Zoas not fully open, Blasto loosing color

[D Z]

My tank has been in slight disarray for the past week or so. It pretty much started with addition of an emerald crab. I knew the risks of emerald crabs, but decided to try one anyways. I had a little bit of hair algae in the tank and was hoping the emerald would take care of that for me, which it almost immediately started to do. Unfortunately, after a couple of hours in the tank, he also realized he like my blasto and started to eat that as well.

 

I ended up removing most of my LR that night trying to catch the little bugger, and also somewhat damaged one of my zoa frags in the process. That was Tuesday night.

 

Since then, I have noticed that all of my zoas have been slightly unhappy. They never really seem to all be fully open. I have also noticed that my Blasto has lost a considerable amount of its color. It was not too terribly damaged by the emerald crab. The emerald basically ate about half of a baby polyp that was forming. It did not touch the main head at all from what I can see. I had originally thought that everything was just stressed out from being pulled out of the tank multiple times to catch the emerald and re-scape my rock, but now I am starting to wonder if something else might be out of line.

 

The tank is a Nuvo 8, and has been running about 10 weeks or so. I have a mixture of LPS, zoas, and mushrooms.

 

Here is the latest testing results:

 

Salinity: 1.024

Temp: stays around 76

Ammonia: 0

Nitrate: very low, close to 0

Alk: 11.2 dKh

Ph: 8.2 - 8.3

 

I am considering purchasing some other testing supplies, but wanted input first. I was thinking Calcium, Magnesium, and phosphate would be for sure. Not too sure whether I need to be concerned with Iodine, potassium, or Iron at this point. Any input there?

 

 

[D Z]

bump

[Ruester007]

Sorry to hear. A couple of things come to mind. First when you removed the live rock did you disturb the sand bed significantly. Second, when you removed the live rock, how long was it out of the tank and under what conditions was is kept?

[D Z]

The sand bed was not disturbed. Luckily, I had to only remove the upper-most pieces. The pieces of LR that are on the bottom did not need to come out.

 

They were only out of the water for a couple of minutes, sitting on the table next to the tank. I would say 3 - 4 minutes max.

 

 

I am thinking about ordering the test kits I mentioned above. In addition to that, I am thinking about trying the Zeovit Nano power pack as well as Zeobak. I have read a couple threads on here and out of the internet and have not really found any bad reviews. I do not really know whether this will solve my problem, but it does mention helping LPS and soft coral in health and growth. I think it even mentions helping in healing of soft corals.

[jack1978]

Any algae growing?

Might be phosphates.

[D Z]

I have had some film algae and hair algae that I have been trying to get control of before it gets out of control. It is not a lot, but I guess could be a sign of phosphates. The last time I had phosphates checked, they were 0, but that was a couple weeks ago, and I believe before the hair algae started growing.

[D Z]

Well I finally got my hands on some more testing supplies yesterday and may have found the problem. My Calcium is quite low, at 350. Magnesium was also somewhat low, but I'm not sure if it would really have a big effect on the zoas/blasto. I did a big water change and am going to pick up some Brightwell Aquatics ReefCode A/B tonight and start dosing 2-part to correct the issue.

 

Everything else seemed to test out ok. See my signature for full testing results. Any input?