Begginner soft corals?

in nature im sure things like that happen all the time to coral theyll be fine

 

Thank you guys. I'm having some trouble with my new Xenia though. I brought it home on monday and they polyps have not opened yet. I thought it was no big deal since my zoas didnt open up fully until like 2 days later. But last night it looked like my Xenia has "shriveled" up. The polyps(hand looking things) have closed up tighter than before and the stocks looks skinnier. It looks like the whole Xenia has just gotten smaller. Any ideas? I did another water change yesterday and water params seem fine. Thanks again.

 

Can you take any pictures? that would greatly help

Also you say your water params are fine just so we know what they are would you list them please.

 

what fish do you have in the tank? I had a button polyp that came on a piece of like rock and some zoas that were closed tight for a week then I got rid of my dwarf angel fish and it opend right up. so if any fish are nipping at them they will stay closed

 

Sure, I'll take some shots when I get home. Water params are ammonia-0, nitrite-0, and nitrate-20. Could it have anything to do with the fact that I'm still using tapwater in my system? I can't afford a RO unit right now, so do you think its a good idea to just buy water from the lfs for the time being?

i have 2 damsels, a clown, scooter blenny, and watchman goby. It doesn't look like anyone picks on them. The only problem I had at first was my scooter constantly crawling all over my zoas(free copods maybe? lol)


Thank you guys!

 

And what about kh? Xenias seem to be intolerant to low kh.

 

I currently don't have anything that I can test KH with, so that I'm not sure. But here are some pictures of my xenia right now.


I actually noticed some bald spots too. I don't know if its because they've retracted more, or if my hermit crab was eating them. i saw him on top of them earlier, so I took him down. But as you can see, the xenia looks very small and they're holding tight little fists.

The culprit?

 

They look to be hurting pretty bad... However i've had Xenia completely lose all the "hands" and regrow them before after a fish die/ammonia spike. Tap water could be the culprit as tap water can have a bunch of stuff in it that you can't test for. I was never able to grow coral for the longest time, stuff was always dieing even shrooms and leathers. Finally switched to RO and a regimented water change schedule, upgraded my weak lights, and its been smooth sailing ever since then. I can keep anything now without a problem.

How long has your tank been established what is your tank size/ equipment? Sorry if i missed it earlier in the thread...

 

I dont have an ro/di filter either but i just buy premixed saltwater from my lfs and i buy 1 gallon jugs of RO water from the grocery store for top off water. My LFS sells RO/DI water for like 35 cents a gallon too, I dont know why i dont buy it from there, id save alot of money. but yeah id definatly start using that instead of tap water. you will have a bad algae problem too with tap

 

Thanks again guys. My tank is a 20gal and has been around for about 5 months. It has 25lbs of live sand, 20lbs live rock, Aquaclear 30 with carbon and foam, octopus bh100, koralia nano 425 and a marineland doublebright led fixture.

Also I'm going to do a water change right now using RO water. I actually have the unit in my kitchen(for drinking) but its just very slow to produce the water. I can get about 3/4 of a gal and the tap will slow to a drip, so I have to let it sit for about half an hour before I refill again. I don't know how the drinking water filtration unit differs from the ones made for saltwater aquariums, but it seems very inconvenient.

Also can someone tell me what this growth on my live rock is? It looks like clear green rat turds stacked up on top of each other. Are they harmful?

the green stuff on the rock in the middle.