Pink Tiped Elegance LPS Coral
Picture Taken April 1999

Purchased on April, 3rd 1999.

This picture shows my Pink Tipped Elegance during its first week in the tank. No actinic lights were installed when this photo was taken so you can not see the florescent green and pink. The base of the coral is brown with green highlights.

A cleaner shrimp can be seen in the upper left corner of the photo.

Pink Tiped Elegance LPS Coral
Picture Taken June 1999

This coral is placed at the bottom of the tank resting on the sand, just off-center of the Metal Halide light. Water flow is calm to moderate with occasional burst of strong indirect water flow

Pink Tiped Elegance LPS Coral
Picture Taken July 2000

This image shows the coral a year later. When fully expanded it seems to have nearly doubled in size. This picture also shows the bright green highlights brought out by actinic lighting.

I feed this coral weekly a few thin chunks of chopped thawed silversides. I try to make sure each of the mouths gets a chunk but that is not important. It's more important to fight off the shrimp who try to steal the food.

You can see how this coral has gotten very large filling in the entire area I placed it in. Zoanthid polyps are growing along back and side rocks. The mantel of my Derasa clam can be seen at the bottom center of the picture and a gorgonian to the bottom left.

The actininc lighting produces the blue shadows, this picture was not edited in any way.

Pink Tiped Elegance LPS Coral
Picture Taken July 2002

It's been 2 years since the previous picture of this beautiful coral. I have moved it off the sand bed to center stage in the tank. It has really grown into a nice show piece. When fully expanded it is over 8 inches tall nearly a foot wide and wraps around nearly 360 degrees.

Pink Tiped Elegance LPS Coral
Picture Taken June 2004

This picture is more than 2 years since the last picture.

This picture shows the elegance coral in my holding tank while I work on the dedicated reef room for my new in-wall setup.

The holding tank is using weaker lighting based on 175w Ushio 10K bulb instead of the normal 250w AB 10K HQI bulbs. Since the lighting is weaker I have the coral much higher closer to the lighting.

Expansion is amazing. This coral takes about a square foot of space.

Pink Tipped Elegance Daughter Colony
Picture Taken December 2004

While doing some tank maintenance on the holding tank I noticed what looked like an anemone on the sand below the elegance..

Upon closer inspection I could see it was a daughter colony of the elegance coral.

I cleaned the glass and the coral has many daughter colonies in the process of forming. I can see at least 5 on this side alone.

Pictures left is an example of a daughter colony hanging. The coral will keep calcifying a base until the weight is strong enough to tear the flesh and separate it from the parent.

Pink Tipped Elegance Daughter Colony
Picture Taken December 2004

This image shows one of the larger daughter colonies. This one includes about 6 inches of coral flesh. When this coral detaches from the parent, I think it will clearly reduce the size of the parent colony.

During this process, I've been target feeding the coral a home made frozen slurry to make sure it has plenty of energy to heal itself.

Unfortunately I thought I could just wait it out and let the daughter colonies drop. However, instead the skeletons got heavy enough they ripped away from the flesh - leaving the flesh still attached to the parent.

Pink Tipped Elegance First Daughter Dropped
Picture Taken December 2004

This is the first daughter colony I found fully separated from the parent. This daughter colony is just under 2 inches tall.

I tried to direct feed it but nothing would stick to it. I plan on redoing some of the rock work in the holding tank to create a place to put the daughter colonies closer to the light.

Pink Tipped Elegance Daughter Moved to Display Tank
Picture taken April 2005, Nikon D70 Digital SLR, Nikkor 18-70mm DX lens

This is the first daughter colony which is pictured above after it was moved from the holding tank to the new display tank.

It clearly shows significant growth. What can not be seen is that the elegance has a second mouth formed which is hidden in this picture behind the tentacles.

I have this coral lower in the tank in a low flow area of the tank allowing it to become acclimated to the new tank conditions.