Stirring up trouble?

ezdive

New member
Hello all,
My little one was play with the magnet cleaner on the tank last night and by the time I noticed what she was doing, she had stirred up much of the sand that was on the bottom portion of the glass. What I noticed next is that many of the polyps on my acros were extended. Much more so than I have seen them before.

My question is this. Is this a good thing? Should we be occasionally be mixing things up on the bottom to get some of the nutrients and micro-critters into the water column for the corals to have an additional source of food? I wouldn't recommend for anyone to just mix up the whole bottom of the tank but maybe just a little every week or so.

Opinions?
 
Funny thing that you say that.... i was going to switch out my downdraft skimmer and put the normal one back in system and it was skimerless for a few days and everything was more extended and about 20% larger. Maybe we are taking too much nutrients out of the water...? Any time i go diving the ocean isn't exactly nutrient poor and crystal clear.... who knows! I was just thinking a couple days ago about trying out a skimmerless nano with a large refugium.
 
I do regularly stir and somewhat clean my sandbed weekly or so.
The answer IMO is yes.
Plus a couple of sandsifting gobies also take care of a lot of the work.
Shoulkd not b an issue in an established well skimmied tank, with adequate amounts of LR.
 
It's very hard to tell if things are doing well from polyp extension. Ii have a friend who has a couple of acros in his tank under T-5 lights. He and I bought from Reef Life when they were doing the fragstravaganza. We have the same acros. His extend beyond belief. Huge polyps. Mine hardly come out at all but we are both seeing growth. I run MH over my tank. The reaction from the the polyps was what sparked my curiosity. He also has a red slime problem and I don't. Nutrients in the water?

Perhaps I will experiment a little. Do some before and after kind of stuff.
 
IME, polyp extension may just mean they're struggling to reach the light source. When I had PC lights, my Xenia were long and slender. When I switched to T5, they were more compacted and thicker. Then they went BA-BING!!! and started spreading like crazy.

The temporary murkiness may have caused the polyps to reach out.

Stirring up the sand bed is a good news/bad news kind of thing. Good it can release micro-critters into the water column for fish/corals to enjoy. Bad it can release nitrates and other nasties trapped in there. I do it anyway.
 
its more likely they were trying to catch food particles when you stirred up the sand bed.

theres no harm in stirring things up a little bit, just dont go more then 1/2" or so, especially if your running a DSB. you could release some nasties.


ezdive, have you looked CLOSELY for redbugs by chance in your tank?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10459404#post10459404 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by gasman059
that's a hard pill to swallow.

I agree with Manny, I have corals 12 to 15 inches directly under a 250 MH with incredible polyp extension.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10459571#post10459571 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Fish2reef
I agree with Manny, I have corals 12 to 15 inches directly under a 250 MH with incredible polyp extension.

OK, that just PROVES that after 5 years, I still don't know d**k. :dance:
 
Hey pedro not at all. I know more today than i did yesterday but in general there's just way too many variables realted to reefkeeping and polyps are one of the most clear cut signs of acro health.
 
wanna see PE check out Rogger's Millis. They're hairy bastards. I've even got frags of stuff from his tank and I don't see much PE, however I think it's because I've got angels and the coral polyps know better than to have PE while the angels are awake :p
 
What your doing is basically the same as how the Blu Coral Method works. That clean water is good but corals need nutrients to really grow well.

The issue you might have is the same that ppl who try the blu method have. If you don’t have enough to get the nutrients out after a few hours then you start having the algae blooms and degrading water quality and now you have bigger problems than you started out with.

I did notice much better growth with the method and my water quality stayed well within prams but that was with good skimming, plenty of LR and water changes.
 
Bawla,
No I have not but now that you mention it, I will take a looksee.
I stirred up the sand bed yesterday and did not see much difference in the corals. I heard (in a seminar from Anthony Calfo) that corals get about 30% what they need from light and the other 70% from the water. Polyp extension could be because they are starving or just feeding. Corals that get too much light (and who among us really knows how much is too much) they may retract, relying on the zoozanthelae to feed them. I know that they get alot also from absorbing things from the water column too, through their "skin", free floating amino acids and other compounds found in seawater which is one reason I also dose that.
The colors in my corals are nothing to complain about and the growth is, I guess good (I can tell differences almost every day in them). It is just too hard to tell if they don't extend because they don't need to or because there just isn't enough in the water column to bother coming out for.
 
mine have almost no polyp extention but they are still growing. So mine are feeding too. (I think) Makes me jealous though, Gasman, I wish mine would do the same. I think acros look so much nicer with their polyps out.
 
EZ maybe u are dealing with a pest. U have a camera with macro lens take a couple of pics.
How about your flow?
A couple of pics of midday polyps.
IMG_5559.jpg
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Gasman, Very Possible. I will look into it but I don't have a macro. I'll try with the digital and see if I can get anything
 
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