Paly not opening all the way

[feixjai]

I acquired this paly Friday, and it seems to never want to open fully. All the other zoas and palys that I got from the pack opened up already, but this one would only open up to an oval shape. I picked this up from a reefer on Craigslist and should have only been in the little container for only about 4 hours, in room temperature surrounding.

I have a 15 gallon AGA with a 2 gallon HOB fuge with cheato
temps: 75 degrees
pH - 8.0
NO2, NO3, NH3 - 0 - undetectable
salinity - 1.024

For flow, I have an mp10 running at 80% short pulse
For lighting, I'm running 2 boostLED par30s (3b2w 40 degree optics) and a warehouse LED (6b6w 30 degree optics, RB at full blast, and W dimmed to approximately 10%) .

I dose Aquavitro's Fuel 2 days a week, and do water changes about once a week. The only inhabitants of the tank is a 1 inch angler and a skunk cleaner shrimp. Here's a picture:

It also seems a little bleached comparing to the pictures of the this paly I've seen online.

The last paly I had that wouldnt open fully eventually just stopped opening and turned brown. Its the paly that you see above the polyp in the picture. Could it be that while gluing the frag, a little of the super glue touched the polyp. The polyp is attached to a little piece of tile so the glue wasnt directly on the polyp

What are the chances of bringing it back?

Thanks for your time and help

- Henry

 

[RokleM]

The picture is very hard to see, but it looks like your assumption is correct. It looks like a freshly cut and glued single polyp, likely with glue on the flesh itself. There isn't a ton you can do other than let it go and see how it does.

IMO, temp is a little low for my liking, but that's neither here or there and depends on what all you're keeping.

 

[feixjai]

Here's a slightly better picture:

Would it be helpful if I were to try to feed it meaty foods? Or would it cause more stress on it, because of the possibility that it doesnt want to eat or the cleaner shrimp crawls all over it?

Turns out the 75 degrees is the temperature of the bottom of the HOB fuge. The tank is actually around the 80s.

BTW, thanks for the help RokleM.

 

[kichimark]

Just give it some time. IMO I would not try to feed it in this state. It does looked stressed probably because it is a fresh cut and the whole situation of being in a different tank.

 

[XSharkboyX]

Just give it some time. IMO I would not try to feed it in this state. It does looked stressed probably because it is a fresh cut and the whole situation of being in a different tank.

+1 Its always a huge risk buying fresh cut frags dude. 1 polyp frags are destined for doom my friend. All you can do at this point is wait and see what happens. Do not move it around.
For future reference ask to see the frags first. If there isnt any coraline on the plug/rock and the glue looks bigger than the frag, it was just cut. Stay away. I would personally never buy less than 10 polyps at a time... But thats just me. btw from the pic it looks like a zoanthid not a palythoa.

 

[feixjai]

Thanks for the reply guys. I actually bought a couple of frags and it all came glued at separate locations on the white plug you see on the bottom left of the picture. I was expecting all the frags to be on individual plugs, that's why I had to remove them and re-glue them on separate plugs. Luckily under the polyps were still pretty decent sized pieces of tile and rock, so hopefully relocating them wasnt too much stress on them. I was also told that this was an adult, so hopefully it'll be able to pull through.

Ill be sure to ask for pictures next time and staying away from single polyp frags.

Thanks again!

- Henry

 

[RokleM]

The one in the bottom left still looks fresh anyway, so the point is still valid.

IMO, in the future I would recommend either giving them time to recover before starting to cut them off the disk and re-gluing. Your other alternative is to cut the disk itself into multiple pieces, gluing that to larger disks or rock, minimizing stress to the polyps/mat itself.