Yellow polyps

ty_05_f

ty_05_f

Active Member
Hey everyone. I'm starting to have a problem. My yellow polyps were doing so well. Then all of a sudden they start dissapearing. Now only two are left and they are closed. What do you think could be eating them. I havent added anything new since at least a couple of months.
 
beth

beth

Administrator
Staff member
What do you have in the tank that might eat them? Is another coral getting too close to the yellows? [aggression?]
 
ty_05_f

ty_05_f

Active Member
nope there isnt any corals that close to them, and i havnt ever seen any of my fish pick at any corals. So i'm baffled
 
chinnyr

chinnyr

Member
I had camel shrimp devour my entire colony.Wait til your lights are off at night and peep in with a flashlight and see if anything is eating them.
 
ty_05_f

ty_05_f

Active Member
I had a peppermint shrimp. But he dissapeared too. They are noctournal i know but he/she would always be out for feeding time.:confused:
 
ty_05_f

ty_05_f

Active Member
They are positioned top middle. I'm thinking medium flow. I havnt moved them at all and they were reproducing so well having new buds all the time.
 
marvida

marvida

Member
I have experienced similar disappearing acts & this is what I think I found. First off I have always had peppermint shrimp with the yellow polyps and have never witnessed any predation. I have seen the polyps occasionally detach & drift away. I have read that yellow polyps, in the wild, are not found on pristine reefs. They are in some pretty turbid areas. Yellow polyps will eat, pound for pound, 10 times as much as any other coral I keep. My tanks are heavily skimmed with large amounts of LR. I have decided that when my polyps were disappearing it was because they were starving. Once I put them on a fairly aggressive feeding program they came back with a vengence.
Just my opinion. No real scientific research to back it up.
Ken
 
clarkiiboi

clarkiiboi

Active Member
Could you list your tank mates? It may be one of your fish, who knows, but worth a shot. And what you have added, if any, after the polyps. What about other inverts?
 
ty_05_f

ty_05_f

Active Member
I got the polyps for free from the lfs it only had a few on there so she told me how to get them to multiply and i had almost 12 polyps from the original 3-4. What i have added after them was almost all my corals. I could list them all if you want.
 
cincyreefer

cincyreefer

Active Member
They aren't being fed enough. Try feeding them brine shrimp or another meaty food and they should start spreading real well. They are photosynthetic, but don't get nearly enough glucose to rely on it.
 
ty_05_f

ty_05_f

Active Member
thats why they just completly dissapear?? Oh, but i do feed them. The last time i did was last week and i fed them two days straight with live brine shrimp.
 
ty_05_f

ty_05_f

Active Member
Just did a little night wathcing. there seems to be alot of what looks like pods around them. Also I saw what looked like small shrimp or monsterous pods.
 
cincyreefer

cincyreefer

Active Member
Well its possible that they could have been eaten, chemical warfare from a soft coral, or water quality... hard to say without knowing everything about the tank. But 9 times out of 10 they just aren't getting enough food, especially when they start to multiply and get into larger groups. I only fed mine once a week the first few weeks i had mine and they probably tripled. Then they started to shrivel up and disappear, so i started feeding them every other day and the population just keeps growing now with no recessions. So my guess would be lack of food, but it could be something else. HTH
 
ty_05_f

ty_05_f

Active Member
oh great i just saw a bristle worm. I don't think that would be the culpret b/c it was very small like an inch but very thin.
 
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