Yuma's Been Sick for 7 Months

[teddscau]

Okay, so I bought this cute little pink Yuma at the Chicago Aquarium Show back in...October? Anyways, the little guy was spread out like a healthy mushroom at the show, but when we brought him back home he started closing up. Fast forward seven months and he's almost completely closed up (he's been like this since we brought him home from the show). He's shrivelled up smaller than an eraser on the end of a pencil.

The other mushrooms (a variety of ricordea and discos) seem to be doing (relatively) fine, and are wide open, and growing. But the Yuma refuses to open, and I'm worried he's going to die soon. I was really careful when acclimating him because I heard they were very sensitive to increases in lighting. I've been keeping him in low lighting, because when I put him in moderate lighting, he starts to change colours and begins to look even more upset, sometimes even crawling in his frag plug.

All the parameters have been in a healthy range the past several months, except for phosphates and nitrates. Phosphates have been at 0 for...9 or 10 months, until a few months ago when we started dosing phosphates. Now they're at...0.05 I think. Yeah, the stony corals haven't grown at all, and the calcium in the tank isn't being used up at all. We haven't had to dose calcium or alkalinity at all since setting the tank up last summer. The stony corals haven't been growing their skeletons at all—just tissue.

Decided to try dosing nitrates today. Used half the recommended dose just to err on the side of caution. On a side note, the Caulerpa's been growing non-stop. It's probably the reason the stony corals aren't growing, seeing as the caulerpa's been sucking up all the phosphates and nitrates. Never had an algae in the tank either, save for bryopsis.

Yeah, so we went to this reef chemistry seminar, and despite what everyone says about phosphates and nitrates being bad, it turns out coral is unable to grow without them. Since dosing with phosphates, algae's actually started growing on our glass, and the corals have grown ever so slightly.

Right, so back to Yuma. How do I get him to open up? The past month he's gotten even more upset, and it looks like he's thinking of giving up and jumping off the frag plug to his death. Should I try putting him in more light? Should I see how he does with extra nitrates?