Zoa troubles...

Crocpete

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Hi, my tank is about 6 months old and I have 5 “colonies” of zoas as well as a piece of Hollywood stunner chalice and a GSP. They were all doing great until, fully open great colors, new polyps, etc until about a month ago. Three of the colonies are still great along with the GSP but the Hollywood stunner changed colors, a few polyps were closed and now on 3 of the colonies they are all closed. They are all about 3” from the bottom of the tank on the live rock, they get good light and I feed them once a week. Any thoughts or suggestions? They are now all glued in place because I moved them around until I found the sweet spot but now that spot might not be so sweet...
 
Hi Pete. You will have better luck getting help if you provide the following information:

Full set of recent water parameters
Your tank size and light model
What you are using for flow
 
Got it. Tank parameters as of last week:
Ammonia - 0ppm
Nitrates - 5ppm
Specific gravity - 1.025
Phospates - 2ppm
Ph - 7.86
Salinity - 10.2 dkh
Calcium - 470
Mg - 1170
Temp - 78.4
It’s a 20g long tank with a HOB carbon filter & very small skimmer. I also have a small Koralia powerhead, I believe the smallest they make, 250?
 
I was dosing NOPOX for about a month and all was great. I stopped for a few weeks and got a good sized algae bloom (diatoms & cyano) and my phosphates spiked. I also stirred up the sandbed quite a bit recently and thought maybe that led to the phosphates spike. I have resumed the NOPOX and algae is gone after siphoning it out. Zoas are Fire & ice, wam watermelon & radioactive dragon eyes. The F&I, RDE & one of the ways are great, the other 2 wams look terrible along with the Hollywood stunner
 
The phosphates certainly jump out, along with the couple of disruptions you went through.

What light do you use?

If light is good and other corals are growing your best bet would be to just slowly stabilize everything and observe.

One other note is that your NO3 and PO4 are, in my opinion too far out of balance for NoPox. You are at risk of zeroing out your nitrates and trading your algae problem for a dinoflagellate problem.

If it was my tank I would stop the nopox and add a “small” amount of a phosphate absorbing resin to the filter. Then “slowly” use that and some accelerated water changes to pull down the PO4 levels. Test the Nitrate regularly, and adjust your water change regimen to keep at at or around the 5ppm it is now.

Once the PO4 is in line, then work on stabilizing. With a 20 gallon tank, weekly 10% to 20% water changes will be your best friend.
 

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