Zoa/Coral HELP (pest?)

bfiggy

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#1
Hello everyone, I have yet to do a formal post on here with this new account since I fully ventured back into the hobby. Got into this hobby back around 2010
my username used to be "MrOCCoralMan" even though I was like 12 years old haha. I started off in freshwater and then ventured into a saltwater tank and have been hooked ever since. I am in desperate need of ya'lls help.

Background on this 12 gallon build. It's been setup for a year and half slowly but surely getting to a nice spot. I've had lots of ups and downs with such a small tank. Used to have an 80 gallon and boy is this little tank WAY harder to keep stable. If something swings it's catastrophic as most of you nano peeps know. I am running All For reef and finally have the parameters stable.

Tank Parameters:
Alk: 8.5
Phos: .05
Nitrate: 1 (I know this is super low working on dosing NeoNitrate and bringing this up monitoring daily)
CA: 430
Mag: 1330-50

NOTE** retested nitrate just now and it's at 5!

Zoas in my tank have done well for the most part. I have had 2 different pieces seemingly disappear out of thin air. One was a colony of BBEB and for about a month I slowly noticed every day 1-3 polyps would detach and just float into the abyss. Id sometimes find them in the back detached from the colony Id try to glue them back and then they'd just shrivel up and die. Last week I had a super pretty rainbow eclipse frag 2 polys and randomly they just closed up for 3-4 straight days. Now one of the heads has completely floated away and the other is just stuck closed. TODAY I wake up and after my inspection I noticed that my GMK colony seems like it has a chuck taken out of the skirt tell me if I'm crazy? I have circled the hornet frag that also seems to have a piece of skirt taken off last night... Also included a FTS.

I know those nitrates are way too low but could that be what's making these zoas act so weird? I only have a peppermint shrimp in this tank which I have seen eat dying corals but not healthy ones.. Could he be the perpetrator? I will take him out in second if that's the case. I have poked my flashlight around at night for the past 3 nights but I haven't seen anything on any of the zoas. No pests that I can see....

Any help would be greatly appreciated wanted to also include a fts for all of you. That orange clown is 13 years old has been with me since I got into the hobby. her bf is the 4th clown I have tried to pair with her since her mate died and he's been around for about 6 months! Helfrichi firefish is the only other fish and they all get along well.

Thanks in advance for your help with this!

-Bfig
 

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bfiggy

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#3
I don't think water parameter will caused all these issue to zoas. You might have something very hungry or playful in your tank
could this peppermint shrimp be the culprit? I noticed it eating a torch that wasn't doing great and when I woke up it was pretty much completely gone
 
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#6
They normally eat left over food when you feed the fish. Few pieces of flake should be good every other days
or remove it from the tank if you don't have aiptiasa problems
 

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