Purple monster letting go of life..

[hmmmmm]

Something weird going in with a purple monster frag I've had for a while. Never any issue, growing over the frag rack and great color. Now I'm losing polyps..

I saw 3 that slowly withered away and got very small, they had white mucus on them in the end, I tried to blow it off using a turkey baster, but that just evaporated them. So I'm thinking they were decomposing already. Now I'm seeing one that also got very small and is letting go of the frag plug.

Red is the polyp letting go, green is where is lost the 3 polyps in the last week. The other ones disappeared without me seeing it for myself.

From the top, looks like it spreading from right to left over the plug.

Her is a pic of the same frag maybe 2 months ago

Before it spreads any further I'm looking at options. Can find any pests on it, maybe dip anyway? Water parameters are always the same, because I'm changing roughly 30% every week, no changes to livestock filtration feeding etc. 7.8 alk, 40 no3, 0.1 po4 480 calc (yes running high nutrients but has been this way for over a year with great results).

I could frag it over multiple plugs and hope for the best. Dip it for pests. Maybe try some lugols iodine dip if it's an infection.

Any thoughts or advice?

 

[blaxsun]

You could dip it. Could also be coral warfare (you have lots of zoas in close proximity). Nice collection of zoas, btw!

 

[Zoa_Fanatic]

Zoa generally don’t fight zoa unless it’s Grandis. Mine completely melted and I left the plug in the tank. Three months later they’re growing back from a completely blank plug.

I don’t see anything near yours that should be fighting with them.

Sometimes zoa just melt for no reason FYI.

 

[Hooz]

I've had similar issues. A whole colony of Purple Hornets melted on me in 2 days. Was growing great for 4-5 months, then just started shrinking and disappearing.

About a week later I started seeing tiny Purple Hornets sprouting up on the same rock, about 2" away from where the colony used to be. Now I have about 7 polyps again.

Zoas are just weird sometimes.

 

[hmmmmm]

Go hard or go home I guess

Dipped it and gave it a quick h2o2 bath. No critters but saw the mind tricks next to it also shrinking, so I'm not taking the chance. Had good luck with h2o2 before