Zoa colony acting odd, help :-/

[Sean Fitz]

Hi all, so Ive been doing this over a decade, and have had this particular colony ~9 years. I havent made any crazy changes lately, pulled a huge trumpet coral out of the other side, added some new rockwork. All my other zoa colonies, euphyllia, sps are doing great, but my Tyree Vampire and AOG joint colony has been closing up, and the mat that connects all the polyps is disintegrating, they are now solo polyps with no mat. I did frag a few a month or so back, but the ones closest to the frag cut still look great. This started mid colony and has heen slowly expanding. Some have reopened smaller with less color. I blow the detritus out of the rockwork weekly. Im stumped.

I see no pests, parameters are good (8.2 pH, 8.5 KH, 450 Ca) Mg has been high lately at 1500 but its been like that for a while and wont go down. Phosphate is at .3 ppm, which I blame on the new rocks cycling (and it was dry rock) , but if anything I thought that would hurt the sps. This is not a mobile colony that can be moved or dipped.

Thoughts?

Last month

Now

 

[Sean Fitz]

My other colonies

 

[Blue Chrome]

Was the new rock added next to that colony? Perhaps the removal of the candy cane, or addition of the new rock changed the flow or lighting?

 

[Sean Fitz]

The piece behind it is new, but the colony actually started having problems in the front/middle and the ones touching the new rock havent been reached yet. I did change bulbs out a couple months ago, and the new rock may make the flow less, but not much less

 

[Blue Chrome]

The phosphates and slightly reduced flow could be contributing factors since it is such a dense colony. How long has this been going on? Are you noticing more algae? I can't quite tell but it looks like there might be some algae on that rock, whereas the rest of the tank seems to have coraline.

 

[Blue Chrome]

By the way, your tank and other colonies look really nice!

 

[Sean Fitz]

Thanks! The trumpet coral was the size of a volleyball so ive been excited to start adding new coral in its wake but this has me worried. Before now it lived mostly unchanged for nearly 5 years.

Its been maybe a week and a half, but there isnt much on the rock algae wise (it was all under the zoa canopy until now). They perk up when I blast off the detritus, maybe ill start doing that daily and see how it goes. The new rocks just stopped bubbling and are growing coralline, so maybe it is just from that?

 

[wattson]

looks like some sort of pest,,how the polyps are disappearing,,
raise alk a 1 point slowly ove r acouple of days and looks like it could be an allopathy issue,,I get this sometimes and run a "Little " bit of carbon in a reactor and things get better most times..
hate to say this but what is your No3 ?
also,,do you dose any iodine or Iodide ?

 

[Sean Fitz]

Well I did run carbon for a day, but no effect. Now I have some phosguard in there. I honestly don't test nitrates, I don't even trust my api kit to do that, and everything else in the tank looks great... I dose lugols and target basted them with a concentrate which has helped before. Thinking about trying vitamin C. I know its OG, but might be worth a shot.

 

[that Reef Guy]

Could be any number of things or multiple things.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/s...nthids-happy-healthy-and-growing-fast.250791/

Read the Thread above for Lots of Info on Keeping Zoanthids Happy.

 

[Sean Fitz]

As a follow up my colony came back. Not sure what it's deal was, or if the vitamin c helped, but after maybe a month of looking half closed its back to normal. I did start blowing out the detritus daily.

 

[Capitol Reef Corals]

looks like some sort of pest,,how the polyps are disappearing,,
raise alk a 1 point slowly ove r acouple of days and looks like it could be an allopathy issue,,I get this sometimes and run a "Little " bit of carbon in a reactor and things get better most times..
hate to say this but what is your No3 ?
also,,do you dose any iodine or Iodide ?

Just curious, why did you ask if he was dosing iodine or iodide?

 

[Blue Chrome]

Glad to hear it's doing well!