Zoa colony fading fast.

[fiction]

A large colony of mine appear to be melting away really fast. Here are two photos to show how different it looks within only 2 days.

I'm at a loss to as why they are dieing all of a sudden? I noticed yesterday there was a lot of small specks of a slimy looking substance floating at the top of the water, so I did a 3g water change and most of it is gone now. My calcium is at 430, ph is 8.6 and my alk is in the low range at the moment, I don't think any of those levels are off enough to cause any problems? Also I haven't seen any pests bothering them at night.

 

[Russellaqua]

A pH of 8.6 is quite high. Natural seawater has a pH of 8.2, and this is a logarithmic scale. This represents nearly double the amount of OH- ions normally present in the ocean, making it somewhat caustic in the tank. This could potentially be enough to cause problems for some animals.

 

[fiction]

A pH of 8.6 is quite high. Natural seawater has a pH of 8.2, and this is a logarithmic scale. This represents nearly double the amount of OH- ions normally present in the ocean, making it somewhat caustic in the tank. This could potentially be enough to cause problems for some animals.

I guess that could play a factor, I'm not sure how my pH could get that high though? I'm going to do a 4 gallon water change with natural seawater today and hopefully that will lower it a little.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Have you tried Vitamin C? That would lower your pH too.

 

[fiction]

Have you tried Vitamin C? That would lower your pH too.

Never heard of that before, Could you explain how to use it?

 

[J. Montgomery]

First off, thats a sweet zoa collection. Have you added any new zoa frags within the past month or so? I'd imagine that if one of your parameters was off, then other corals would also show effects.

 

[Pufferpunk]

Long thread but worth the read:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1252294&perpage=25&pagenumber=1

 

[Azurel]

I think I might take your advice on that to Punk and see what happens with my stuff.....Will let you know.....

 

[Pufferpunk]

Yeah, join the C croud!

 

[fiction]

First off, thats a sweet zoa collection. Have you added any new zoa frags within the past month or so? I'd imagine that if one of your parameters was off, then other corals would also show effects.

I've added a few within the past month. Also I did notice that another colony is slowing shrinking.

 

[J. Montgomery]

Would that other colony happen to be one of the new additions?

 

[LorenK]

And was it by chance your ebay colonY

 

[fiction]

No, the ones that are melting I've had since August.

 

[fiction]

From what I've read on here and other forums, it seems like some just fade away for no apparent reason. Other then trying v. c, I guess I'll just wait it out.

 

[Pufferpunk]

That's the exact reason I am using VC now.

 

[J. Montgomery]

It is true, I've had some zoas melt away on me for no apparent reason. Though in my experience, those are always small frags of just a few polyps.

 

[fiction]

Here's something that I'm wondering could of maybe caused my current problems. I was recently given a free frag (that I didn't dip) and I noticed that it was the first piece to start showing signs of problems. It was slowly closing polyp by polyp, before any other zoas were showing any problems. Even though it wasn't melting as fast as the other ones, I wonder if it could of brought something with it since it was wild caught?

 

[J. Montgomery]

Thats the most reasonable thing I've heard yet.

 

[fiction]

All the other reasons just don't make any sense to me, since everything but the zoas are thriving.

Should I take everything out and do a dip or is it to late since whatever is causing these problems is already in the tank?

 

[fiction]

Also the piece that I'm talking about is in the first photo I posted at the top right corner, it's the blue zoas, you can kind of see the right side of the colony has a few polyps closed up and these problems started happening the day after I took that photo.