Phoenix Montipora Danae - Help please!

[cnseekatz]

I picked up a frag of this Phoenix Monti (M. Danae), and can't seem to make it happy.

 

The LFS had the frags under lower light, and this particular piece was well shaded. The mother colony however was directly under a 400w halide, and looked great. When I put it in my tank, I placed it near the bottom, in a very low lit area. Within a day, all the nice blue polyps had retracted, and I haven't seen them since.

 

I've tried moving the frag around to find the right spot, but to no avail. I've tried low light & flow, low light - high flow, high light - low flow, and high light and flow, without success. The color has darkened a bit, but there's been no tissue recession at all.

 

Anyone have any thoughts? My params are stable, though my ALK is a little low (around 7). Do you think this might be causing the stress? Everything else in the tank (SPS, LPS, polyps, nems, etc.) is healthy and growing. There is no coral nearby that would be irritating it, and it is not on the sand anymore, so that's not the problem either.

 

This is what it looked like when I first dropped it in my tank:

 

[smeagol108]

U know what the alk was in the tank in came out of? Alk shock would be my guess if your other parameters are good and it was in a low lit area of lfs tank.

[Hig789]

Might take it a little while to acclimate to your tank and your lights if they had it under low lights.

 

I always hate buying stuff from places that use crappy lighting. Lately all the frags I have bought have came out from under Radions so I don't even change my lighting at all when I put them in the tank. They usually are open within a hour.