Problems With Yellow Polyps

[Guitarmasta37]

About a month or two ago, I got a colony of yellow polyps. They were doing great up until a few weeks ago when I compared pictures of my tank when I first got them and realized they had been slowly dissapearing... All my water parameters are good, I have a hammer coral that's doing great, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Anyone have any ideas? Is it normal for yellow polyps to just dissapear?

Before -

Now -

Also, the color seems to have darkened a little bit. The polyps that are still there seem just as health as they were at the beginning. I'm not sure what the deal is...

 

[frozenreefer]

do a full test of all water perams and post them it might shed alot more light on the problem

 

[Guitarmasta37]

Salinity - 1.024
pH - 8.1
Alkalinity - 2.5 meq/l
Amonia - 0
Nitrates - 0-10ppm ish
Nitrites - 0

I'm gonna go get it retested tomorrow, I can't remember what exactly the alkalinity was. that may be a tad off

 

[jhentr]

I don't have luck with yellow polyps either. Some people consider it a nuisance. For me, it's not, kinda like some people can grow xenias while others can't. Mines isn't growing nor dieing. It's just hanging around.

60 gallon shallow- 4 T5's.

 

[purge43]

I cant keep yellow polys or xenia's either, but i can keep and grow some of the more difficult sps's , so go figure.

 

[Toddrtrex]

Would raise your salinity to 1.026.

What fish do you have in your tank?

 

[Guitarmasta37]

i'll give that a shot

hopefully i can be one of the people that can grow em decent, haha

I've got 2 true perc clowns, a flame hawkfish, firefish, and a coral beauty. I spend a good amount of time working on or watching the tank, and the coral beauty has never even touched any of my corals, so I highly doubt it's messing with them.
I have found random polyps closed up in the sand though, so I'm wondering if they're just not adhering to the rock like they should be?

 

[KSzegi]

I'm by no means an expert but will say that my yellow polyps are finally going crazy. I notice that you have yours down on the sand now ... maybe try increasing the light? I had a small colony of them that was 'just there' for several months ..... they finally took off when I put them in an area with higher light (I have them about 1/2 way up a 24" deep tank under 175MH) and higher flow. They are also situated in an area where food particles drift by at each fish feeding time ..... and I target feed them at least once a week. I had never realized that they would be such meat eaters!! The only other thing that I did that seemed to help considerably was start adding some iodine each week. I would test first before doing that of course, but I do feel it made a big difference.

 

[Guitarmasta37]

awesome, i'll give that a shot
they were just moved down there while I was doing maintnance on the tank, so i'll try putting them back up
what exactly do you feed them when spot feeding?

thanks for the info!
also, whats a good target level for alkalinity and stuff? I'm still fairly new to corals, so i'm still learning. I've only had the set up about 6 months. So far I haven't lost a single fish, and the yellow polyps are really the only thing giving me trouble

 

[rogersb]

When I had them they were in high light and growing like weeds. They also liked to be fed. I had to get rid of them and ended up using a lot of putty to cover their bases because they were killing sps. Just be careful where you put them.