Anybody keep Anthellia Polyp (Waving hand Coral)

[platapus]

I have been keeping Anthellia Polyp for 4 months now, it was growing very rapidly up until a couple of weeks ago, It is rapidly dying now, I cant figure out why, everything else I have is bloosoming. My water seems to be fine:

PH:8.2
Salinity: 1.0235
Ammonia:0.0
Nitrite: 0.0
Nitrate: 0.0
Phos: 0.0
Cal: 440

Is there anything else I should be testing for that would affect corals this way?

Any insight on this would be great! ;-)

Thanks

-plat

[MontanaRocknReefer]

Hi Plat! They are desirable foods for some fishes, especially tangs, so they do best in tanks without fishes. They are attacked by fishes, worms, snails and other, more aggressive flower animals.
Also require 9 hours of intense lighting and heavy water movement. HTH Johnny

[tdwyatt]

I have been keeping Anthellia Polyp for 4 months now, it was growing very rapidly up until a couple of weeks ago, It is rapidly dying now,

I don't know that this is ANYTHING but a coincidence, but I occasionally squirt some of the juices and fine debris from the mix I make to feed the corals over the anthelia I have, they are about 18 months in this system (skimmerless as well, so this may just be a total coincidence). 3 months with sudden demise would be consistent with the consumption of any stored reserves that the anthelia might have had. I concur on the lighting, they will need to be up in the tank, and hopefully you have lots of intense VHO or MH lighting available for them.

[Mrs Smith]

Our anthelia are definitely light lovers - they are near the top under 2 x 250W MH, and flourishing. We also keep the salenity a little higher, although if yours hasn't changed, it doesn't sound like a likely culprit. What about water flow? Ours seem to like a moderate to strong current. Good luck, and I hope they recover.

[platapus]

I have 3 110w 4 ft VHO and 2 175w 10,000k MH

I have alot of current as well

my tank is 100gallon, lighting is 6.8watt per gallon....

what do you feed athellia?

[opihi]

anyone else think alk could be a problem here?

[Wrasseman]

ALK is an important part of the tank chemistry equation. What is yours currently? I have anthellia in my tank (grows like a weed) and keep my alk at 10 - 12 dKH.

[tdwyatt]

Originally posted by platapus
...what do you feed athellia?

I don't do it so much on purpose as that it receives the overshoot from feeding the frogspawn and the E. anchora. It gets a good dose of oyster/shrimp/brineshrimp/dt/selcon/Golden Pearls cocktail and closes up with a (I assume) feeding response. I cannot say that it is doing anything but responding to the stimulus from the squirt of the turkey baster, but it does so enthusiastically with the food mix, slowly or not at all when I am blowing off any accumulated debris with plain seawater.

[jegel]

what other corals do you have around the anthelia's?? any changes to the tank about the same time you noticed the die off?? I got 4 small polyps on a small shell and in about 6 months I had hundreds covering 2 rocks. Then after moving my colt near the anthelia polyps they started melting and becoming deformed. Now the colt is gone and the polyps are healed up and growing slowly.

[platapus]

my alk was at 5, I have started using buffer to bring it back up to 10+, it is currently at 9. the closest thing to the athelia is a flower pot coral ( not close enough to touch though. )

[jegel]

Keep in mind my colt was never touching the anthelia polyps... it was only near... it seemed to by right infront of the polyps in regards to water current... My thought is that the colt was letting off something that didn't take well with the polyps as the current flowed past... I'd put my money on this since taking the colt out stopped the problem right away.
Also, in my case the polyps weren't just receeding.. they were melting and looked mutated. I might have some pictures and will try to post soon.