What would you do? Blue Clove Polyps

[BAYMAC]

Crazy part is, when Blue Cloves first hit the scenes all those years ago; reefers wanted them and were trading for them...Only to realize they are not so cool and became the bane of existence...

Sadly, I'm a guilty party

 

[divewsharks]

Sadly, I'm a guilty party

Me as well, "fortunately" they did not grow well in my tanks.

 

[CaseyP]

Do they detach and spread around the tank? Or just encrust from the mother colony? Do they spread on sand?

Heh i might be interested in some for the macroalgae tank. I don't have a lot of rock in there and could use some pop of blue.

 

[Turkeysammich]

They are like really small gsp. They don’t detach. They grow like a mat. They come in different colors. I’ve seen blue, tan, brown. So far.

 

[tribbitt]

Do they detach and spread around the tank? Or just encrust from the mother colony? Do they spread on sand?

Heh i might be interested in some for the macroalgae tank. I don't have a lot of rock in there and could use some pop of blue.

I’ve seen a few “nano-bowl”setups with this covering the rocks. It looks quite cool especially with white light

I would just recommend keeping it far, far away from anything that’s going into a main tank

 

[derek_SR]

Here's a pic of what I got - left of the oregon tort. Definitely some kind of small polyp but doesn't look as big or have as long tentacles as the "blue clove polyps" I've seen. They also haven't really been an issue - been in my tank for a while. Definitely slowly growing over rocks but not nearly the suffocating pain that montis and zoas are - they aren't bothing any acros nearby. What could these be?

 

[BAYMAC]

They are like really small gsp. They don’t detach. They grow like a mat. They come in different colors. I’ve seen blue, tan, brown. So far.

They can detach. I've had it happen quite a few times. I don't know if a critter was doing it, or what, but they'd end up in my sump fuge.

 

[BAYMAC]

View attachment 75290

Here's a pic of what I got - left of the oregon tort. Definitely some kind of small polyp but doesn't look as big or have as long tentacles as the "blue clove polyps" I've seen. They also haven't really been an issue - been in my tank for a while. Definitely slowly growing over rocks but not nearly the suffocating pain that montis and zoas are - they aren't bothing any acros nearby. What could these be?

looks like them, fell blessed

 

[Turkeysammich]

They can detach. I've had it happen quite a few times. I don't know if a critter was doing it, or what, but they'd end up in my sump fuge.

Oh I didn’t know that. Thanks for the correction.

 

[BAYMAC]

Oh I didn’t know that. Thanks for the correction.

its a pretty weak mat they make, so it could have just been a hermit or something poking around and popping them off.

Those ended that tank, which was connected to two other tanks that ended up getting them and going offline as well.

 

[Turkeysammich]

its a pretty weak mat they make, so it could have just been a hermit or something poking around and popping them off.

Those ended that tank, which was connected to two other tanks that ended up getting them and going offline as well.

That’s what makes me nuts in this hobby. It can never be the good stuff. It’s always the bad stuff.

 

[derek_SR]

Well shit! Maybe they just don’t like my tank that much. Or maybe I’ve got something eating them.

 

[Darkxerox]

Never saw these until the Aussie shipments started coming in around 2008-09. Hard to see but zoom into the left scoly. You can see how they start to encroach and kill tissue after a few months:

 

[Invictus]

Well shit! Maybe they just don’t like my tank that much. Or maybe I’ve got something eating them.

I wish you the best of luck. They will literally grow up onto the Zoa polyps eventually irritating enough and then suffocating them out. No experience with their interaction vs Acros but I can see how they’d coexist, maybe stifle encrusting at most.

 

[Kensington Reefer]

Well shit! Maybe they just don’t like my tank that much. Or maybe I’ve got something eating them.

If you think something is eating them, please continue to investigate.
I’ve been looking for that piece of information!

 

[JVU]

Crazy part is, when Blue Cloves first hit the scenes all those years ago; reefers wanted them and were trading for them...Only to realize they are not so cool and became the bane of existence...

I tried blue cloves when they were cool a lot of years ago. They spread a little locally and looked nice (IMO) for a year or so then died off, don’t know why. This was a long time ago, way before I joined BAR.

Now I have these brown or tan clove polyps. They are much smaller and not pretty. I know exactly where I got 1 polyp from around 7 years ago. I’ve tried many forms of killing them off over the years and they are slowly getting the better of me. Very frustrating.

 

[JVU]

View attachment 75290

Here's a pic of what I got - left of the oregon tort. Definitely some kind of small polyp but doesn't look as big or have as long tentacles as the "blue clove polyps" I've seen. They also haven't really been an issue - been in my tank for a while. Definitely slowly growing over rocks but not nearly the suffocating pain that montis and zoas are - they aren't bothing any acros nearby. What could these be?

Well shit! Maybe they just don’t like my tank that much. Or maybe I’ve got something eating them.

Those look similar to what I have. Unfortunately pretty common. I didn’t think they were a big deal when I had them as long as you have. They are a slow burn.

 

[JVU]

I used fenben infused fish flakes every few days for a month and it didn’t kill anything other than a Green Star Polyp colony which retracted shortly after the very first dose and never recovered even after being moved to a separate tank within 24 hours. I wasn’t trying to kill BSP (I don’t have any), I was dosing to make sure the vermitid snail population would be further crippled. I had no noticeable change in parameters. I had a cleaner shrimp which passed around around that time—that may or may not be related,but my 4 conch, 2 urchins, and army of snails were unaffected. The dosing is very small: one small pinch of flakes per 100g per guidances from Chris Meckley who uses these flakes on his farm system once a week to control SPS pests and vermitids, I stopped dosing since I did a tank reset where I replaced my entire rockscape. There are a few vermitids in my pipes and overflow box (much less than one year ago) but they don’t seem to bother anything.

Yeah I’ve heard Chris talk about that, and at one of our events at High Tide earlier this year I asked him about it directly. He definitely seems to think it’s a good approach. I may try the Fenbendazole flakes at some point for the clove polyps I have. It seems kind of risky for everything else in the tank to me though.

 

[Slingfox]

Yeah I’ve heard Chris talk about that, and at one of our events at High Tide earlier this year I asked him about it directly. He definitely seems to think it’s a good approach. I may try the Fenbendazole flakes at some point for the clove polyps I have. It seems kind of risky for everything else in the tank to me though.

Yeah, there is a very long thread on Reef2Reef on fenben usage to eliminate BSP. It seems like the pharma pill version ground up and dosed to the tank is very potent. The fish flakes version is almost certainly less potent but it seems to be able to eliminate BSP at least temporarily. It is unclear whether the fish flakes can permanently eliminate BSP—especially at a very low dose. If I had a BSP issue I would try a small pinch once a week which is what Chris Meckley does, then increase dosage or frequency if I saw no affect. You could also experiment in a separate QT tank to see what the effect is on the BSP.

If you want to experiment I can give you some fish flakes. Just let me know what size tank you intend to run it on.

 

[Kensington Reefer]

View attachment 75290

Here's a pic of what I got - left of the oregon tort. Definitely some kind of small polyp but doesn't look as big or have as long tentacles as the "blue clove polyps" I've seen. They also haven't really been an issue - been in my tank for a while. Definitely slowly growing over rocks but not nearly the suffocating pain that montis and zoas are - they aren't bothing any acros nearby. What could these be?

Get a brush on them...outside of display tank if possible
Those are the burgundy ones...they’re terrible too
Don’t know what eats them
They bad, treat accordingly