my blasto is not opening up

[shorjai]

hi i got this blasto for about two month now sittin inside my 12g nano 48w pc light. the blasto open up nicely for about a week but now its been close up. need some help, whats the reason behind it? Everything is doing fine in my tank. here is a pic of the blasto

the blasto is located right in the middle of the picture.

[JimCata]

try giving it a little more light. Mine did that when I moved into a bit of shadow, so I moved it again and it totally opened.

[dendro982]

More light in the lower, that at the top of the tank, flow.

[Serioussnaps]

Light is not the answer. Turn off circulation and spray a nutritious food mixture onto the polyps and tell me what happens. Was it open when you bought it? I don't think you bought a healthy specimen(merletti there). Blastos need to be fed IME.

[dendro982]

I feed my damaged blasto merletti together with sun coral, in a separate container. But there was low light.

After I moved it to the tank with direct sunlight, it started to recover faster, even with less mysis. But tank was fed few times a day by cyclop eeze and food for filter feeding cucumber.

My guess will be, that the both are important. And the hight flow will cause them close.

[Dancing4raiin]

My blasto aqtually started dying because i gave it to much light. What worked for me was moving into the shade, and letting it sit for about a week, then just moving it a bit closer to direct light every few weeks. it was a slow process which took about 3 weeks, but i lost one polyp

this picture is of it when it was in direct light, and not opening up all the way

[killagoby]

They like a little bit of flow, and to be on the bottom of the tank. Feeding will help too. I would stop touching and moving it out of the tank to feed it. Every time you do that it will recede and show it's skeleton.

[dendro982]

Amount of light:
mine was in NanoCube 6 with 18W PC, tank depth 12". That was no way enough. In feeding box with sun coral - 20W 50-50 screw-in lamp, not enough. The highest light provided was direct sunlight from the southern window, Canada, several hours a day, not 400W MH

The changes were from this:

to this:


Touching:
it really don't like it, especially if pressed hard and skeleton pokes into the soft tissue. Mine has conical tubes 1.5" long below the polyps - no problem when moving. But new mounted frag is moved by touching support only.

[killagoby]

dendro982 how did you get rid of the Aiptasia on that rock. It looks like that had something to do with it.

[roblack]

Looks like the Blasto M. overgrew the aipstasia bc you can still see it in the new pic, lower left. That stuff can be a pain. Copperbanded butterfly fish are the best IMO for getting rid of it, but diffcult to feed afterwards. I recommend borrowing CBBs until the anemones are gone and then passing them along or trading them in (sometimes eat LPS)

[dendro982]

Lower left are yellow polyps, just in shade . But I still have aiptasia, appearing periodically in the tank.

What not to do with aiptasia on Blasto merletti - do not use vinegar, it kills polyps. I used Joes Juice with precision tip on the syringe. When aiptasia returned, applied again. The problem is, that the aiptasia was actually under the polyp and aside - and it hides after moving coral - had to draw its location and apply by drawing

[Dancing4raiin]

thats a real nice blasto dendro

[Dancing4raiin]

So what steps did you end up taking sorjai? and how is the blasto doing?