constricted PEs

[flricordia]

Happens very often that certain morphs of PEs become constricted on the stem with the head becoming bulbous and eventually withering away while others attached to the same matt remain perfectly healthy and even grow larger. During this time new polyps can even come up.
I am only guessing, but it seems to be a nutritional deficiancy going on. Absorption of protiens by select polyps connected to the same mat.
I base this on the fact that where not long ago I never used a protien skimmer and my PEs (barring pests and outside range of water parameters) always did well with no problems whatsoever. Now I use a large PS to keep nutrients in check, mainly for the control of unwanted algae.
Could overskimming play a roll in the overall health of our PEs? Even other morphs of palythoas, zoanthus?
Besides the obvious, pests, too much lighting and unfavorable water conditions, PEs still seem to be from time to time plagued with constrictions and sometimes eventual death.
I have witnessed the total death of PEs on an entire matt, but leaveving the matt intact, new growth eventually sprung up.
Is target feeding more imortant than the planktonic feedings that all zoanthids require in order to prosper? On a reef from wha tI understand most feeding occures at dusk when plankons rise and wash over the reef. Maybe evening feeding and the shutting off of the skimmers/carbon-media filters might help if lighting/pest/water conditions are within required parameters.
Jsut a thought.
I will be setting my skimmer to shut off a few hours before lights out and remove all particulate filters and take note on the results.

 

[seafansar]

I have some PE's that do that too. They look great and grow for months, then start dying off like that, and finally recover and start growing again. I have no clue why they do that. It makes it realy hard to grow out a big colony.

 

[bannshy]

This is a fantastic topic glad you brought it up. I agree with you on the skimmer being a factor. I will be setting up a frag tank without a skimmer. I will only have zoa's, paly's, and acans int this tank so I don't think I will have the chemical warfare going on. If anyone knows if this would be bad please let me know so I can rethink the idea.

 

[knockout]

I am starting a collection of PE's and other high end Paly/Zoas and believe this to be an Excellent topic, I am officially riding in this thread, sorry I have no input!

 

[aaronlovesshel]

have a large red pe colony that has this very thing going on right now. I have a skimmer on the system but had not considered its impact. I started to dose some Kents Iodide soln (thanks flricordia) along w/ some selcon and have seen some turn-around albeit not complete. As a side note, when I introduced selcon there were some corals that opened up very nicely