Help - one zoa frag not opening

[ashtoreth]

Hi,

I had a fire skirt frag (two heads with a new one forming) that used to open up pretty wide but suddenly stopped. I had taken it out last week to scrub some algae off of the frag plug (had a diatom outbreak that has since died down) but it hasn't opened back up since. I took it out yesterday and used a qtip to try and rub off light areas where there seemed to be darker algae growth on the outside and ran it under freshwater (read on the forum that might help) but it still hasn't shown any signs of opening up. I have other zoas that entered the tank at the same time and had some algae growing that I scrubbed off but all are open. I placed them under the same lighting and flow. Does anyone have any suggestions for what might be happening or if I should try something else? I wonder if I bothered it by doing too much and if it's better to wait but I also don't know how to tell if this particular frag is going under and don't want to lose it if I can save it. All my other corals (branching GSP, euphyllia, other zoas/palys, green hairy mushroom, duncan) all are doing fine.

 

[Macbalacano]

If everything else in the tank looks good/normal, it is very likely just stressed from the handling. I'd leave it alone. In my experience, zoas can be moody. I've had some randomly close for days/weeks and reopen again randomly. I'd give it a little more time.

If you notice other things in the tank reacting, then I'd start to look into your water parameters etc...

 

[ashtoreth]

I just checked my water parameters and my phosphates are much higher than last week, presumably due to the die-off of the algae? I've been removing my filter pad every week but think maybe I needed to remove it more often. Is it possible that my phosphates are too high and causing more algae growth? My nitrates have also come down from where it was before. Tank parameters below:

Temp 77
Salinity 34.1
Ammonia 0-0.25 (I'm using the API test kit and it's looking a tinge greener than pure yellow 0ppm but my tank has been cycled and up for 4 months now and have 3 fish, 1 shrimp and some coral so not sure if it's possible that something could've driven an ammonia spike? Nothing is dead as far as I can tell but I did recently add a batch of additional new corals.)
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0-5ppm (closer to 5ppm)
pH 8
Alk 8.3
Calc 480
Mg 1380
Phosphate 0.08

 

[Macbalacano]

Your water parameters look good. The phosphates are ok, it could come down based on your nitrates being so low. I would work on increasing your nitrates as Zoas will prefer higher nitrates, definitely above 5, in my experience.