Zoa bubbled up

[Donaldf973]

Got them last friday have been perfectly fine and today they closed up and started to grow bubbles. All parameters spot on except high nitrates (80-100). Will be doing a 50% water change tomorrow.

First picture's when i got them second is how they are today.

 

[glb]

Those nitrates are super high. I’d definitely do a water change fast. Is the tank new?

 

[Donaldf973]

Yeah a month old but I've had this happen before with zoas and palys in 1 year + established tanks with low and medium nutrients. Last year same thing happened with a few polyps and no one on nanoreef.com could help me figure it out either.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

I would get those nitrates lowered and stabilized before adding any more corals. Zoas are susceptible to shock as well so they may be "melting" from being introduced to vastly different water than what they were used to at the LFS.

You may need to do a more extensive water test to figure out what was affecting your mature system zoanthids.

 

[Donaldf973]

I'm attributing this to the nitrates also just bugs me out that once or twice in a year it will happen. 10 years of this happening no matter no low or high nutrients and no one's been able to figure it out.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

I'm attributing this to the nitrates also just bugs me out that once or twice in a year it will happen. 10 years of this happening no matter no low or high nutrients and no one's been able to figure it out.

Zoas can be finnicky sometimes, I would shoot for consistency mostly with them by trying to keep parameters as stable as possible. Don't give up on them!

 

[tankstudy]

It looks similar to something I see when I do dips on my zoas/palys. If I leave it in coral RX too long or fresh water, they will bubble up like that. They will recover in normal water parameters but if they are doing that while in your main display, I would double check your water parameters.

I've kept a few zoas before in 80+ ppm nitrates but I don't think all morphs can tolerate that.

 

[Donaldf973]

I think it's because my salinity is way off. I checked it today and it was reading 1.033-1.035. So calibrated ny refractometer and sure enough it was off when double checking with a second one. Water change time