What fish eat zoa?

[bk_market]

I got this ugly zoa/paly growing all over the rock in my nano tank mix in with some hair algea. The rock can not be remove or chip apart as it is the base of the rock work. I was thinking of scrapping or kalk paste the zoa but afraid it might crash my tank with palytoxin. I can’t even remove the hair algea properly without messing with the zoa.

 

My plan is to get a fish that eat these kind of zoa. Any suggestion on fish that proven to eat zoa & paly? I can remove most of the other coral in my tank except for a huge colony of Duncan and some basic sps and my pair of clownfish.

 

This is the zoa in question. Brown with yellowish speckles.

 

 

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[YHSublime]

Looks like pink and golds, yeah, they’ll take over but look pretty in the blues! A file fish might, but honestly, taking out the rock and getting them off will be the best. How big is the nano? I know some members that would take the rock for a day or two and have their fish clean it off


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[Viktoriia]

Just don’t try to boil your live rock!

[bk_market]

Ya this is one big rock about 24” long with many coral encrusted on it. It is in my 30gallon nano tank.

Maybe instead of kalk paste a whole chunk which I read from many palytoxin horror stories online I would do 2 polyps a day before leaving for work each morning. This way when they die and release the toxin, I’m not around. Though a fish or invert that eat zoa I think would be the best bet. No nudibranch though maybe some kind of crazy crab or hermit?


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[bk_market]

Looks like pink and golds, yeah, they’ll take over but look pretty in the blues! A file fish might, but honestly, taking out the rock and getting them off will be the best. How big is the nano? I know some members that would take the rock for a day or two and have their fish clean it off


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Ya I was just angry but it is pink and gold look nice but it is choking all my corals around it. I got this from a wamas meeting as a few polyps frag. A year later...





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[Origami]

When I had palys that I needed to get rid of, it was a mix of physical removal (I've learned to deal with the Palytoxin risk after having been exposed to it and suffering greatly). But, I've also successfully knocked out patches of them with kalk. Taken out in small groups, your tank should tolerate it well. However, be careful with how much kalk you add. Your alkalinity will skyrocket as you're in a small tank. With all pumps off, you can syringe some over a few polyps. Then, about 20 minutes later, siphon or remove it with a turkey baster.

[treesprite]

Sorry, I have a feeling they came from me because I gave away a ton of them a while back. I think I did inform some people about their growth pattern. I don't have any of them now.

[bues0022]

Back a number of years ago I had some problems with some brown polyps taking over my tank. I had a very bad experience using kalk paste (I tried siphoning as much out as possible, but params still went wack). Instead what I did was just used some kalk water in a syringe. I mixed the water, let a bunch of the heavy particulate fall out, drew it up into a 10ml syringe. Then I put a needle on it (I was working with a dog rescue foster group, so I could get these easily without feeling like a druggie), and I poked through the stalk of the polyp and injected just a little bit. It died pretty quick. I did a few polyps every couple of days until they were all gone. 

[Origami]

3 hours ago, bues0022 said:

Back a number of years ago I had some problems with some brown polyps taking over my tank. I had a very bad experience using kalk paste (I tried siphoning as much out as possible, but params still went wack). Instead what I did was just used some kalk water in a syringe. I mixed the water, let a bunch of the heavy particulate fall out, drew it up into a 10ml syringe. Then I put a needle on it (I was working with a dog rescue foster group, so I could get these easily without feeling like a druggie), and I poked through the stalk of the polyp and injected just a little bit. It died pretty quick. I did a few polyps every couple of days until they were all gone. 

It helps to have a big tank with a lot of water if you target one small patch at a time. 

 

Another option other than kalk paste is to mix up some sodium hydroxide and do the same. It stays clear and behaves similarly to kalk (calcium hydroxide) without bumping up the calcium, and it should have much higher solubility than kalk powder. When it comes out of a syringe, it forms a white, cloud-like precipitate that helps you identify where it is. You can get pure sodium hydroxide packaged as drain cleaner at places like Lowe's. One example is Roebic Crystal Drain Opener.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

My emperator used to love polyps and most of the similar bigger body types like the koran and such will eat them pretty quick once they get bigger. 

[bk_market]

thank you guys for the suggestions. I will start with the Kalk paste to see if I can slowly control and reduce the Zoa number within the next 2 weeks. Im planning to inject 1~2 per day and see how it go. 

[wangspeed]

Aiptasia X works better for me than kalk, but it’s sodium hydroxide, so don’t go crazy! Kalk paste doesn’t seem to damage the tissue as quickly as Aiptasia X in my frag tank.

[Origami]

6 hours ago, wangspeed said:

Aiptasia X works better for me than kalk, but it’s sodium hydroxide, so don’t go crazy! Kalk paste doesn’t seem to damage the tissue as quickly as Aiptasia X in my frag tank.

Aiptasia X is kalk paste: Water plus calcium hydroxide. (It's actually in their patent application as I recall. The protected part is that they've encapsulated the kalk into tiny balls that supposedly entices the Aiptasia to not retract so quickly, possibly even ingesting some of it.)

[wangspeed]

Aiptasia X is kalk paste: Water plus calcium hydroxide. (It's actually in their patent application as I recall. The protected part is that they've encapsulated the kalk into tiny balls that supposedly entices the Aiptasia to not retract so quickly, possibly even ingesting some of it.)

Ahh. I looked up the MSDS. It has both, but more calcium hydroxide.

[Origami]

You may enjoy this, Warren. It's the Aiptasia-x patent app filed ten years ago.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=22&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=Aiptasia&OS=Aiptasia&RS=Aiptasia

[wangspeed]

Very interesting content in that patent. Thanks for the link!

[Origami]

11 hours ago, wangspeed said:

Very interesting content in that patent. Thanks for the link!

You're welcome. Yes, very interesting. I first came across it years ago. It wasn't until you'd mentioned the MSDS that I went back and did a quick patent search (just to see if they'd changed something - they didn't). I picked up a few things that I forgot in the intervening years: That they used a calcium salt and sodium hydroxide. (I'm guessing this means that they're adding sodium hydroxide to calcium chloride to create calcium hydroxide (kalk) precipitate. The MSDS would indicate that the reaction is calcium salt-limited, leaving a residual of sodium hydroxide and ensuring a saturated solution. Then there's the agar component - a nutritive medium. But, most interesting was the "anemone desensitizer... selected from the group consisting of magnesium sulphate, chloral hydrate and menthol" (claim 5). So, you basically stun/immobilize them so they don't retract while bathing them in a highly-caustic solution. 

 

BTW, magnesium sulfate ("sulphate" in the UK) is Epsom Salt which can be bought in a drugstore. Chloral hydrate is a controlled substance in the US and would become chloroform in the highly alkaline mixture used here. Menthol is cheap and can be bought online.

[DFR]

Interesting indeed!