What makes yumas melt away.

[The Beaut]

I had this brilliant pink yuma, kept it in the shade, melted away. Just got a rock with about 15 yumas on it. So I tried a minor experiment. Broke the rock into various pieces, placed the pieces in various areas of my tank. Shade, bright light, low flow, high flow and even in my fuge. So far most have melted away, have about 6 left. As you can see in my gallery my Fl rics and the one large pink and green yuma are doing fine. I have come to the conlusion it has to be temperature. My tank is at a constant 82 degrees. I think yumas are collected deaper and thus come from colder waters.Please let me know if anyone else has had the same experience. It would be a shame to have people keep buying them if they are just going to die.

 

[jman77]

Some people say the temp is the cause,,,,some people say the light,,,, others the current ...some the stress of collection.... others that they are dyed ....

take a pick ..

 

[Mr. Ugly]

What temp are you running your tank?

 

[Sk8r]

Also watch your alkalinity. Try an alk of 8.3 and a calcium level of 400. That will steady your ph and generally not irritate anything.

 

[Azurel]

I have had 7 pink varities of these dang things and countless colonies melt on me in all differant locations just like you....I personally think it is an infection that end up getting them....I can tell just by looking at a Yuma now if it is going to make it or not....I don't even bother with them any more....Unfortunate too because they are my favorite mushroom...Never had an issue with Florida ricordea.

 

[The Beaut]

Yeah, really frustrating.There is only three left now. I have some so called difficult to keep corals in my tank, no problem. But these yumas are getting the better of me. The large pink one i have is a very different shape to the other yumas i have had, almost like a mini carpet anenome, very large for a mushroom . It is doing great as well as the Fl rics. I wont buy regular yumas again.

 

[All Delight]

some of the ones I have don't melt away, but they get the gaping mouth with brown crap coming out. Then they fade and die. Its always with new ones, so I think it's collection and too intense lighting. Most of my successful yumas came from tanks that had pc lighting. I'm very weary of buying them from a tank with MH lighting especially if the light is too intense.

 

[redFishblue]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7567649#post7567649 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Azurel
....I can tell just by looking at a Yuma now if it is going to make it or not....I don't even bother with them any more....

What are the signs, in your experience, that they are not going to make it?

 

[adtravels]

I had all but one of mine melt until I got My alk calc mg balance within acceptable parameters
ie alk 2.5-4 meq/l
calc 350-450ppm
mg1260-1400ppm

Then they recovered and grew back they also seem to like a little nitrate

 

[redFishblue]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7593157#post7593157 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by adtravels

Then they recovered and grew back they also seem to like a little nitrate

Why do you think they like nitrates?

 

[kass03]

I have nitrates in my tank and have green yumas that do great and have babies and also alot of Florida rics Ive had for over a year that multiply.

I tried red yumas and blue yumas and they melted. They looked great at the store so it's got me baffled. My temp is'nt usually over 80 either.
Same as you I tried several places for the yumas starting at the bottom but they melted within 2 weeks.
I did have 1 green yuma that bleached when I got it but it came back and is beautifull now and had a baby.
I have T5 lighting.

kass

 

[The Beaut]

Update, all i have left now are a few little bumps of what used to be nice big yumas. My Fl rics are still doing great. My super large pink ric which is very different looking to other pink yumas i have seen, is also doing great. So thats it for me, no more yumas.

 

[BrokkenTWolf]

I don't believe that temperature alone is the key - perhaps something in your tank is waging chemical warfare against your yumas? I keep mine at 82 degrees along with some ricordea florida and look:

<IMG SRC="http://www.critter.net/~brokken/orangeyuma.jpg">

When I first started keeping rics and yumas it was very touch and go. I lost several specimens. But once they took hold, they ALL started doing very well. Here are my observations regarding yumas and rics:

1. They don't seem to do very well in solitary. They seem to thrive best when there are other conspecifics in the tank.
2. They don't mind seem to mind laminar flow - so long as it's not too strong
3. I believe that once there's a number of them in the tank, they probably release compounds into the water that makes the tank more favorable to other corallimorpharians. Hence my slow balance from zoanthid-dominated tank to corallimorpharian-dominated.

 

[The Beaut]

I wish i knew what it was. You can see in my gallery i have about 25 Fl rics, doing great. I am not going to keep buying them just to see if i can get them to live. I have an extremely healthy tank with really good growth out of all my corals. Its to too bad because they are definately one of the most colorful corals around. Congrats to those who can keep them. I just dont like killing anything.

 

[Me No Nemo]

I have lots of them under 10K 250 watt MH, and 10K MH, and one under PC lighting. They are in a 90 gallon, a 125 gallon and a 12 gallon, in one tank with a low nitrate reading and another without. All are doing very well. The only things I can think of are decent flow and slowly acclimating them into the higher light. The yumas are growing alongside FL rics and I've had about 50 pass through my store in the past couple of months with only one loss, and that one came in completely white and never came back. I feed Coral Vibrance and Phycopure plus cyclopeez twice a week. My opinion is that they need the slow acclimation and feedings. GL...hope you find what works. Marcye

 

[All Delight]

My temp is a low of 80 and goes upwards to 83.

 

[catdoc]

I was about to give up on keeping yumas and floridas b/c they'd slowly melt away. We're talking over several days/weeks, they'd slowly wither away. It took several months and all but one remaining yuma before I found out why. The problem was only occurring in my tank at work. I'm usually only there in the daytime. One evening, I happened to check in on the tank after dark with a flashlight and spotted a predator feasting on my yuma! It was a fireworm, he got away that night. I made a bristleworm trap and tried again a few days later. As I was getting ready to place the trap, the monster was found feasting on my rbta. I didn't even need the trap b/c when they're feeding, they're so attached to their prey that they CAN'T disengage to escape.

It took several months for the surviving yuma to recover, I just put it back in the display tank today (it's been recovering in my frag tank, then I just forgot about it!).

Predatory fireworms are rare, but it's worth checking late at night (several hours after lights out was my experience.). Supposedly these worms will hunt in the daytime too, but I only saw it at night.