glalderman
New member
When I got home from work Tuesday one of my large colonies of Zoa's was looking very weird...had about a 1" line of closed polyps near the center of the colony that traversed the entire colony...
Was trying to figure out what was causing this...did notice that my Xenia was stretching out in front of a PH and might be blowing across and touching the polyps...but didn't think that would hurt...anyway it has been getting worse the past 2 day and I was just about ready to pull the colony out and put into my nearly empty frag tank to see if it was some kind of toxin from another coral (although nothing close to it that stings??)
Well...got looking at my light hood (250w DE MH) and saw that the plate that holds the moon lights had slid over about 1/4" when I had the hood off to work on the tank Monday...and yep...right under that 1/4" gap was my damaged Zoa's...unreal what UV rays will do...I fixed the gap and within a couple of hours the closed polyps have started to re-open...I am hoping for a full recovery...here is a picture of the damage...as you can see they are starting to already open again on the far right side...
Feel very badly about giving my Zoa's a "sunburn"...
Before UV exposure:
After UV exposure...
Anyway...just wanted others to see the effect of accidental UV exposure to coral...So make sure you keep those DE MH bulbs behind glass...without any gaps!
Greg
Was trying to figure out what was causing this...did notice that my Xenia was stretching out in front of a PH and might be blowing across and touching the polyps...but didn't think that would hurt...anyway it has been getting worse the past 2 day and I was just about ready to pull the colony out and put into my nearly empty frag tank to see if it was some kind of toxin from another coral (although nothing close to it that stings??)
Well...got looking at my light hood (250w DE MH) and saw that the plate that holds the moon lights had slid over about 1/4" when I had the hood off to work on the tank Monday...and yep...right under that 1/4" gap was my damaged Zoa's...unreal what UV rays will do...I fixed the gap and within a couple of hours the closed polyps have started to re-open...I am hoping for a full recovery...here is a picture of the damage...as you can see they are starting to already open again on the far right side...
Feel very badly about giving my Zoa's a "sunburn"...
Before UV exposure:
After UV exposure...
Anyway...just wanted others to see the effect of accidental UV exposure to coral...So make sure you keep those DE MH bulbs behind glass...without any gaps!
Greg
