Please help! 1 of powerhead suctions fell off

lilfish717 · Apr 23, 2019

I'm still relatively new to this hobby. I've been managing to keep my corals alive for a couple of months and I've been feeling alright. Until...I came home from work today. I noticed something was wrong right away all my corals were tipped over and buried in sand. There was a bare spot where I could see glass and mountains of sand places. Remind you... I have the big black (pebble like) Hawaii live sand. I instantly realised a suction cup on my powerhead came loose. (probably due to my algae problem) pointing it straight to the sand. I fixed that and then un-buried my coral immediately. I didn't notice anything wrong until I turned my whites off to see what illuminating. Everything was fine besides my pocillopora. It was laying sideways on the sand. The part that was on the sand had no green illuminating like the side that didn't touch the sand. I think it might've had a polyp bailout. I don't think they're just closed because when they're closed they usually illuminate still just in small circles. What can I do? This is very depressing considering I was finally gaining confidence in this hobby. :/ please help!

ludnix · Apr 23, 2019

I think youve already done all that you can. You can try using a Turkey baster to blast sand stuck on the corals still. Given time they will recover and those branches if totally dead can be clipped in a few days when you're sure and algae starts to cover them.

I would try and figure out a stronger Mount for your powerhead to avoid future problems but its something that has happened to most of us at some point.

TriggerFinger · Apr 23, 2019

It happened to me too. My pump actually landed on top of a barnacle cluster while my blenny was in it. He was alive but NOT happy. I ended up replacing the suction cup powerhead with a magnetic one and have been fine ever since.

lilfish717 · Apr 23, 2019

ludnix said:
I think youve already done all that you can. You can try using a Turkey baster to blast sand stuck on the corals still. Given time they will recover and those branches if totally dead can be clipped in a few days when you're sure and algae starts to cover them.

I would try and figure out a stronger Mount for your powerhead to avoid future problems but its something that has happened to most of us at some point.

TriggerFinger said:
It happened to me too. My pump actually landed on top of a barnacle cluster while my blenny was in it. He was alive but NOT happy. I ended up replacing the suction cup powerhead with a magnetic one and have been fine ever since.

litterly a couple minutes after I made this post I looked and the pocillopora seems to be happy again with full polyp extension. I thought for sure it was gone. Didn't realise that it always had it's polyps out 24/7 before, just what I thought was closed turned out to be just not fully extended. That's a good sign right? Thanks