Small polyp size - what the heck

[jafoca]

I have two different palythoas / zoos that I feel are not what they should be.

Firstly is a rock I have in my display. The main rock, probably 20 polyps, has tiny (like 2 mm) polyps with little to no skirt. There is one of these zoos that somehow got on the other side of my tank and it is at least double in size and has a good skirt. These are nice polyps, bright orangish with white in the center, so idunno what is going on.

The other is my purple deaths. The first PD I got was tiny, maybe 2 mm across too and could hardly open. After that the one polyp has spit out at least 4 new baby polyps, and the one polyp has doubled in size, however I see most purple death being massive polyps, like the size of a quarter. What gives?

Anyone have any guesses as to what can make a polyp be small or grow large? I just picked up some Chamelion People Charmers this weekend and they have MASSIVE polyps - bigger than anything I have seen - will they shrink? =/

 

[fishes2889]

High or low flow, intensity in lighting, are some of the factors that make a polyp big or smaller than usual.

Whodah? had a thread comparison (i think) on his Nukes and PD's upon placement in the tank. Cant find it though.

 

[Zoanuts]

Hey Nick, Low/med flow-med light, low nutrient = bigger polyps for the NG's and PD's I think I read that somewhere. Mine don't like direct light at all.

 

[Azurel]

I have noticed that sometimes when parameters are out of whack that polyps will be small and act untypical. I have found that proper alK, and mag seems to help with polyp health.....I also thing people keep a lot of polyps in underflow meaning they don't actually have enough flow for the polyps. I had issues awhile ago and added another MJ1200 to increase flow. I had some polyps that wouldn't open very much and were closed up enough to start getting algae growing over them. So I moved them to a much higher flow part of the tank and now they do not close......Just some observations....

 

[jafoca]

I think i will try putting my PD's in the shade. It can't be an issue with the whole tank (Params etc) as I have everything else in there doing fine from what I can tell...

 

[fishes2889]

What are your parameters?

 

[jafoca]

lol - I don't know.

Its not really a matter of me being too lazy to test, but I find that I can not read the results of my tests well at all (salifert), so I find it kindof pointless to try.

I have SPS with good polyp extension and many other zoas that all look fine, so I think my params are in line...

 

[Azurel]

My PDs are in mostly direct lighting of 250 14k lighting.....I have never seen an issue with them under bright lighting except for 10k MH lighting....

 

[ficklefins]

Quick FYI,
My Purple Deaths which are about the diameter of a pencil eraser, are right next to my Nuclear Greens which are the size of a dime. But the weird thing is that my PDs are spreading much faster then my NGs.

 

[jafoca]

Mine are under 10k T5HO... mebe that is it...

my spectrum is crap. I hate it.

 

[er1c_the_reefer]

i had my zoas under t5ho's and i thought it was too much light for them, fwiw...

 

[gflat65]

All of my larger type zoas get much smaller in either of my tanks with MH for some reason. I took some shots last night of some Devil's Armor I got from a friend after the move next to some that made it through the move/crash. The ones I got after the move were put under PC's until last night and had incredible color and were stretching for light (long coenenchyme and ~dime sized oral discs). The others have been about 10" below water surface under (2)-175W 14K Ushios and VHO's since the move. The newer ones are much larger than the originals (and have better color-both frags came from the same colony...). They will shrink. All of my PE types and normally larger polyped types reduce to about half the size they were when I got them shortly after getting them. Only the actual Palythoa species keep their size for me (though my PD's and NG when I had them were much smaller than most people's...). I've got shrinkage problems. They say it's genetic...