Why are my Zoas looking sad?

[Salty_Northerner]

I've been looking all over the place and cannot get a straight answer. My tank is coming up to its 1 year anniversary on July 27th and for some reason my sunny d's don't look nice and plump with a nice round skirt like they used to. They are multiplying but they seem to be doing the same thing as their older polyps. I have some pink zoas on the same Rock that are doing the same thing but lights are out and I can't take another picture ATM to show.

I checked for pests and the only thing that I can come up with is maybe the odd small bristle worm. I've seen my orchard Dottie back eyeballing something around the base of the polyps and thinking he's scoping out his next meal. I don't have very many bristle worms and anytime I shine the light at night I never see any crawling on the rocks. I'm lucky to see one underneath a rock that's sitting on the sand bed if I'm lucky so I know there's no infestation. They are receiving decent randomized flow and they are clean.

Tank parameters
Sg- 34.6 ppt
Temp- 77-78
pH- 7.86 - 8.15
Dkh- 8.5
Cal- 455
Mag- 1400
No3- 7.1
Po4- .08 - .10

I do 10% water change every Saturday using tropic marin pro reef salt. I add 7.5ml of All for Reef everyday at noon and it's keeping the alk steady at 8.5

I add 15 drops of Brightwell Coral aminos pretty much every day, then once a week I'll add 7 ml of Red Sea ab+ aminos. I do spot feed reefroids twice a week basically to keep the phosphate from dipping too low. When I do spot feed the polyps don't close up properly and instead they umbrella. My light was only 7.5" off the water so I purchased the solid mounting kit and maxed out I get 11"

I thought there may have been a hotspot so I put the colony on the sand bed where in theory there shouldn't be much of a hot spot at all.

Using a single Prime 16HD @11"off the water line as BRS suggests it's the optimal height. I'm running a 12-hour lighting schedule and it peaks at 29 Watts from 26 Watts every 20 minutes or so.

Pretty much everything in the tank is doing really well and I have some green Palys and purple people eaters which I believe they're called and is another paly. I know the sunny D's are also a paly so I'm kind of stumped here on what's going on. Someone told me they are morphing, whatever that means?

One more thing that I've kind of stroked off the possible problem is some of the polyps are being shaded from my plating Coral so obviously it can't be a hotspot.

Anyways if anybody can toss me some useful information on what's going on I'd really appreciate it and thank you

 

[Grossman90]

Looks like something is irritating then. Check for anything on the stalk or head when closed up. The polyps closer to the monti look worst. Could it be the monti?

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Looks like something is irritating then. Check for anything on the stalk or head when closed up. The polyps closer to the monti look worst. Could it be the monti?

Nope, they were like that before I moved them. They were higher and over towards the center and away from the Monti.

 

[Outlaw Corals]

Awesome colony, did you dip them ? if not i would dip them for sure

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Awesome colony, did you dip them ? if not i would dip them for sure

Thank you! No I never dipped them when I received them. They were from a farm that go through multiple quarantines. They were cheap and a test coral after ripping the tank down a few months after it was going. Had a horrible nasty dino problem that was killing the corals. When I redid the tank I ordered a few test corals and didn't dip because I wanted anything good that was on the plug. I did examine Tham under a magnifying glass and nothing hitchhiking at all.

 

[Outlaw Corals]

Thank you! No I never dipped them when I received them. They were from a farm that go through multiple quarantines. They were cheap and a test coral after ripping the tank down a few months after it was going. Had a horrible nasty dino problem that was killing the corals. When I redid the tank I ordered a few test corals and didn't dip because I wanted anything good that was on the plug. I did examine Tham under a magnifying glass and nothing hitchhiking at all.

Always dip no matter what or who they came from, even if you are looking through a microscope you wouldn’t be able to tell if it had any kind of bacterial infection, so we dip

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Always dip no matter what or who they came from, even if you are looking through a microscope you wouldn’t be able to tell if it had any kind of bacterial infection, so we dip

What do you suggest for a dip? Mind you they are on a nice sized rock that I'd expect would soak up a dip and be leached back into the tank.

 

[Outlaw Corals]

What do you suggest for a dip? Mind you they are on a nice sized rock that I'd expect would soak up a dip and be leached back into the tank.

Well, it all depends on what you are dipping for, I only use two types of dip, for bacterial. I use the KFC dip, and if it’s for pests I use potassium chloride, and you just rinse before returning to main display

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Well, it all depends on what you are dipping for, I only use two types of dip, for bacterial. I use the KFC dip, and if it’s for pests I use potassium chloride, and you just rinse before returning to main display

I looked last night with lights off and no pests at all. Stalks looked nice and clean with a wax like look to them. I think it's a possibility the iodine is low. I only had the Fluval iodine additive but now thinking of the aquaforest iodine. It's a simple 1 drop a day so maybe that could be the problem.

Fluval says for my tank 1.5ml once a week. I'm probably skimming alot out tbh and thinking the Fluval brand might be to weak!?

 

[Rjukan]

I've got 2 possibilities for you based on my experience with zoas..

First is salinity. It seems like they don't do well in a lower salinity. My Hannah tester wasn't calibrated, and I was calibrating my refractometer with RODI... turns out it was more like 1.022 when it was reading 1.026. Soon after getting it back up to that number they started opening again and looking better.

Next are these buggers:

If you see any of them around, even if not on your zoas at the moment, pull them out of the tank. They are wicked in how sneaky they are. You see them on the glass and are like oh, they are harmless. Meanwhile others are camouflaged at the edge of your zoas slowly eating them. Then at night it's a free for all.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

I've got 2 possibilities for you based on my experience with zoas..

First is salinity. It seems like they don't do well in a lower salinity. My Hannah tester wasn't calibrated, and I was calibrating my refractometer with RODI... turns out it was more like 1.022 when it was reading 1.026. Soon after getting it back up to that number they started opening again and looking better.

Next are these buggers:

If you see any of them around, even if not on your zoas at the moment, pull them out of the tank. They are wicked in how sneaky they are. You see them on the glass and are like oh, they are harmless. Meanwhile others are camouflaged at the edge of your zoas slowly eating them. Then at night it's a free for all.

Yeah that was the first thing I checked was the SG, I've got a TM floating hydrometer and it shows 1.255. my Hanna shows 34.5ppt so thats all fine. As for pests I've got nadda. I pulled out my big a** maxspec coral viewer and flashlight along with my reading glasses and all looks pest free and believe me I checked for a while and it's all clean.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

Any specific aminos or iodine that's been proven to actually work?