Gorgonian troubles
 

As you know, I've been away in Boulder this week. I got home tonight and my Sea Whip is not looking too good. Mostly, my wife was feeding the fish and adding makeup water while I was gone. The Sea Whip has what looks like white spots and the polyps are now darker in color and not all coming out. I'm a little concerned. It did shed a skin layer when I first got it. The white spots are new. I tested the water and ph seemed a little high, maybe 8.5, which is strange since I thought ph tends to go down, not up. Nitrates are up a bit, too. I'm doing a water change tomorrow. No picture yet as the actinics are on. Any thoughts?

Sorry to hear that your gorgonain is not doing as well. My tank is always my biggest worry when I go out of town. Try doing a 20% change asap, followed up by a couple of 5-10% a day or two later. 8.5 does seem high for the ph considering that is usually tends to decrease over periods of time when not dosing supplements. If you checked it at the end of the photoperiod then it will be slightly elevated as opposed to if you checked it in the morning. Did your wife add any additives while you were gone or just make up water?

She was just adding makeup water. Everything else in the tank appears to be doing well. The small SPS frag even appears to have more polyp extension. It's just the gorg is looking like it has problems.

Hopefully the water change will help. Good luck with it and let us know how it does.

Surprisingly, I found an ebay auction with pictures of a sea whip gorgonian that looks very similar to the way mine does now

http://cgi.ebay.com/PURPLE-SEA-WHIP-...cmdZVie wItem

When I first got it, the polyps were very white in color as seen in some of my first pictures. The polyps now look darker, like those in the picture from the auction. I don't know if this is good, bad or otherwise.

Well, the gorg has appeared to take a turn for the worse. The purple "flshy" parts have started to deteriorate and I can even see the round skeleton base in some areas. I'm going to consider this a lost cause, but I did get some poly reaction when touching it, so something is still hanging on. I'm at a loss for what to do at this point. Suggestions?

Latest pic:

Allright. Something I discovered while poking around. On Liveaquaria, they advertise these for sale. I went to look at the list of parameters and one thing I noticed is that they say these gorgs like temps 72-78 degrees. When I set up this new tank I moved the heater over and left it set the same. The temp of the tank hovered around 78, 2 degrees lower than the old hex tank. I figured the size and additional volume probably made the tank cool faster. Sometime about two weeks ago, or so, I began raising the tanks temp to 80, which is where is sits now, very constantly. Could the temp be too warm for the gorg? If I bring it back down, how will that affect my other inhabitants?

I'm no expert on gorgonians but the temp should be fine. Most reef inhabitants can handle temps in the low 80's without problem. Being in FL my tank is in the low 80's almost year round. I would suspect a calcium or alkalinity imbalance or high nutrients like phosphates, nitrates, nitrites, or ammonia. Temps between 76-82 should have very little effect on most corals.

This is a common misconception. Water is one of the most stable elements known to man. It actually can reatain its temperature better then most other stuff. The more volume of water that you have the more stable and the slower a change in temperature will occur. You HEX tank had a lower total volume hence the higher temperature it ran at (due to the heat from you lighting and other equipment) I can almost gaurantee that it also ran colder than your current tank. The Temperature swing will be greater in a tank with lower volume of water then one with a higher volume.

At the suggestion of a member on another board, I gave the gorg a dip in Seachem ReefDip. I'm not sure if this will do any good at this point but it can't hurt to try.

In addition, I suspect something really drastic happened when I did the water change. I had never done a large water change like that before, except maybe when I moved tanks and added more new water. Since doing the water change, my xenia has been rather wilted and the feathery like extensions on the polyps are nearly gone. Three of my Trochus snails have died off. These were pretty good sized snails, too. This morning I found a pile of hermits all voraceously eating away at the flesh of one of them. My bicolor pseudo even got a few bites in. Also, my finger leather seems prone to withdrawing it's polyps much more frequently and the extension doesn't look as good. In fact, the things doing the best appear to be the anemone twins and the clowns are playing with them on occasion. No hosting yet.

So that's where we stand. Last night I did add a buffer to bring the ph back up a little and see if that helps. My tank always ran high with the PH and I think the water change really dropped it and shocked everything. We shall see.

What was the ph and temperature of the water change water? Quick changes in ph and temp can be very stressful to reef inverts. I have performed plenty of large 50% water changes before with minimal problems. Just need to ensure that ph, temp, and alk are reasonably close.