Sunny Delight suddenly closed and unhappy

[Tavero]

Hi there,
I have a strange problem. Over a week ago all of my Sunny Delight frags and the main colony started to look more and more unhappy. I have owned them for more than half a year and was cutting and creating and selling frags regularly. It is the only coral in my tank that is closed up. Even all other 15 zoa variants i own are open.
The frags are in different parts of the tank (different flow and light) and all started to close up at the same time.

It's like they communicated with each other that now is a good time to start melting away just to annoy me...

 

[vetteguy53081]

Start with giving them short gentle blasts from a turkey baster. If you see stuff dislodge, that will upset them
Assure nitrate and phosphate not going out of safe range
Did light or flow. Change?
Add iodide to water and check salinity to assure not elevated

 

[Tavero]

Start with giving them short gentle blasts from a turkey baster. If you see stuff dislodge, that will upset them
Assure nitrate and phosphate not going out of safe range
Did light or flow. Change?
Add iodide to water and check salinity to assure not elevated

I forgot to write that my water parameters are fine and i have animals in the tank that are much more sensible that are doing fine (acans, sps ect).
Nothing is being dislodged with a turkey baster.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I forgot to write that my water parameters are fine and i have animals in the tank that are much more sensible that are doing fine (acans, sps ect).
Nothing is being dislodged with a turkey baster.

You said parameters are fine. What are your numbers and what test kit are you using? Other factors that make zoa unhappy are lack of feeding and food as infrequent feeding and ultra low nutrient conditions can lead to entire colony meltdowns. Target feeding is not a requirement as Zoanthids are photosynthetic. I have found that target feeding Zoanthids always provides mixed results, when a food particle falls onto the polyps.

Back to parameters, good water quality is a must.
dKH: 8.0 - 11.0
Calcium: 400 - 440
Magnesium: 1300 - 1350
Iodide: Maintained via regular water changes or manually at small dosages
Temperature: 78-79 degrees
pH: 8.1-8.3
Phosphates: .04 - .06
Nitrates < 10

Asterina stars, little tiny tiny spiders, tube worms and nudibranchs also will make them miserable to point of death as will aptasia, worms like spinoids or vermetid snails.

 

[Tavero]

Pests wouldn't make any sense. Think about it: there are several frags of the same zoa colony at different spots in the tank looking great for months and all of them close up suddenly at the same time.

Water parameters:
Ca 400
Mg 1200
Alk 9.3
PO4 0.0 (dosing 0.03/day)
NO3 2.0 (dosing 1.0/day)
temp 24°C

I opened another thread in the water chemistry section and i think I am onto something though.
Dosing 0.04/d was too much and phosphate was accumulating inside my tank, but it seems like my phosphate solution has sedimented and i was actually dosing close to 0.00 instead of 0.03 per day.

For everyone that is interested what has happened:
3 CaCl2 + 2 PO3−4 → Ca3(PO4)2 + 6 Cl−
Don't mix phosphate with calcium

 

[Tired]

Sounds like you might not have enough phosphate. For a lot of tanks, 0.03ppm is the minimum that should be present, so dosing that amount and having it be used up might not be enough for soft corals. Try upping that a little, so there's phosphate at all times, and see if that helps.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Pests wouldn't make any sense. Think about it: there are several frags of the same zoa colony at different spots in the tank looking great for months and all of them close up suddenly at the same time.

Water parameters:
Ca 400
Mg 1200
Alk 9.3
PO4 0.0 (dosing 0.03/day)
NO3 2.0 (dosing 1.0/day)
temp 24°C

I opened another thread in the water chemistry section and i think I am onto something though.
Dosing 0.04/d was too much and phosphate was accumulating inside my tank, but it seems like my phosphate solution has sedimented and i was actually dosing close to 0.00 instead of 0.03 per day.

For everyone that is interested what has happened:
3 CaCl2 + 2 PO3−4 → Ca3(PO4)2 + 6 Cl−
Don't mix phosphate with calcium

Not saying pests but giving possibilities

 

[Tavero]

My Sunny D are continuing to give me issues and i have no idea what i can do anymore. As of right now i am making sure i have enough phosphate and nitrate in the water, but they still look unhappy.

That's what they looked in August.

And now

Additionally i can see my Lord of the Rings expelling zooxanthella once a week. Is this an indicator for something? They also seem to be annoyed two days a week or so.

I have now dipped one frag of Sunny d in peroxide for half an hour and put it into my shrimp nursery tank. This one is absolutely void of nutrients but it has at least different light and different water. Maybe a change in parameters will help? I don't know but i am desperate.

 

[Tavero]

While observing my Sunny D frags i have seen some green and brown dust on the zoa.

Under the microscope there is some green algae coraline algae specs and some moving dinoflagelates

This is the closed zoa opening. Here i could see a lot of dinoflagelates but also some weird stuff that looks like a fungus. I am considering dipping in pure Dino x what do you guys think?