Duncan only extends at night

[Acros]

This Duncan has been in my tank for a month now. It extends a little bit every night, but retracts when the lights come on. Any idea what’s happening here?

None of my frags are doing great. This one and a favia are doing the worst. Tank is a little over 5 month old 29g bare bottom setup. I started with a mix of dry rock and live rock (at least I thought it was live), added sand to sump about 2 weeks back. I have very minimal coralline algae growth.

light: XR15 G5 Blue running AB+ at 50%

Alk: 8.4
pH: 8.0
Calc: 470
Mag: 1470
Nitrate: 5 (was lower than this for the longest time)
Phosphate: 0.187 (was 0.03 until a few weeks back)
Salinity: 1.025

 

[Acros]

I extends enough to come out of the skeleton and show its tentacles at night.

 

[Acros]

It has extended ever so slightly now. Anyone? Any idea what I should test for?

 

[Sabmanj72]

It's probably your lighting.

I put mine in the sand and with the blue light It closed up and when I lowered the lighting and changed it to white it opened back up.

I also feed reef riods ?

 

[Sabmanj72]

Also might be to high up and flow , they like to be lower down and mild to moderate flow

 

[Acros]

I tore down that tank and rehome everything. The LFS was able to revive that Duncan.

OMG that tank was a dry rock bare bottom disaster. I couldn’t keep mushrooms happy after 5 months of ‘maturity’. I couldn’t really figure out what was wrong with that tank.

Anyway, I started a new tank with live rock from gulfliverock.com and couldn’t be happier. I can keep SPS now.

 

[rona2035]

I would move it lower and then gradually move it up if the bottom isn’t your desired spot.

 

[Sabmanj72]

I've always used live sand and live rock never had an issue

 

[Sabmanj72]

My duncan at the bottom of the tank

 

[Alexopora]

This Duncan has been in my tank for a month now. It extends a little bit every night, but retracts when the lights come on. Any idea what’s happening here?

None of my frags are doing great. This one and a favia are doing the worst. Tank is a little over 5 month old 29g bare bottom setup. I started with a mix of dry rock and live rock (at least I thought it was live), added sand to sump about 2 weeks back. I have very minimal coralline algae growth.

light: XR15 G5 Blue running AB+ at 50%

Alk: 8.4
pH: 8.0
Calc: 470
Mag: 1470
Nitrate: 5 (was lower than this for the longest time)
Phosphate: 0.187 (was 0.03 until a few weeks back)
Salinity: 1.025

I know it has already been rehomed but just incase you do decide to try duncans again. Its probably your lights. Start your duncans on the sandbed and monitor its behaviour. If it doesnt retract when the lights are on, you may try gradually relocating it to your desired spot in the rockscape.

 

[Acros]

I was under the impression that a single XR15 G5 Blue running at 50% won’t be a lot of light in a 29g standard tank. Looks like it was too much light. My flow was high as well.

My new tank is an IM25 and the light is now running at 85%. The tank only has SPS.

 

[Acros]

I would like to add some LPS to the tank, but could not find any that tolerates high light and medium to high flow. This is a very shallow tank.