Here's why my zoas closed

[blasterman]

I woke up this morning to see my 20L that's heavily populated with rapidly growing palys of all types in a rough state. Most of my palys were either fully closed or irritated. Problem got worse as I was looking at it - skimmer was going nuts. Had done a small water change a few nights before and thought I had introduced some silicates somehow, but my glass was clean. No signs of anything out of whack. Turbo snail doing fine (when those things die they are toxic)

Grumbled....cussed at my cat (she gave me a dirty look back) kicked a few things, was rude to a few people on FB I shouldn't have been.......I don't like like things changing in my tanks I don't have immediate control of and it makes me really crabby.

Then I noticed my damsel tossing something around. Oh...wait...hermit crab carcass. Not a molt either. I reached in pulled the corpse out. Damsel (a female and very territorial) proceeded to bite the heck out of my hand at the loss of her snack. Flipped on my airstone that normally just runs at night and things were looking a lot better after a few hours. Debated feeding the damsel to my cat, but I've had the damsel for 5 years and I'm not that cold.

Short form: a single dead hermit crab less than an inch long skunked up a 20L tank for of healthy palys. Oddly my 5" blue stag acro and a few other SPS were unaffected. Shows just how sensitive palys can be to water conditions.

 

[A. grandis]

Main thing is to change your behavior with the people.
They are way more important than any bad change in your system.