paly questions

[squishifishi]

I Got some new red/green palys the other day. A few of the heads are dead looking(how do you tell if they are dead?) and some others are missing sections of the skirt. I suspect there may be a predator of some sort in the rock. Also, the rock is kind of big for mytank. so, Can I peel or remove the coral from the rock and put it on one of my existing rocks? how is this done? thank you!

 

[squishifishi]

Hah! I found what I think to be the predator! (hopefully it is the only one...) it is a little tan centipede-looking worm with whiskers on its head. it glides along or if it comes off of the glass into the water it swims in a squiggling motion until it finds a surface. I know it was in the paly rock because I saw it's light head a few times at night when I could not make out what it was. It ventured onto theglass today so I siphoned it out and put it in acup to observe. it is very fast. any ideas what it may be?
anyways, I would still like to remove that bulky rock, so how do I safely remove the palys?
thanks!

 

[squishifishi]

ok, I did it! some of them I was just able to peel up. others I had to take a chisel and hack around the base to loosen the clump of polyps. I don't think I did any damage to the actual polyps, but the connective tissuegot ripped in a few places and they broke apart so now I have about 5 pieces with 2-6 heads each. I spread them around the tank and it looks much better now. I hope they don't release to much palytoxin or whatever and kill the tank...I'm running carbon though so that should help. I'll do another wc tomorrow. will that be enough to deal with any possible toxins?
oh, and how can you tell if a polyp is dead?
thank you for any help/replies

 

[Beandawg]

how can you tell if a polyp is dead?

It will melt if it is dead. If there is any piece that is closed up, they can be saved.

 

[MediTank]

what I usually do when I want growth out of polyps is to take a frag and circle it with other empty frag plugs, the mat will quickly "creep" onto the other plugs... then you simply cut the mat, severing the 2 frag plugs..... be careful while doing this as many zoas and palys can have a very powerful toxin that does have the potential to kill if exposed to large doses