Trachyphylia behaviour.

[WhiteTang]

Hi!

I have bought a trachyphylia 1,5 year ago.
The coral was one of my nicest looking and it would display a fantastic shapeshifting behaviour.
From total flat to cone and then "inside out" with feeding tentacles extended!

After the summer I had my tank going downhill and battling algae, so I did a "restart".

The coral has totally changed behaviour since then. It has stopped the shape shifting and keeps only one "classic" form. It has not extended feeding tentacles for over 3 months and just inflates its flesh during daytime and "shrivels" during the night.

My system, a 16g IM Nuvo tank, has been super clean after the restart I did 4 months ago. I hand feed the 2 clowns only as much as they eat so no food is rotting. Seachem Matrix is running in the sump for extra bio filtration plus a pouch of purigen and a mix of activated carbon / phosguarg.
I also have a MAME airstone skimmer.

Is it possible that my water is just too clean for the LPS?

 

[ZeeSparrow]

Have you tried directly feeding it?

 

[SaltyWalter]

Yes, very possible that you cleaned too much out of the tank and it's no longer an ecosystem that it used to be.

Please clarify what a 'restart' means, exactly what did yiu do? Just becasue there is algae shouldn't require shutting a tank down, there are options to get rid of it without starting over

 

[WhiteTang]

Yes, very possible that you cleaned too much out of the tank and it's no longer an ecosystem that it used to be.

Please clarify what a 'restart' means, exactly what did yiu do? Just becasue there is algae shouldn't require shutting a tank down, there are options to get rid of it without starting over

What I did was to replace the sandbed with new live sand and all of my ugly rocks with 2 fresh live rock that I bought from the LFS.
In my sump I had a lot of seachem Matrix which I also took out and gave it a thorough clean. (I shaked em in fresh saltwater to get rid of detritus buildup). That is a new routine. Cleaning more often the biofilter.

I also moved back to weekly 20% water change. Something I should have never stopped doing but I got carried away when I listened to other people here on RC, saying that 20% is too much and all I do is spend salt. And I have stopped overfeeding.

This is my first saltwater tank and it has been a very nice ride. I just didn't have tha patience to battle algae. Also its a nano tank. It cost me so little money to change the sand and buy new rock it was a no brainer.

I will try out kalkwasser in my ATO now. Hoping to have some stable params to successfully keep some SPS.

I have done a ton of research and I was between balling method & kalk in ATO. Although balling is a more "pro" method with great success I think kalk would be more suitable for my system.

anyhow.

Back to topic. I started spot feeding the trachyphylia. It did respond and seems to eat all 3-4 pieces of mysis that I gave her. I will keep spot feeding the little coral for the next 2 months once a week to see if that has any positive changes.