Zoas dying off

[sen5241b]

This is an earlier pic of them when they started dying. The ones in the foreground closed, got some flaky white crud on them, withered and died and then the others followed. I tried dipping them in Furan-II daily for 3 or 4 days (for Zoa pox) but this did nothing to stop them from dying. Of 30 some polyps there are now half a dozen left. When basting them with a turkey baster some crud did come off of them and now I've put them right under a nozzle. All my chems are just fine. What's the tick to keeping Zoas healthy?

 

 

 

[FishyTim]

did you try to manually remove the crud? I did that plus the Furan and that worked like a charm.

 

This is an earlier pic of them when they started dying. The ones in the foreground closed, got some flaky white crud on them, withered and died and then the others followed. I tried dipping them in Furan-II daily for 3 or 4 days (for Zoa pox) but this did nothing to stop them from dying. Of 30 some polyps there are now half a dozen left. When basting them with a turkey baster some crud did come off of them and now I've put them right under a nozzle. All my chems are just fine. What's the tick to keeping Zoas healthy?

 

 

 

[Jan]

This is an earlier pic of them when they started dying. The ones in the foreground closed, got some flaky white crud on them, withered and died and then the others followed. I tried dipping them in Furan-II daily for 3 or 4 days (for Zoa pox) but this did nothing to stop them from dying. Of 30 some polyps there are now half a dozen left. When basting them with a turkey baster some crud did come off of them and now I've put them right under a nozzle. All my chems are just fine. What's the tick to keeping Zoas healthy?

 

 

 

 

Looks just like a gray predacious sea squirt that grew over a colony of blue zoas that I had. By the time I realized that the very cool little gray sea squirt that was living amongst the zoas was actully taking over, at which point I started ripping as much of it off as I could, most all except for 3 out of about 50 zoas were lost. the last 3 ended up getting covered by coraline algae. Rip the stuff off of the zoas with a pair of tweezers. Wear gloves and goggles to protect yourself from the toxicity of the zoas.

[Smoothtriqueter]

I was going to suggest fragin it up or at least cutting off the infected area plus one line of healthy zoas hoping to get rid of it.

[sen5241b]

Looks just like a gray predacious sea squirt that grew over a colony of blue zoas that I had. By the time I realized that the very cool little gray sea squirt that was living amongst the zoas was actully taking over, at which point I started ripping as much of it off as I could, most all except for 3 out of about 50 zoas were lost. the last 3 ended up getting covered by coraline algae. Rip the stuff off of the zoas with a pair of tweezers. Wear gloves and goggles to protect yourself from the toxicity of the zoas.

 

Very possible. I do have tons of whitish spongy stuff growing all over my LR but it almost always grows in the dark.

[sen5241b]

Aquarium Corals by Eric Borneman"

 

Zoanthid condition 2 is characterized by zoanthid polyps closing up and becoming soft and mushy.Most often,there is a white "cheesy" deposit or film that appears on the outer surface of the polyps. This almost invariably results in the death of the animal and is almost certainly caused by Beggiatoa sp.A new disease of Palythoa caribaeorum (which may be the same as this condition) has been described and positively correlated with higher temperatures,low salinities,freshwater inputs (sediments) and maximal gonad development.No pathogen has yet been found.

 

Last night I held the Zoas under light and used tweezers to pick the "cheesy" film off the polyps. Some were definitely "soft and mushy" and I scraped them off the rock.

 

Trates are zero (by API tests).

Salnity is .026

Temp 77 to 80 (I have seen temp change by a couple degrees in a few hours)

At times it did seem like there was a little detritus settling on them. I now have it right under a nozzle.

When my ATO switches on you can see a 5 second blast of freshwater diffusing in the tank but I can't believe that would hurt them.

 

At this point I'm just trying to do a post-mortem before I buy anymore Zoas. Is my tank permanently infected?