Corals polyps won’t open

Fishology

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I forgot the name it’s a hard coral with big polyps I saw is was closing slowly yesterday thought it was irritated today none of the polyps are out, did a water change yesterday, no corals are around it. I dose calcium regularly. Help
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will need so much more info for anyone to help.
Tank age? How long is the coral there? parameters? light? flow?
The tank is pretty new around 3/4 a year to 9 monthsish
Size: 40gl tall tank

Light: it’s a nicrew aquarium saltwater lights 3 rows or 24 leds

Flow: medium, my tank is slit in three different areas the right side is for float corals as torch, forgspawn, and hammers
The middle is for sps and SOFIE corals as green sliders and finger coral and the left side is for coral who need low to no flow like zoas and mushrooms

Parameters:
Ph
Nitrate
Nitrite
Ammonia
I’m planning on getting a test kit with a wider variety of thing to test as calcium and alkilinity

Filter: Marineland penguin 350 power
 

anthonygf

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This is what tested yesterday I don’t know why you it didn’t upload on the message
Don't forget phosphate test. That is just as important as nitrate. Why are you dosing calcium? You should not be dosing calcium if you are not testing it. Are you testing calcium?
 

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The tank is pretty new around 3/4 a year to 9 monthsish
Size: 40gl tall tank

Light: it’s a nicrew aquarium saltwater lights 3 rows or 24 leds

Flow: medium, my tank is slit in three different areas the right side is for float corals as torch, forgspawn, and hammers
The middle is for sps and SOFIE corals as green sliders and finger coral and the left side is for coral who need low to no flow like zoas and mushrooms

Parameters:
Ph
Nitrate
Nitrite
Ammonia
I’m planning on getting a test kit with a wider variety of thing to test as calcium and alkilinity

Filter: Marineland penguin 350 power
those are not parameters....we need the values of those in order to possibly nail down an issue...
 
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Don't forget phosphate test. That is just as important as nitrate. Why are you dosing calcium? You should not be dosing calcium if you are not testing it. Are you testing calcium?
had a calcium deficiency so I was dosing, this coral was dead because the lack of calcium it slowly came back. I don’t have a phosphate nor calcium tester I don’t have money to spend 200 on a newer test kit.
 

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had a calcium deficiency so I was dosing, this coral was dead because the lack of calcium it slowly came back. I don’t have a phosphate nor calcium tester I don’t have money to spend 200 on a newer test kit.
How can you know you had a deficiency if you don’t test for it or lfs test it for you? How do you know how much to add? If you don’t have funds for it you honestly need to keep to simple soft corals then and not really a need to test much. Still need lighting and flow for more help.
 

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polyps not opening could be one of a couple things that i have experienced myself.
perhaps it doesnt open when lights on. i have a few sps that extend polyps only at night. i personally havent had one of these corals, so i dont know if this is a trait of this type of coral. elevated phosphate was another big one for me. with sps, fluctuations are a contributor too. ive also had a duncan that didnt open up for a week to two for an unknown reason, so it could just be for no reason that you will ever figure out.

if you are dosing, it could be large fluctuations causing it to be unhappy. your ph is quite high, so that number is either wrong, or youre dosing something else that caused that to get high, which would make me think that there is large fluctuations in water parameters. hard to say, because there are no parameters listed for the other important coral paramaters. the red sea foundation pro test kit is 70$, which will allow you to test for the big 3 coral parameters (MG, CA, and ALK). phosphate will be seperate. for the sake of finding a range youre in, if you want to go cheap, you can get an api kit, but they arent in small increments, but it would give you a ballpark to see if its elevated. otherwise, red sea has a phosphate kit for 50.
as mentioned just before, lighting and flow are the last couple things that would need to be known
 
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The tank is pretty new around 3/4 a year to 9 monthsish
Size: 40gl tall tank

Light: it’s a nicrew aquarium saltwater lights 3 rows of 24 leds

Flow: medium, my tank is slit in three different areas the right side is for float corals as torch, forgspawn, and hammers
The middle is for sps and Softies corals and finger corals and the left side is for coral who need low to no flow like zoas and mushrooms

Parameters:
Ph 8.2-4
Nitrate 10
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0

Filter: Marineland penguin 350 power
 

melonheadorion

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it could be that the light is just not bright enough for that coral?? im not an expert on that light, so i will let someone else talk about that, butr looking at the description of that light in a long bar version, the description says to use two of them just for low light sps, which would leave me to believe that, just to get an sps that requires minimal amount of light power, that two of them are needed just for that.
thats all just a guess on my part.
 
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polyps not opening could be one of a couple things that i have experienced myself.
perhaps it doesnt open when lights on. i personally havent had one of these corals, so i dont know if this is a trait of this type of coral. elevated phosphate was another big one for me. with sps, fluctuations are a contributor too.

if you are dosing, it could be large fluctuations causing it to be unhappy. your ph is quite high, so that number is either wrong, or youre dosing something else that caused that to get high, which would make me think that there is large fluctuations in water parameters. hard to say, because there are no parameters listed for the other important coral paramaters. the red sea foundation pro test kit is 70$, which will allow you to test for the big 3 coral parameters (MG, CA, and ALK). phosphate will be seperate. for the sake of finding a range youre in, if you want to go cheap, you can get an api kit, but they arent in small increments, but it would give you a ballpark to see if its elevated. otherwise, red sea has a phosphate kit for 50.
as mentioned just before, lighting and flow are the last couple things that would need to be known
It may be I am planning on getting the reef master kit for api as it contains calcium and phosphates along with other important parameters, I only really does every month or so I hadn’t does until over a month I only does cause had returned for a week long trip and was there to feed the fish or take care of corals.
 

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It may be I am planning on getting the reef master kit for api as it contains calcium and phosphates along with other important parameters, I only really does every month or so I hadn’t does until over a month I only does cause had returned for a week long trip and was there to feed the fish or take care of corals.
that will at least get you going. although calcium is important, it would be the alk and phosphate that i would focus on when it comes to your issue.
 
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it could be that the light is just not bright enough for that coral?? im not an expert on that light, so i will let someone else talk about that, butr looking at the description of that light in a long bar version, the description says to use two of them just for low light sps, which would leave me to believe that, just to get an sps that requires minimal amount of light power, that two of them are needed just for that.
thats all just a guess on my part.
it could be that the light is just not bright enough for that coral?? im not an expert on that light, so i will let someone else talk about that, butr looking at the description of that light in a long bar version, the description says to use two of them just for low light sps, which would leave me to believe that, just to get an sps that requires minimal amount of light power, that two of them are needed just for that.
thats all just a guess on my part.
I have the light on full power I lowered it to 80 percent cuase the zoas were closing at around 7pm and it caused to much algae, no others corals have closed and have actually opened up more and grown,
 

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I forgot the name it’s a hard coral with big polyps I saw is was closing slowly yesterday thought it was irritated today none of the polyps are out, did a water change yesterday, no corals are around it. I dose calcium regularly. Help
image.jpg
Looks like lephastrea and some things that will cause this:
Too close to sandbed and irritated by sand
High salinity
High alk
low calclcium
High phosphate
High nitrate
Cyano or dino
Lack of flow
lack of light
 

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