Polyp Problems

Alrighttttt, so everything is looking great and the fish are all active and happily feeding moderate feedings twice a day of dry in my new tank. It's a 75g bowfront that was up and running for a year in the previous owners house. I purchase it, transported everything to my place and voila!

This is the only thing I have some concern about and unfortunately it's on one of my favorite pieces of coral. This colony of button polyps has 10 of 25 little heads looking like they're dying. The owner said to leave them and just see how they do. The strange thing is that the heads that look like they're dying are still reactive to feeding, light, water flow, etc etc. What exactly is going on here? If they are dying should I remove the entire colony from the tank? Is there a way I should remove the "dead" looking heads?

My Little Ocean - Day 3 by Emilio Ciccarelli | www.TWOLITREmedia.com, on Flickr

As a general question about corals and this one as well..this may be very noobish but it's important I ask, when corals "die" can they toxify the tank like when a fish dies and you don't take it out quick enough or does dead coral just turn to it's hard rock form?

Thanks in advance

 

If that is a current picture of the zoas I would say they look perfectly fine. If there are any that you think are dyeing can u post a pic of that one head, but as a whole they look fine.
If you’re worried you could always dip the coral in coral-rx. It will kill of any zoa eating slugs on the coral.

 

You must not be seeing the dead looking polyp heads in the photo?
This is a current photo.

Theres the nice flourishing orange ones which are great, but look closer and you will see the greyed out, dead looking ones.

Thanks!

 

Those greyish ones that are open? Those look healthy. They just look like a different type.

 

Oh snap really? Haha, they don't fully close up the same, nor do they look "full of life" though. Hmmmmmm. I believe the entire thing was orange zoas when the tank was at the previous owners house but I could be wrong. Now looking at them in a different light maybe they are just purpleish zoas?

These corals also just recently went through a transportation, could it have shocked them? Should I try to dip them?

 

They look perfectly healthy to me. I have never seen polyps just "change color" and those look like healthy polyps. Maybe those weren't open at the previous owners place? Maybe they just like you more!

 

Agreed,no problem,just a different type,so it's actually a plus.

 

I have been told that button polyps can be extremely dangerous for the owner to have in a tank due to their toxins they can secrete. I just heard a horror story about a guy who was washing some off a rock in hot water and they're toxins were released into the vapor. The man later began bleeding from orfices, and was paralyzed for three days.

These types of things wives tales or should I be aware of this?

 

That is somewhat true. The secretion is very toxic but I have never heard of anyone nearly dying from "vapor". I did have a buddy get some in his eye and his eye was swollen for about 2 weeks. Don't get any in a cut or in your eye.

 

^ I heard cuts are surely important to keep an eye on.
Is there a certain type of tank safe latex or something I can put on if I plan on handeling these things?

(K+) by the way for anyone in this thread helping for sure. Thanks!