I will never fully understand this hobby...

[Animal-Chin]

No matter how long I do this I'll never totally get it. I had this gorgeous colony of red blastos 2 days ago. Noticed a couple of days ago half of the polyps were not coming out, looked sick, not right. Yesterday got home from work, totally dead, NO tissue at all.

In 2 days it went from fully extended big puffy heads to a skeleton.

Tank parameters are totally in check, everything else in there is looking fantastic.


Why does this happen? Grrrrr!!!!!


Sorry just venting.

[Potatohead]

Did something eat it?

[Animal-Chin]

No idea. I hope not. :sad:

[albert_dao]

Got any Euphyllia?

Sometimes they shed tentacles and other corals catch them and eat them. Then they die.

[Animal-Chin]

Ya I do, it was close to chalice too, maybe the chalice stung it?

[corpusse]

Ya I do, it was close to chalice too, maybe the chalice stung it?

I recently lost a blasto as well with another one just a few inches away. It was indeed a chalice that took it out, but could not reach the other one. While it extends feeder tentacles every night / morning. In the middle of the night they extend way further then any other time.

[Animal-Chin]

Ugh...maybe thats it. Freakin coral....lol

[TimT]

I had a huge Chalice that would send out 4" sweepers. Favia also do this. Chalice also feed using a mucous net. If that gets blown off the chalice it can cause problems for anything it lands on.

I agree with Albert on the Euphyllia tentacles breaking off when they're disturbed, as well the polyp will sometimes bail out. Polyp bail out happens with Pocillopora too.

Anemones are known to spit out mucous bundles.

Any of those things would kill an LPS polyp if it tried to ingest it. If one or two polyps die it can take out the whole colony.

[Dearth]

I recently had a similar thing happen I had a good sized colony of fuzzy green mushrooms with around 30 heads I saw one looking unhealthy no big deal happened before but then in a space of 24 hours I lost almost the entire colony I have 4 heads that survived definitely unhappy but alive nothing else in the tank was affected it is very strange what happens in our tanks sometimes

[Myka]

I think often-times we just don't see what happened. Such as feeder tentacles, mucus balls, etc. It's frustrating.

[Cujo#31]

We chase a goal, a dream, a vision. Sometimes things don't work the way we imagine they should. Its what we get, and what we can expect when we try to "play god" with mother nature in our own little oceans. Nothing is ever perfect, and we have very little warning often, so very little opportunity to correct a situation. Hey....it's reefing. It ain't easy. If it was easy everyone would be doing it. If everyone is doing it, where is the fun in that? I like a challenge. And we all have to have a bit of "that special kind of crazy" to get ourselves into this hobby and endure.