Is my neon green Kenya tree dead?

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

Haven't changed anything in the tank but my tree looks like this, flopped over and a bit wrinkled, as of yesterday afternoon and this morning and I'm not sure why. Has it died? Why?  I had the lights off since the 17th but they've been back on for two days now.

[seabass]

Definitely not dead.  Why did you have the lights off?  They get the majority of their nutrition from photosynthesis.  In addition, they can capture micro-plankton with their polyps and even uptake inorganic nutrients (phosphate and nitrate) from the the water.  They can also occasionally shed (slough off a thin layer of tissue) to remove algae, detritus, etc.  People often get concerned the first time they witness this.

[Tamberav]

It is just mad/unhappy.. perhaps because the lights were off. 

[less than bread]

Im sure now that the lights are back on, it will return to its former glory. Beautiful specimen

[Tired]

They flop when unhappy. It's also normal for them to look funky at night, as they shrink down to protect themselves. Keep your lights on so your corals don't starve, and it should sort itself out.

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

Yeah I turned the lights off and covered the tank to help tackle a massive blue green cyanobacteria issue, I wasn't deliberately 'starving' my corals 😅 just so long as it's not dead it should be fine now because the cyano is gone and the lights are back on.

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

Happier now. Still leaning but is that just because it is very tall? 

[Tired]

It still doesn't look fully extended. Also, I think the rock it's on is leaning over, which may be contributing. 

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

Is this phosphate high enough to be contributing? I couldn't really tell if it was 0.25 or 0.5 

Nitrate I thought was 0-5 which should be ok ....

[Tired]

Soft corals need nitrates. All corals do, but especially softies. Generally you want about 5-10ppm. You also want at least 0.03ppm phosphates. Compared to that, your current phosphates are quite high (and your test kit isn't useful for reef sensitivities of phosphate), however, phosphate that's quite high is fine for corals as long as there's also some nitrates. 

 

More nitrates would probably be helpful. 

[InAtTheDeepEnd]

7 hours ago, Tired said:

Soft corals need nitrates. All corals do, but especially softies. Generally you want about 5-10ppm. You also want at least 0.03ppm phosphates. Compared to that, your current phosphates are quite high (and your test kit isn't useful for reef sensitivities of phosphate), however, phosphate that's quite high is fine for corals as long as there's also some nitrates. 

 

More nitrates would probably be helpful. 

OK, thank you very much for your help, really useful 🙂