Elegance Coral

 

  To answer your question in the short version, light is the cause of all the problems.  The problems don't stop there however.  There is a pattern of symptoms that these corals go through.  These Indo Pacific Elegance corals are coming from very deep dark waters.  When exposed to light that is to bright (witch doesn't take much) they will swell up and withdraw their tentacles.  I believe that as this takes place the cell walls within the coral are being destroyed.  This is the same tissue damage we find in corals that have bleached.  After suffering this damage their ability to fight off infection is greatly reduced.  Their cell walls have been compromised leaving them open to attack from a wide range of organisms.  This is where the pathogen, protozoan, or disease theory came from.  It has been assumed that the over inflated oral disk and shrunken tentacles was a result of these organisms.  This is not the case.  If a coral showing these symptoms is removed from the light that is causing them, in time, the coral will survive.  If the exposure is to intense or to long the cellular damage will be to severe for the coral to overcome and infection will set in.  The over inflated oral disk and shrunken tentacles is not contagious.  I have mixed these corals with healthy and/or weakened Elegance corals many times and never had a reaction from the other corals in the tank.   The infection that fallows can be contagious, as any infection in a closed system can be contagious. 

   And that was the short version.  So if you want a healthy Elegance it may be worth the money to buy an Australian Elegance.  There is no need to dive to greater depths to collect them there.  These corals are just as hardy as the Elegance corals we were getting 20 years ago, even though they are coming in through some of the same wholesalers and retailers that sell the Indo Pacific corals. 

 

  This is a video of a swollen Elegance with its tentacles withdrawn in the same tank with 9 other Elegance corals.  Some of these corals are very healthy and others are in different stages of this problem.  The other corals in the tank did not begin to swell because this one was in the tank.

 

 

I had heard that they are collected from murky water grass bed areas

 

Here's the newest pic