Fireworks Clove Polyp Help

[gabom234]

I'm not sure if this is something that can be figured out with just pictures, but I have had this fireworks clove polyp for a couple of months now. It has recently, maybe as of 3 or 4 weeks ago, started struggling. A couple of the smaller ones turned white and died out completely, now there are several of the larger ones that have closed up and become elongated as can be seen in the pictures. I'm really not sure what could be causing this, since they were doing fine for the first month or so. It currently sits in a part of the rock that receives around 100 par, and what I would consider medium to high flow. I am considering moving it to a different spot, but I'm not sure if I should move it somewhere with more/less light or more/less flow. Looking for any input and help before I just randomly swap it to see what happens. Thanks in advance. For what it's worth, my tank is about 6 months old, and I have a mix of softies, SPS and LPS including an acro, and everything else has been doing great so far. Thanks in advance.

 

[KrisReef]

“Elongated” typically means that they are stretching to get more light. Adding more light (turning up leds -slowly over time) or moving the polyps higher or out from the shadows can help.

 

[TX_REEF]

how long was it in place before it started struggling? What, if anything, changed between when it was happy and when it wasn't?

Some likely potential issues:

• sudden change in light or flow
• sudden change in nitrate or phosphate - do you test? what are you water parameters?

 

[gabom234]

I would say it was around 6 weeks where it was doing fine, started going south maybe 3 or 4 weeks ago. Around that same time, now that I'm thinking about it, I had a bunch of snails start dying. Before that my nitrates were always under 10, then around that time they started going up, to 13.5 at its highest. I've slowly been bringing them down over the last 4 weeks. I test weekly and this week my parameters were as follows:
Salinity: 1.025
Temp: 78
Nitrates 12
Phosphates: 0.02
Alk: 7.2
Calcium: 460

My alkalinity has been dropping slowly for the past couple of months to the point where I'm starting to really consider dosing alkalinity. Everything else has been steady, and I have not yet started testing Mag, which I'm also starting to consider testing just to be safe. So far, weekly 10% water changes seem to have everything doing well except for the snail die off and the firework clove polyp struggling.