Leather help

[Mitchell]

I purchased this finger leather off of a guy and it seemed to be doing well in my tank.
http://mjtj.tripod.ca/images/leather1.JPG

The other day I started to notice the base of the coral seemed to be breaking apart. The best I can describe it would be...
It looked like crystals almost like a mineral ? Like thin glass shards.

http://mjtj.tripod.ca/images/crystalize.JPG

The pic on this one isn't the best but if you look closley you can see some shards.
I woke up this morning to find one of the clusters bkoken off and laying on my substrate.

I called someone and they told me that I could just cut the leather and try to get the healthy pieces growing agian.
As I cut the clusters off some of them seemed to have a black center, almost like a rot so I made sure the cuttings contained no black centers and I elastisized the pieces to little rocks.

http://mjtj.tripod.ca/images/finger.JPG

If you need further info to answer my ?? then ask please.
All I want to know is what the heck happened to it and will the cuttings survive?

P.S. seeing as though I have never used the IMG tags I hope the pics work:p :confused:

[maplereef]

Happy NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!
Over the holidays i had my toadstool leather coral not to happy.. The polyps stay closed for over a week and then my cleaner shrimp were all over it... (bad sign :(..). I took some cuttings off of it and glued them in the tank and they all rebounded really quick. :).....I did some research in my Jullian sprung book (vol 1 ) and figure its some worm that is eating it from the inside out. They suggested a fresh water dip, i did it twice and also did it late at night as thats when the worms seem most active. My leather is back to normal ;).... I noticed one of the frags i cut off looked a little sick and when i pulled it out of the tank and had a good look at it i noticed this white crystal stuff on the under side of it.... it looked like harden salt or mabey glass fragments. I did the same with the frag and its back to normal.. Leathers seem to be pretty hardy that way...
I also found out that when some corals are getting sick they will dismember pieces of then self to keep their species going. The little pieces that get dismembered will fall off and start to regrow on the bottom of the tank.. COOL HUH? ;)
The frags i cut off myself started to polyps with in 2 hours after cluing them to my rocks
Hope this helps
I hope everyone has a great year:)

[Daniel Schubert]

Mitchell

I had the same thing happen with one of my leathers. The base just crumpled apart in my fingers like little fiberglass fibers. I first used an elastic band like you suggested but it was to tight and split the leather in two. So ended up using dental floss and loosely tied each half down on a new piece of rock. It took about two weeks for the leather to re-attach and now each half is bigger then the original one I purchased. Also I kept it away from any water currents.

Just my experience hope this helps

Daniel