[blenniesfmhvn]

Tank is one yr. old with established live rock and dsb. Noticed polyps weren't open. Also noticed a Chromis disappeared in my tank and got ammonia at 2.0. Couldn't find the Chromis. Did 25% water changes, till all registered fine. No nitrite, no nitrate, etc. I've ran all water tests and all tested fine. I did a another 10% water change - no open. I put in brand new pc's in place of the old ones - no open. I added some Amquel Plus because I have an ammonia sensitive test kit that registered at .25 - no open. (This was just rodi and new salt.) All other test kits I own always register ammonia at 0 on new buckets of made up water on the same salt. I switched to a new salt - no open. (Rodi water alone fine - trash can fine, etc.) Does Amquel or AmmoLock do this to polyps? Only other thing I could think of is that the sponge (which is in fine shape) could be affecting the polyps. It is a red branching tree sponge about 8 inches tall. I did all the research I could find on this sponge; no where could I find any mention of it being toxic to anything. There's nothing crawling over the polyps and no fish bother them. Help please I am really stumped!

[Reefland]

Kind of hard to decipher your post but...

If you had something die and had an ammonia spike, that is likely your problem. It sounds like you were pretty aggressive at correcting the problem, but that could have also had an effect on the corals. How long has it been since the ammonia spike? Are the corals dieing or are the polyps just not extending?

[blenniesfmhvn]

Originally Posted by Reefland

Kind of hard to decipher your post but...

If you had something die and had an ammonia spike, that is likely your problem. It sounds like you were pretty aggressive at correcting the problem, but that could have also had an effect on the corals. How long has it been since the ammonia spike? Are the corals dieing or are the polyps just not extending?

Well, I can't tell if they're dying or not. Just had another ammonia spike up to 3.0 while ago and changed the water again. The polyps don't seem to be dying, as far as I can tell, but haven't opened since the first ammonia problem was corrected. I think this time it might have been some banded trochus snails die, that didn't make it through the first few water changes. My Aqua C pumped up some pretty smelly foam this last dump, and when I cleaned it this morning, it was only slightly foamy cloudy. It's probably been 3 days since the first spike. Now I'm just worried I'm going to get in an ammonia cycle -- unless something else dies. (Still have good Bio Max populated and keep rinsed with tank water.) I also wonder if the polyps could be contributing toxicity to the situation in their closed state. It's shocking to see the big green button polyps closed up especially, and for such a long time. I think I got nearly all of the Amquel/Ammo Lock changed out of there tonight. Drained 3/4 of the tank and replaced with treated tap, since out of rodi. Also, do you think I should worry about a salinity problem with the tap water -- since it goes through a water softener (that's a lot different than using rodi..?) Afraid I'm gonna loose the whole reef. The fish are sure enjoying their rearranged rocks at least for the time being. Thanks for trying to decipher this!