So... I need a little help with my branching frogspawn.
Here it is in all of its glory (apologies for the bad pic):
When this picture was taken, the colony measured 14" left to right, 8" top to bottom, and 10" front to back. I obtained the colony when it had only 4 polyps in September 2002. The polyps are impossible to count given the density of the tissue. Since that time I have fragged it multiple times. As it has grown over the years, polyps toward the bottom of the colony have withered away when they became fully shaded or enveloped by other polyps. This, of course, is "nature taking its course."
However, in the past few weeks I have been losing polyps at an alarming rate. The loss is occurring from the bottom up. In other words, only the bottom-most polyps are dying. Unfortunately, after they've died, the "new" bottom-most polyps begin to retract their tissue and perish, typically in a matter of 2-3 days. This is most troubling given the 4+ years of problem-free success I've had with this critter.
My digicam is out of juice and I'm recharging the batteries overnight. I will post pictures tomorrow evening of some of the damage.
I've only ever lost one Euphyllia colony (a torch) in its entirety - and that was to brown jelly disease. The other Euphyllia (a hammer) in the aquarium (along with everything else) is still thriving. These polyps, the ones that are perishing, appear disease/parasite free.
In a later post, I will post water parameters (not that it matters a whole lot in this case, since this Euphyllia could probably grow fine in a cesspool) along with a list of what I suspect may have catalyzed the recent polyp loss. But for now, I'm going to preserve the mystery NOT for the hell of it but to prevent "priming" anyone's brain and freezing it up from giving some real answers/clues/experiences. This is such a bizarre case since it's been such a prolific colony.
So, my question is this: has anyone else experienced what I dub "bottom to top" death of a Euphyllia colony, and why?
Many thanks for the help folks,
Pete
