Reef nutrition

Polyp Extension in Stylophora

Fishin for ideas here...

I have a purple/pink stylophora (that's what the previous owner said it was) that isn't looking so hot anymore. It has grown like wildfire over the past year - probably a 2" frag to several large fingers, see below. This is a pic from when it was doing well:

mPVA71D.jpg



Recently I have been doing a lot more to the tank. Several heavy water changes, trying to get my alk back up (from 5-6ish to ~10, slowly), took out an ineffective Tunze9002 which was never running, and generally been tinkering a lot. The rest of my numbers seem ok. Phosphates and Nitrates aren't measureable (Whatever is in there is getting eaten by macro or nuisance algae, I assume. Ca is at 480, Mag at 1550. The only thing that I measure which is off is my alkalinity, but it was low for a loong time - basically when all this growth happened.

Anyway recently it's begun to slowly lose some color and I'm getting almost no polyp extension. Most of the polyps near the mid to bottom of the coral are retracted, like a few of them in the picture above. No tissue death yet, fortunately, but I am really hoping to avert disaster here.

I recently added a few more corals but nothing that I know of that has any sort of allelopathic activity; a pectinia coral, a blue acro, a small chalice.

The last change is that I added a cherub angel to the tank. I haven't seen it pick at any coral at all, and he sleeps at night, but it could be that he's bothering it. I just have no real evidence of him nipping, and I figure he'd hit the LPS first anyway.

Does anyone have any recommendations on what I should check, or what might be causing this? I'll try to get a pic when the lights are on again so you can see the difference.
 
One other thought - could this be a reaction to increased light? I cleaned the cover of the lighting compartment in my hood and probably increased the amount of light that passed through it (at least made it less diffuse).
 
Did you ever check out the angel during the night? I was just curious if you had ruled that out as well. Maybe it's something bacterial?
 
I'd say check phosphate/nitrate, although it could be the sudden increase in light. If that were the case if expect all polyps to be less open though, not just an area of them.
 
I just finished a few days of no lights to combat algae.

Looks like it's on the way out, unfortunately. The loss of color and lack of polyp extension has progressed considerably, and it looks like some STN at the base already. What a bummer.
 
Really looking at phosphates if you are having algae problems.
i agree with what coral reefer and denzil are saying. If you have algae you probably have nitrates and/or phosphates that are a little too aggravating for the coral. Even a slight change in phosphates will dull coral color. would be good to change gfo. If you think its alleleopathic toss a bag of carbon in! careful for nips and stings from neighboring coral too. they close up as described when nipped or stung.
 
BTW This guy came back with a vengence and is still growing. Not sure what caused the problem to begin with, but he's fine!

Anyway I am selling the tank now - you can find my thread in the buy/sell forum. Sad!
 
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