Zoanthids on the Decline

[Almon]

Just recently, some of my zoanthids began declining and dissappearing completely. I've had green palys for 7 years, but just recently began aquiring zoas. First were a few 8th Wonders received 6 weeks earlier from Elite Reefs. Then the beautiful flowerseller florescent oranges, and now grav's christmas zoas.

 

Individual polyps will close up, turn brown, fade away, and comletely dissappear. It starts with a few and spreads to the entire colony.......

 

What is going on with these zoanthids? Are they being burned? Not enough flow? Is there a parasite? A bacteria? Is my alkalinity too high?

 

Water specs:

pH: 8.0 - 8.2

Ca: 410

dKH: 13.2

NH3/NH4: 0

NO2: 0

NO3: 10

 

Here are the Christmas Zoas 14 days ago on the reef under 175w 10K MHs

 

Here there are today, front and back, under a 250w 20K MH. Click the picture for full-res.

 

 

 

I certainly don't want this to happen to the Solomon's Blues or any other Zoanthids. What's up?

Edited April 22, 2008 by Almon

[bigJPDC]

melting.

Have you thought about a fw\lugol's dip?

[Almon]

melting.

Have you thought about a fw\lugol's dip?

 

Melting? Yeah...that's what they're doing alright....

 

I've never heard of Lugols...looked it up...Iodine dip. So you think it is a bacteria or parasite? I have the Tropic Marin Pro Coral Dip, another Iodine dip....it's good stuff. I recently put all of my frags in an iodine dip, but these zoanthids were in the reef tank and did not get dipped......until yesterday. I tried that on the Christmas zoas, but that doesn't seem to help. They look twice as bad today.

[bigJPDC]

It might be too soon to tell after the dip - I'd post your pics in the Zoa forum on RC. You'll hear to check everything - chemistry, flow, lighting, nipping fish, etc., but hopefully you can get those back.

 

jp

[Grav]

I dont see the dreaded pox, so i'd focus on things like flow and light and such.

[Almon]

I dont see the dreaded pox, so i'd focus on things like flow and light and such.

 

The Christmas zoas were 14" under the surface. There were in between 2 175w 10K MH (coralife, kinda crappy) and 1 96w 420nm actinic. The lights are 5" above the surface with glass in between. That's not too much light is it? I've usually stuck with "more light the better".

 

The top picture doesn't show it, but around these zoas are a Digitata, a Slimer, a couple Milli's, and a birdsnest. To support them I pointed a powerhead directly into these sps corals which would be directly over the zoas. Is that still not enough...or could it be too much? The milli polyps are waving in the current.

 

 

 

 

The "Dreaded Pox"?

 

That doesn't sound good. Is it going around?

Edited July 23, 2007 by Almon

[smarsh97]

You can try a Furan2 dip. They use this for bacteria and fungus and also the pox. I heard it works wonders.

 

I haven't been able to find Furan2 in PetsMart or Petco lately.

 

Sandy

[lanman]

If you figure it out - let me know. Some of my zoanthids just do that. I have had a rock in my aquarium since February. It had about 50-60 assorted green zoanthids on it, and 2 orange ones. Slowly they evaporated. The last one just died this week - one of the orange ones. I have another rock, at the same altitude, on the other side of the tank that came from the same tank breakdown - it has orange with silver center zoa's. They are thriving.

 

I have a rock with about 50 pink zoa's. All but 2-3 of them are 'melting' now. A frag I took from the same rock is thriving in my frag tank. The blue zoa's that I got from leishman have never shown any tendency to melt at all - they've done nothing but grow. A frag of toxic waste color zoa's that I got from Gadgets grew from 4 polyps to 9 polyps in about 3 weeks. Then all 9 of them melted. A rock I got with brick colored zoa's with orange rings that I got from Howard immediately started melting when I put it in my tank. All but about a dozen (of 70 polyps) died. Now it is re-growing, and there are about two dozen polyps.

 

Other than a few tiny frags, one colony of milipora that STN'd almost to extinction, and a xenia that collapsed; nothing else dies in my tanks. Just zoa's.

 

Needless to say, I don't get excited about zoa auctions. Nonetheless, I love the little buggers, and the ones I do have, I like to plant a poly here and there in my rockwork. And they grow... but I don't count on them being there next month.

 

bob

[jamesbuf]

Any new change in equipment or changing of bulbs? When I downsized to my 42gal, I kept my ASM G5 running and my zoos basically have been on pause since then because of the overskimming.

[AndrewB]

We find this affliction with some of the wild-collected zoanthid colonies that come into the store. It acts like a bacterial infection but so far we have not found any particular antibiotic to be effective against it. We've tried kanamycin, nitrofurazone, furazolidone, erythromycin and minocycline.

 

What does appear to work to a degree is to isolate the afflicted colonies and use intense water flow and mechanical filtration to remove the debris resulting from the infection. This generally does not save the infected polyps but will help prevent the spread to others in the colony.

 

If you want to bring some of the nasty tissue to the store maybe we can look at it under the microscope and try to figure out what it is. Long shot, but worth a try maybe.

[SkiCurtis]

I'm having the same problem do dips on everything coming in. I have looked at this site that smarsh(Sandy) told me about and have not seen any spiders. I did see last night a snail over a old frag of zoos that already disapeared.The snail like most of mine are encrusted with coralline algae so I have no idea if it is a sundial snail or not, so I took it out anyway. I agree with Andrew that it has happen with more of the wild caught stuff. I

[Almon]

Any new change in equipment or changing of bulbs?

 

Changes? Oh yeah....all kinds of changes, including adding many new animals.....all of these zoanthids are only a partial list. I've been collecting lots of frags from wamas members. I've taken my Ca from 300 to 400-450, I've increased my KH from 6 to initially 17, but its falling below 13 now. I used a crappy test kit that said every drop was .5, argh. Got new Halides a couple/few months ago, added a 55g refugium with sand, new plants, new crabs and snails. Just took down the 40g frag tank because red flatworms had been recently introduced. I apparently left my frag condom at home and was not practicing safe frag trading. I removed all of the sand and gravel which had thousands and thousands of pods. The tank was set back up with a bare bottom. Also I added a new 55g fish tank with 2 new bags of live sand, no fish yet. All of my tanks are on the same shared sump system. Got a new skimmer and put it in the sump, took the old HOB skimmer and put it on the 55g fish tank. Oh yeah.....I finally removed my balls a week and a half ago.....now I feel like a 21st century man!

 

I started seeing the 1st zoanthids decline about 4 or 5 weeks ago.

 

 

 

If you want to bring some of the nasty tissue to the store maybe we can look at it under the microscope and try to figure out what it is. Long shot, but worth a try maybe.

 

Yes! I would love to do that....probably not until tommorrow evening....thanks!

 

 

 

http://zoaid.com/index.php?module=Gallery2&g2_itemId=384

 

Nice post

[Almon]

I also added two fish to the reef, a six line wrasse and a psychedelic Mandarin. But I now have zoanthids in the frag tank melting, so it's not the fish eating them. 3 weeks ago I replaced the 55g aquarium that I used as a freshwater holding tank with two large 50g trash cans.

 

I went to Scales yesterday. Andrew and Juan were very helpful, we scraped a declining zoanthid and looked under the microscope. No bugs, critters, or anything else moving. No weird substances. It just appeared to be dead or dying tissue. It must be some type of bacteria because it seems to be spreading to other zoanthid colonies. I need UV sterilization! I bought a hydor power head to increase flow and it's really nice, so I'm blasting the zoanthids and other SPS in the frag tank.

[Almon]

It's been 16 days since I first posted about the decline of the zoanthids. After not finding any moving critters on them using a microscope, I decided that more water flow was the next step. I've kept them in direct flow for the past two weeks. I also had another rock with a few polyps that I left out of the flow. Those polyps melted and dissappeared within three days. The zoanthid polyps that I put in direct flow appear to have completely stopped declining. The polyps that were mostely affected have completely dissolved away, but the problem does not appear to have spread to any other polyps. A few of the afftected polyps may have gotten better.

Edited April 22, 2008 by Almon

[NRehman]

Almon,

Thanks for updating. This, and Andrew's post, is very useful as I have a few "melts" myself.

[Leishman]

See part changed to red below:

 

Red Bugs: INTERCEPTOR (6 hours) Used for Heartworms in dogs

 

Acro Eating Flatworms: Tropic Marin PRO-CORAL CURE (15minutes)

 

Monti eating Nuibrancs (and Acro Eating Flatworms): Levamisole (15-20minutes) is used to: A) treat patients with stage III colon cancer after they have had surgery to remove the tumor, or as much of the tumor as possible. In stage III colon cancer, the cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes. B) deworm pigs

 

All bad things on wild zoanthids: 1. Using a 5 gallon white bucket, add 3 gallons of RO water.

2. Now add 1 or 2 drops of Lugol's Iodine per gallon of RO water.

3. Set your PH to 8.2

4. Set your water temp. at 78 degrees

5. If you have some Flatworm exit made my Saliferts, add

2 drops per gallon to the RO water to kill any Flatworms

 

Place the colony in the white bucket right side up. Leaving it there for about 5 minutes. Then grab the rock and invert it and place it in the water 3 inches below the water surface. Now twist the rock as fast as you can in a clockwise and counterclockwise motion for at least a minute.

[Almon]

It's been nine (9) months since I reported the decline of several zoanthid colonies. I can report today that the current status of the Christmas Zoanthids is excellent. They have fully recovered from that crazy "Melting" thing that they do.

 

9 months ago (click for closeup)

 

Today (located at the bottom of the reef in continuous current)

 

 

 

What was the cause and remedy?

 

I believe the biggest factors were current, light, and possible heat (it was July/August). Bacterial contamination is possible since I received some wild zoas at that time. I did bath all the zoanthids in freshwater and iodine, so it is possible that some wile bacteria was contributing to the problem, but I think Phil (grav) was correct by suggesting to look at water flow, light and such (I'm thinking such meant water quality?).

Edited April 22, 2008 by Almon

[shawns]

"...current status of the Christmas Zoanthids is excellent."

 

SWEET!!!

 

[Brian Ward]

Oh yeah.....I finally removed my balls a week and a half ago.....now I feel like a 21st century man!

 

Thanks for sharing ...