Green Star Polyps retreating and strange white film on live rock

[beachmutts]

I have 2 questions for all you enthusiastic reef tank keepers.

1) I have a piece of live rock with star polyps that have been flourishing for about 6 months. They actually were getting much healthier than when I got them. Lately though, the pink "skin" seems to be retreating in surface area on the rock and the polyps are smaller and many fewer are coming out than before.

I have noticed 2 things which concern me.

First, there appears to be at least a couple of types of algae starting to cover them. One is sort of dark green/brown. The other is a hair-like algae (I don't know the technical names).

Second, there are some 2 type of white worms which seem to be living under the pink skin. They stretch way out some times about 3 or 4 inches. One type looks like a piece of hair with little "bubbles" on the sides. The other type looks like a white strand with straigh bars sticking out the sides (and these are pretty short ones)

I have a 20 Gallon tank, 80 degrees, salinity 1.024, ph 8.2-8.4. I do weekly 2.5G water changes and monitor pollutants. The lights are on for about 10 hours per day. Everything seems very stable.

The other thing that bothers me is there is a sort of "white film" starting to cover some of the live rock and also parts of the star polyp rock.

This tank is about 18 months old and has been fairly stable.

Any suggestions on any of this would be greatly appreciated. ..I love my green star polyps...don't want to lose them.

P.S. I know this isn't supposed to happen but I have actually witnessed my male Clown snacking on the polyps. Never enough to acually set them back though.

Thanks,
Mike

[Buddha]

1) Cyano and Hair algae.

2) Bristle worms. Many bristle worms are rock boring so they are essentially eating them out from the inside to make a bigger home.

[Geoff]

do you have a skimmer? has your tank temp started going up since spring started? how often do you do water changes?

i do not think you have to worry about the worms. the algae you should address. do you have anything in there that eats algae ( i obviously do not ). what kind of and how many fish? i would do the siphon thing for the cyano then replace the water with freshly made water. increase the flow in the tank if possible. some pics of the algae would help if you can.

G~

[beachmutts]

Thanks Geoff

I have a Red Sea Prizm skimmer. It may not be turned up enough though. I've over flowed the collection chamber a few times and have toned it down a bit (maybe too much).

It's a 20G tank:
2 clowns
1 cleaner shrimp
4 Snail
5 hermit Crabs
1 feather duster
Chili Coral
Orange Colony
Green Polyps
Anemone

The temp actually has gone up about 2 degrees in the last month and last night I lowered it back down to 78 degrees.

I do ~3 Gallon water changes weekly with R/O water I make myself. Salinity is about 1.024 and ph is 8.2-8.4.


What do you mean by "siphon thing" for the cyano algae?

I do blow them off with a power head daily and have been trying to "brush" this algae off with a very soft basting brush every so often. It doesn't seem to help much.

I don't understand why the snails aren't eating this stuff.

I also put about a teaspoon of "Marine Snow" in every other day or so.

I also add about 1/2 teaspoon of B-Ionic parts 1 & 2 every week and 1 drop of Lugol's solution.

The Nitrates levels aren't 0 but they are always at about 5ppm (I may have the units wrong here). It's the next level up from 0 on my test kit.

I have heard there is some sort of dip which will kill this algae but have heard from the local fish store guys that this is the last resort as it may also harm the coralline algae on the rock.

I will take a picture and send it in.

Thanks,
Mike

[Prismaco]

What you are talking about kind of sounds like what happens when your tank makes its first cycle. The algea bloom along with the white filmy stuff. I would try getting maybe a couple more crabs 2-4. But thats my owen personal opintion. Please keep us up to date, also try to get some pictures...



-Paul

[Geoff]

your bio-load sounds good. it sounds like you could tune the skimmer a little more. i do not have one of these, so i can not tell you exactly. what colour is the skimmate comming out of it? is there any way to adjust water height independantly from the flow? you may just need to lower the water level in the skimmer.

when you siphon out to do a water change siphon out the cyano, if it is cyano. is it like a film over the substrate? if it is then it is cyano. it should siphon up.

sorry more questions. what kind of substrate do you have? is the skimmer the only filtration you run. it sounds like you may have a nitrate factory sneaking around. how much Live Rock do you have?

do you test for CA and alk. what are your numbers here. i would not use any additives that i could not test for. your CA and alk could be anywhere. prolly not to bad since your ph is not way goofy.

i am not sure what Lugol's is i will see if i can figure that out. how often do you feed?

i like pics.

G~

[beachmutts]

Feed frozen brine shrimp (~1/2 cube) and 1 tsp. Marine Snow once per day.

I don't test for Calcium but ph and Alk are good (8.4ph and Alk "high").

Here is a picture...I hope it shows up.

Thanks again for the help!

[beachmutts]

Geoff,
Here's one more picture

Mike

[Geoff]

i am still thinking you may have a nitrate sink somewhere. do you have a wet/dry filter? what do you mean by high on the alk. i am beginning to think that a weeks worth of small water changes may be in order. just to get the water back to a "baseline" not that they are bad, they just seem a little off.

the clown thing may have just been the clown going after some algae in between the polyps. my blennies would do this, i would not be to worried about that.

HTH,

G~

[beachmutts]

Hi Geoff
Thanks again for the help.

I don't have a wet/dry filter...just the protein skimmer. I've come to realize that keeping things stable in a 20G tank is pretty difficult due to the small volume of water. I have about 75% of a 75G tank paid for at the local fish store. I'll have better filtration with this new tank....Should get it in a couple of months.

The test kit I have olnly has 3 readings for Alk Low, Medium, and High. Not too high tech I guess. Anyway, I do add the B-Ionic weekly and ph and Alk seem to be stable.

I've got about 25lbs of live rock in the tank. So I would guess the total water volume is more like 12 or 13 Gallons or so.

How much would you suggest changing on a daily basis for a week? Are you saying I should basically turn over the entire volume of water in 1 week?

Thanks,
Mike

[Jimmer]

If memory serves... 1gallon of SW=8lbs of rock.... roughly

[Mr. Ono]

increase your flow around the green stars, and raise it closer to your lights.

The increased flow will keep the area clean around the polyps.

[Geoff]

with a tank that small, and nothing in there that would use the alk heavily. i would rely on water changes for all of your trace elements. i would think a gallon water change a week should keep things in check. what kind of lighting do you have?

what is your substrate?

when was the last time replaced the bulbs? it just seems strange that they would start acting wierd after such a long time of doing well.

G~

[beachmutts]

Update:

I have placed the start polyps under in a high flow area, moved them up to the lights, lightly brush the "skin" every few days, and blow off debris with turkey baster every day.

I have also reduced the lights on period to 8 hours a day (gradual decrease from 10 hours).

The degradation of the polyps seems to have stabalized (or at least slowed way down).

Now, I will continue what I'm doing and cross my fingers...hopefully they will make a comeback.

Also, the pics I posted don't show the algae really well...but it's not the kind that can be siphoned off. It's very much "stuck" to the skin of the polyps. I need to find a good source for identifying algae so that I can tell for sure what kind it is (suggestions welcome).

Thanks for all the advice...I'll update when I know more.

[CodeToad]

Interesting I am having a very similar problem. My green stars seem to be unhappy all week, and they are letting out thin white feelers or something thin and white. I just gave it a little fresh water bath and I am hoping for the best tommorow. All the other corals in the tank are 100%, its weird.