Poor Polyp Extension

[Aquattro]

Do they extend at all when you feed the tank? I never figured out why my old tank was like that either, but with the new tank, every coral is extended full time. I believe it's water quality parameters we can't/don't measure, maybe disolved organic compounds. Is your skimmer pulling lots of crap? My collection cup gets about 2 inches of gunk every week, and that's with 4 fish, minimal feeding and a bare bottom. You should probably get at least that much in the skimmer.
Other things might be flow, I have tons of flow this time around. Lighting I don't think would contibute, but not sure how to verify that. My temp is stable now, maybe that helps?

[Jaws]

My skimmer has not been performing very well lately. I'm not actually sure if it's because I'm feeding very little lately or because it's just not functioning properly. I believe the skimmer wasn't set up properly for the first three or four months that the tank was set up so when I finally did get it set up properly I would get two inches + every 3 or 4 days. I was battling a lot of hair algae at the time too which I'm sure was as a result of poor skimming. It was pulling out that much for a month or two but has slowed way down now and the hair algae is all gone. I've also cut back on my feeding for the time being. I feed once a day in smaller quantities until I can verify everything is stable for a while. The polyps do fully extend on most of my corals when I feed at night with the exception of a couple less healthy ones. I notice polyps come out a little more when the MH's shut off at night too and just the actinics are on. My temperature is usually pretty stable at around 78 but has got up to around 82 a couple days this summer but not very often. I have most definitely seen my flame and coral beauty angels pick at corals from time to time but usually at the base of the coral and never concentrating on just one. If I watched the tank for 2 hours they might nip at 4 different corals in total and spend the rest of their time picking at the rocks and glass. I just added two Vortechs to the system so I'll see if that helps the flow too. I'm not sure how quickly they should respond but it's been 4 days and I haven't noticed any difference. Thanks for your comments guys. Keep em coming.

[marie]

I would suspect the fish . My sps corals only opened at night when I had my flame angel. They were still healthy and had lots of growth, they just didn't open their polyps up during the day.

[muck]

Im assuming you are talking about polyp extension from acropora. (or other SPS) Check your corals for Red Bugs. I had poor polyp extension from when I had Red Bugs last year. Soon as I nuked em the corals started to extend their polyps a lot more. You will have to check really really close as they are super dupper tiny.