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mike61289
11/28/2016, 10:03 AM
I added a "red people eater" paly, green star polyps, and yellow skirt clove polyps 3 weeks ago. The clove polyps have been mostly closed since Friday. The paly has been opening and closing more than usual since Saturday. The green star polyps were open the whole time until this morning. These are the only corals I have in my tank right now and I can't figure out why they're closed.

Water is testing normal from what I can tell:
SG 1.024
pH 8.3
Alkalinity 9.5 dKH
Temp 78 F
Ca 420
Mg 1250
NH3 and PO4 undetectable
NO3 undetectable

I did a water change on Saturday. It looked like 3 of the clove polyps (it's a frag of 11 polyps) opened for a short time, but now they're closed again.

A friend of mine thinks my peppermint shrimps might be bothering them, but they're nowhere near the clove polyps. They usually hide under the rock with the paly, but rarely venture out. If they do come out, they wander on the sand, not on the rock with the corals.

Any ideas?

organism
11/29/2016, 05:50 PM
What is your lighting, did you start the frags on the sandbed in order to properly acclimate them, are they in moderate flow, and did you calibrate your refractometer with calibration fluid?

Biggen
11/30/2016, 12:15 PM
Perhaps pests on them? Have you dip them? In the past, when ever I've seen healthy zoas open and close and irregular times they are usually being bothered by something (nudi).

mike61289
11/30/2016, 12:33 PM
I just modified my lights a couple of days ago (they closed before that). It's the Maxspect 320w 15000k razor. I lowered my blue lights from 75% (the max I had them at) to 50% max. White lights are also at 50% max. The clove polyps are the only ones I moved and that was 2 weeks after having them.

I never dipped them in anything and wouldn't know what to dip them in. I never noticed anything pestering them though. Any advice?

I'm wondering if my alkalinity/Ca reading is wrong as I recently dosed alkalinity because it was low. That could be affecting it too if I'm not mistaken. Having said that though, I also did 2 large water changes (without dosing anything) since I dosed the tank.