Zoanthid "melting" -- please describe.

[XSiVE]

So I read a bit, or hear about zoo's "melting away" from time to time and Im curious if someone could describe this process to me.

Im not really a Zoanthid keeper but with the upcoming grow-out contest I am trying to gather some more info on them.

I got a frag of two lunar eclipse a couple of months ago, one of them is thriving, the other has been closed for 2 weeks and has been very slowly getting smaller. is this melting? or is melting a faster process? I really don't know..

[jolson10450]

melting to me is they shrink up tony, get a little brown algae looking stuff on top of them and literally when you touch them with anything they will just disintegrate. if it still looks like a polyp you can try touching it and see if it is still hard, if it is then its probably just cleaning its self of waste or having trouble growing because of maybe glue getting on its flesh, or it will just melt away if you touch it.

[cg5071]

I would call one shrinking up, melting. I had it happen 2 times now. The first got smaller but brighter denser colors it seems (not really closed but smaller). I dipped that one in coral rx and it made a recovery. The other is just happening now but the algae is bad so I dont know how it will work.