please help me diagnose/treat my zoas

[Candi]

The tank is a 24g aquapod with PC lighting modified by adding a hydro & upgrading stock pump to maxijet 900 and added another maxijet900 and locline Y. The bulbs are new as of last month. I do weekly 5g water changes using tropic marin salt. Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite all 0 and I'll admit I haven't checked anything else in ages since my water changes always seemed to keep everything where it needed to be and stable.

So the problem actually happened a few times months ago... a colony that was doign great would suddenly go downhill quickly, the polyps would seem to actually shrink, they'd look all funky (sorry for the description or lack there of, but basically the skirt would get very short and they'd sort of invert the middle) sometimes getting a brown coating on their base. I dipped using lugol's and after a few days they would open back up, only difference being they were smaller then before, sometimes color would be a bit off too. Went months w/o this happening then this past week it's going on again (no new additions, no changes to anything in routine)

Here's some photos, sorry for the awful quality old digital.

First shows some looking bad, this one I didn't dip as I couldn't reach it easily... about a week later they were open again and looking normal but you can still see the brownish stuff on the bases
http://members.aol.com/vcandiv/fish/sickzoa1.jpg
http://members.aol.com/vcandiv/fish/sickzoa2.jpg

Here's the ones that are doing very badly right now, before this they were really nice sized red zoas. You can see what I mean by shrinking etc. I've tried lugol's but it doesn't seem to be doing anything and I need to try something else.
http://members.aol.com/vcandiv/fish/sickzoa4.jpg

Here is another photo the above ones are in and a couple other ones doing strange things, the pink one I circled has sort of inverted itself and the other one I circled, all the polpys on that frag have their "mouths" inverted out.
http://members.aol.com/vcandiv/fish/sickzoa3.jpg

Can anyone tell me what is going on with any/all of them? Is there another type of dip that I can easily order online to treat with?

Thanks so much!
Candi

[oddiseus]

Im having the same problem Im not sure what the deal is either.

Check out these pics.

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h186/pyriel127/IMG_1367.jpg

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h186/pyriel127/IMG_1368.jpg

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h186/pyriel127/IMG_1369.jpg

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h186/pyriel127/IMG_1269.jpg

They look real similar to the probs your having.

[Candi]

noone?

[oddiseus]

maybe we have one of those very strange diseases that nobody likes to talk about.

I got up this morning to see my tank having strands of mucus on everything. This is the second time that this has happened while me zoos have been in this state.

Candi has this happened to you?

[jessp]

i have had zoa frags that where healthy for a long time and all of a sudden they did this.

i fragged them myself from mother colony. mother colony remained healthy and zoas perished in long run.

At one point i saw a snail not a sundial a little snail that looked like pyramid snail. it was only one and it was removed. However they all just choked up and died like that. head got small and looked like a nipple on its mouth.

not sure what it was.

[Candi]

jess: thanks for posting, sorry you lost yours too

oddiseus: I can't imagine we're the only few this has happened to, maybe noone knows how to treat? I haven't had what you're describing... although a few other things are out of whack in my tank right now, I have a neon green toadstool which closed up 4-5 days ago and isn't opening back up (it's my favorite coral so I'm freaking) and my giant hairy shroom doesn't look itself (then again my clown moved to host in it when the toadstool closed up so she might be bugging it and it just did some weird moving there where it left behind a baby one). All my parameters are in order, no changes in routine (weekly 5g water changes)... I have quite a few zoas in the tank and most look perfectly fine, it's just these couple colonies. My pulsing xenia is still pumping away... don't get it.

Fingers crossed that it works itself out... like I said in the past when I've done nothing eventually they perked back up (even if a bit smaller/different color) knock on wood I never lost a colony yet.

[cutnup]

this is happening to 2 colonies in my tank 1 looks like your first pic kinda strigy with brown around the stem then another looks like the ones that invert themselves i would take pics but a. its late and b. i have no batteries :(

[cutnup]

oh and the inverting thing has happened before and i let nature take its course and they went back to normal

[oddiseus]

I was asking about refugium poisoning in the nano forum and found that the caulerpa in my fuge was dropping nitrates into my tank in large amounts. I just ripped out all the caulerpa and hopefully I see a change in the morning. I think I still have hope. I would look closely at your systems. I never knew that caulerpa could become a nitrate factory. Ill never use it again. I was told that chaeto does not do that. I hope my insight will help. I hope it helps me. =I

[Candi]

mine are in a 24g aquapod... no refugium etc. Tested and all parameters are in order... they still look bad and the frag where the "mouths" were sort of sticking out has gotten worse, they look like little nipples now!

[oddiseus]

In the pic above with the green zoos and the badly nippled mouths, they were like that for about 2 weeks. They are slowly going back to normal on their own. I did a water change on my tank just to make sure there are fresh nutrients being introduced and I noticed a big difference. This morning I was happy to see that more of my zoos started to look a lot more normal, after ripping out all the caulerpa. So at least I was able to identify some sort of cause. You should try a different test kit, I noticed my kit was expired, so I have no test kit at the moment, and the one I used prior to this gave false results. I never had nitrates, after buying a better kit I found out I did have nitrates and they were almost too high.

[Candi]

Sounds like a good plan, I'll check my tests.

I always do a 5g water change a week but I decided I'm going to do 2 this week for good measure and replace my month old chemi-pure as well... will report back in a day or two with an update (doing the water change tomorrow hopefully)

[impur]

In regards to the inverted polyp, typically this is a sign of a stressor. I have seen it due to high light usually IME. In this case i would assume it is due to the infection the zoos look to have OR due to lack of light. I notice the polyps seem to be stretching their stalks very far in the pics above, an indication that they are "reaching" for the light.

If this is due to the infection, I have experienced something very similar and was able to beat it. I used Furan-2 as a dip. Keeping all zoas in QT for 4 weeks, I did 2 dips 2 days apart. Furan-2 is a powder and is available in capsules or packets. I used the packets but its all the same. I used 1 cup RO water with 1 packet Furan-2 for 20min each dip. After the second dip, the zoas lost most of their color. Within about 4 more weeks, most of their color has returned. The infection is gone and has been gone for 2 or 3 months now. All my frags that were affected had been in my tank for 2+ years.

Here are some pics of the infection my zoos had.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/need%20id/000_0059.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/need%20id/000_0058.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/need%20id/000_0052.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/100_0052.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/impur/100_0054.jpg


Hope this helps and good luck.

[Candi]

looks like I'll have to pick up some furan-2... most LFS have it? I've heard that about the stretching for light as well, however in my case I have a couple frags where they are the same zoas and one is up high another on sand bed and its the high one stretching? Seems like it should be reversed. Either way thank you for the post & photos!

[BAYONNEREEF]

nice

[impur]

Yah, seems like it should be reversed. In that instance i would say its something else bothering the colonies. Maybe the infection? Can't say for sure.

Post up your tank params as well. Maybe we can locate something there.

[kool-cat]

My zoas I recently purchased have white dots on the oral disk of the polyps. Some also have brown stuff on their stalks. So far I have given ro/di water dips and then brought some lugols iodiine dip. The zoas have lost a lot of their color. I noticed the white stuff growing on the zoas 1 week after I brought them. I dipped them in 2 gallons of salt water from my tank today with 16 drops of lugols for 15 minutes. Could lugols alone cure my problem or is it a good idea to get furan-2 too? Any idea what is causing my problem.

[impur]

Lugols won't do anything to it. What it sounds like is zoa pox.

Read here
http://www.zoaid.com/articles004.php

[DarthBaiter]

Some of the Green people eaters I got from DrF&DrS did that. They looked fine when I acllimated and put em in my tank, but next day had that same brown mucus and the inverted polyps and the melted skirts. The whole colony disappered before I could do anything. I got credit for those and got another GPE. This one looks better, but it still had a few iverted ones. I fraged those out and put the healthy ones back in my q tank. Now I'm noticing a clear blister right under the polyp. WTH... :(

[Blitz99]

candi... the picture you are showing with that brown "skin" on it.... take that coral and blow it off with the powerhead and place it in a higher flow zone... something pretty direct, and see what happens. i had some things get that same skin and turned out it was from lack of flow...

i too have been having issues with some things lately, and of course they were all high end stuff like PPE's... so i'm adjusting things as well...

good luck to us all!!!