Zoos staying closed

[cvonseggern]

About three weeks ago I bought some zoos from AW and they've been fine until recently. I got some of Troy's Xenia frags last week and more or less since those were added to the tank, the zoos have stayed pretty much closed up all the time. I'm not saying there's a correlation, but it's the only thing I've changed. Do Xenia carry out any kind of chemical warfare that would affect zoanthids?

Parameters are pretty good. Temp stable at 80, ammonia zero, nitrite 0, nitrates around 7 (kit isn't that precise), SG 1.024 and holding. pH is lower than I'd like at 7.8, but that's the only real problem I'm aware of. Any suggestions? And what's the best way to raise pH? I'm thinking B-Ionic.

[eleyan]

I've had a the same problem for the longest time. Last week I did a couple of things and I'm not sure which one exactly fixed it:
- Someone suggested that it might be stray voltage, so I removed my 2 powerheads
- I added fresh carbon
- I used Polyfilter
within a day of doing the above, zoos started oppening back up. I'm not sure which one exactly did the trick. The poly filter turned brown, so it could have been somthing in the water the it took out.

good luck

[cvonseggern]

All of the three are easy enough...I think I even have some polyfilters lying around. I'll give those a shot, thanks!

[Ram_Puppy]

eleyan, didn't you test your tank and find one of the powerheads was leaking current into the water? regardless, adding carbon is never a bad idea IMHO.

[eleyan]

I went back and tested a bunch of other power heads and found that all of them produced some voltage in the water (from 5 to 20V), so I'm not sure if that is normall or not. I wanted to get a brand new power head from a friend of mine and test it for reference. Right now, I can't tell for sure if the voltage I'm measuring is out of the ordinary?

[reefer]

i had an issue with v.snails, they would send out their mucus web to capture food and end up sliming my zoos. so now everytime i see one of those v.snails, i break out a steak knife and kill them. some people say they are harmless, but i say they are harmful. i lost my colony of purple people eater wannabaes to them. so be on the lookout for those v.snails.!
8)

[cvonseggern]

Of course, it also occurs to me that I haven't been getting good skimming lately...the bioload in my tank seems to be so low that I have to adjust the Euro-Reef farther and farther up in order to get skimmate. I went several days without anything at all from the skimmer...I suppose it's possible that something has built up just enough to annoy the zoos. Or maybe I'm on crack again, I don't know. We'll see if keeping the skimmer properly adjusted and running a polyfilter does the job.

[dan]

check your alk. i bet it's low. i can tell when mine is low by the zoo's sitting low to the rock. when i get mine up to 4 0r 4.5 my zoo's stand up and wave '' thank you''

[GaryP]

cvonseggern

As for getting your pH up, there is a couple of ways. If your Alk is in fact low, raising it should do the trick. The other ways to raise pH are by adding Kalkwasser or washing soda.

Please remember to raise the pH slowly so you don't shock everything in the tank. That applies to raising your alkalinity as well.

Gary

[cvonseggern]

Gotta get some alk & Ca kits before I start dosing anything...but that might be what I need to do. I'm also wondering if the flow where they are might be too high. I'm going to move their rock down in the tank tonight after lights-out and see if they open up tomorrow. If that doesn't help I'll keep unplugging powerheads, then start looking at fiddling with the chemistry some more.