthy specimens lost tissue over a few months. lost some full heads. I have no problems with other LPS(lobos,brains,candycane,frogspawn) and Sps. any ideas?

i have the same problem with some of my blastos too.

all of a sudden some of them start to shrink and melt, whereas some of them, the more i feed them the more fat they become and sprout....

the reason?!..i dun know also....but it depends on whether they are healthy or not and also some are not so tolerant of strong lights or strong circulations.

[dachkie]

ever heard some1 say blastos and sps are not compatible, duno then again maybe i heard from moron clown lol

[Fuzzy]

My pink blasto from GO also recently had this problem.

Its been growing nicely and showing great colour for more than four months, then a few weeks ago

it just started shrinking, and now most of its skeleton is showing

[TayHongSiang]

sounds like they are expiry dates...hahaha...so that you have to visit the LFS to stock up.

[jamesssss]

i having the same problem also... it can be opening beautifully today but next day just melted without any reason...do we need to target feed them or just normal coral-food will do??

[yikai]

i having the same problem also... it can be opening beautifully today but next day just melted without any reason...do we need to target feed them or just normal coral-food will do??

depends on what normal coral food is. anythign smaller than mysis or brine shrimp is almost useless to blastos

blastos have feeder tentacles and appreciate bigger foods like mysis. i have 10 blastos in my tank, i feed all of them with mysis once a week. so far none of them melted.

also i think it is important in choosing specimens. if those specimen have exposed skeleton, chances of them melting are very high. quite difficult to spot healthy specimens because at the LFS, when they are fully expended, its hard to see the skeleton below. but with good water quality and feeding, they will recover very quickly.

HTH

*edit. i have experience this sudden melting in blastos before. i'm unsure why also. one speculation is because when blastos are deflated, their sharp skeleton will be easily exposed and seen. if never handle properly, maybe too much of the deflated blasto flesh can be hurt by the sharp skeleton. this will mean it is harder to heal and chances of melting is higher

[jamesssss]

feed them with mysis?? but the mysis before even drop to the bottom, all my fishes already clear it all liao... how u manage to feed them??

[yikai]

feed them with mysis?? but the mysis before even drop to the bottom, all my fishes already clear it all liao... how u manage to feed them??

i suck the mysis with a syringe and then squirt the mysis on the blastos. when fully expended, the mysis should stick to the blastos and they will eat it. problem is, sometimes shrimp and fish will go and steal food. so u have to find a way to make sure that doesnt happen

[pokmingsheng]

My pink blasto from GO also recently had this problem.

Its been growing nicely and showing great colour for more than four months, then a few weeks ago

it just started shrinking, and now most of its skeleton is showing

when i first got mine from GO,

it started to shrink from 5 heads to 2!!!

cos one of the morning i found one of my starfish totally on top of them...

after i removed the starfish,

its been doing quite well...

currently about 3 1/2 heads...

it grew back...

and i thought when the skeleton shows, its hopeless already...

not really true in my case...

[moron_clown]

when i first got mine from GO,

it started to shrink from 5 heads to 2!!!

cos one of the morning i found one of my starfish totally on top of them...

after i removed the starfish,

its been doing quite well...

currently about 3 1/2 heads...

it grew back...

and i thought when the skeleton shows, its hopeless already...

not really true in my case...

Thats what i thought so in the beginning, coz everything else was doing great...But after many nights still cant find anything eating the blastos... i've begin to dip them in Lugols to see if it helps...

[iskay]

I feed mine with small pieces of seafood (prawn, squid fish, clam). Putting the food directly on top of it's tentacles. They are very greedy and will ingest as much as they can then regurgitate if undigested. Once a while, they do deflate due to unknown reasons.

To prevent my shrimp from stealing, I make sure it has its share before feeding the corals.

The pain really is that each polyp need to be target fed.

[[V]tEc]

was wondering what do they eat in the sea? surely mysis n brine shrimp wun be so stupid to land on top of them

[TayHongSiang]

i target feed with prawn and fish meats also...they are indeed greedy eaters.