what causes this kind of destruction?

[surfnvb7]

its headaches like this which are causing me to get out of the paly collecting. i haven't had this happen since i moved 2 months ago, but in my old tanks i would have this happen to a zoa colony ever now and then. last time this happened was probably back in the spring some time.

i've dipped in FW, SW, lugols, and TMPCC.......etc in the past. I've considered nudi's (never found any), bristle worms (killed with dips), aserina stars (whiped out with harlequin), and pods (non existant due to a mandarin and six-line).

i've never see anything munch on them during the day or night, and whenever this happens, it ALWAYS happens in mass destruction all of a sudden one night.....its NEVER 1 or 2 polyps here or there or gets worse day by day.

i'm completely stumped. although this time, there seems to be an aweful lot of debris and junk in b/w all of the injured/shrunken polyps which i havent seen before.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i186/hokieatrain7/corals/IMG_1912.jpg

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i186/hokieatrain7/corals/IMG_1913.jpg

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i186/hokieatrain7/corals/IMG_1914.jpg

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i186/hokieatrain7/corals/IMG_1915.jpg

[surfnvb7]

no one? not even from the experts? ;)

here is a closeup, i blew on the polyps with a turkey baster to get them to close up. normal ones on the left, abnormal ones on the right.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i186/hokieatrain7/corals/closeupclossedup.jpg

[reef2]

mine did the same thing and ended up losig all my zoas. nothing helped. hopefuly it isnt the same thing.

[surfnvb7]

i lost an entire colony of an awesome bright blue zoa w/ green skirts to this phenomenon about 6 months ago.

the polyps looked shrunken up like raisins, and then they wasted away a couple days later. :(

this colony has been under attack before, but always recovered with very few dead polyps. but i've never seen it attacked this hard before....i hope it pulls through.

i've dipped these zoas before when they looked like this, and nothing but debris came off the colony.....no pests that i could find.

.......but i still wonder if its some sort of nasty bristleworm......

[ct_vol]

I've had a couple of colonies do that to me... I dipped them in TMPCC put them in moderate/low light with moderate/high flow and they've all come back for me... I lost a couple of smaller frags before I started doing this, but haven't lost one since... It always seems to happen to the colonies that are the healthiest/growing the fastest... I've never found out what caused the phenomenon, only how to bring them back...

[Zooguy]

Have you added anything to the tank lately. Like a leather coral? Maybe some Differant zoos that are new to the tank??

[surfnvb7]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10695292#post10695292 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Zooguy
Have you added anything to the tank lately. Like a leather coral? Maybe some Differant zoos that are new to the tank??

nope, haven't added anything new to the tank since june

[650-IS350]

Have you checked your pH and Alk parameters... zoos/palys are sensitve to those parameters.

[surfnvb7]

could care less about pH.....since i dont run a calcium reactor....if i was having major pH swings i'm sure i would see my sps and other zoas having problems on a wide scale

alk is stable via a dosing pump using DIY 2-part.

[CaptNemo]

Yeah, i am curious about this too. Same thing happened to my BamBam zoanthids for like a month now. I can't find any bug or anything on it. half of the colony is close and the other half is still thriving. So i am just praying that it will get better. I already lost two nicer colors already

[MUCHO REEF]

Click on this link, then read post 1, 6 and 7.

http://www.michiganreefers.com/foru...highlight=Mucho


I have a couple of questions.

1. Do you feed your tank, if so, what, how much and how often?

2. What's your salinity?

3. How many times has this happened?

4. Do they bounce back, or do they die? If they perish, how quick?

5. Do you stick with an exact photoperiod, meaning, are your lights coming on and off at the same time and for the same duration everyday?

This picture seems very strange to me for some reason. Notice the pattern of retraction. So why isn't the entire colony retracted? Why do you have full expansion on all 4 outer points of the rock.

Is there a powerhead nearby hitting this colony directly?

I make it a habit of once per month, taking a maxijet 1200 PH and blowing off any residual sediment on every coral in my tank. This greatly prevent what happened in the link above.

Any other info you can share? Sorry for all the questions.

Mucho

[NanoReefWanabe]

linky no worky mucho......

[surfnvb7]

oh shoot....i know i responded to mucho's post.....but its not on here...darn, it was long too......

yeah, linky doesn't work mucho.....

when i get the chance, i'll try to respond to your questions again.

[MinibowMatt]

Sounds like Alkalinity to me... im 90% sure....

Dont count on 2 part... is it DIY? ESV, or one of the off brands?

If ESV, i would be almost certain to say it isnt ALK, but 2 parts go bad, if your Ca and or PH is off, than dosing buffer may not be enough....

My other thought is do you run a really tight system, meaning no algae, super clean water, understocked as far as fish go? If so, maybe it could be due to water being too clean, but I doubt it.

Dont think that damage has to be done throughout your tank if PH was bad, some sp. of zoas come from higher/lower PH regions, and therefore could tolerate PH changes better or worse than other colonies.

oh yeah,
I also see a vermetid snail in there, they annoy zoas in my tank, and could cause the polyps to die if aggrevated enough...

[jeffhand]

nice zoas

[surfnvb7]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10707254#post10707254 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by MinibowMatt
Sounds like Alkalinity to me... im 90% sure....

Dont count on 2 part... is it DIY? ESV, or one of the off brands?

If ESV, i would be almost certain to say it isnt ALK, but 2 parts go bad, if your Ca and or PH is off, than dosing buffer may not be enough....

My other thought is do you run a really tight system, meaning no algae, super clean water, understocked as far as fish go? If so, maybe it could be due to water being too clean, but I doubt it.

Dont think that damage has to be done throughout your tank if PH was bad, some sp. of zoas come from higher/lower PH regions, and therefore could tolerate PH changes better or worse than other colonies.

oh yeah,
I also see a vermetid snail in there, they annoy zoas in my tank, and could cause the polyps to die if aggrevated enough...

i cant see it being KH swings, i test it on a weekly basis and its always stable around 9.6'ish b/c its dosed via a LM3 pump which is right on the money.

i make my own DIY 2-part solutions, the alk addition is just baked baking soda. i dont trust what "mystery" additives come in the store bought solutions. i make it myself, therefore i know exactly what is in it.

same thing with my calcium, completely stable.

also, why would some polyps look messed up and others completely normal, of the same morph, on the SAME colony.....that just doesn't make sense to blame that on a chemical or pH. if it was a chemical, or pH, you would see the damage being indiscriminate and very random. this destruction has very set discriminate destruction over an area.

i wish i ran a clean system, i have bubble algae and dicotya (sp?) algae growing out the wazoo b/c my skimmer keeps going on the fritz and stops skimming. hopefully i got that figured out, b/c the algae is choking out allot of cool zoas which is really bringing me down. :(

can't say much about pH, other than i would expect to see acros which dominate 75% of my tank to show signs first before any other coral if there were major pH swings. maybe i'll get around to

[manderx]

looks like it's the polyps/runners that are getting the most light. raise your lights 8" and see what happens.

[surfnvb7]

can't raise the light, its in a fixed canopy. the light is about 10" off the water already. and the height of the tank is 20".

this particular colony is in the back corner of the tank, right under a bunch of sps colonies. so i can't imagine it being too much light.

although, i am starting to wonder about flow....this happened right after i had one of my nanostreams broke (again). so my tank has been lacking the normal amount of flow for a week now. this did seem to happen right after that happened....

but that wouldn't explain as to why this has happened in the past, in a tank with more than enough flow for a zoa-only tank.

here is a picture of the colony i took back in april. in this pic, something got the top of the colony.......same exact destruction on the same colony.

http://i72.photobucket.com/albums/i186/hokieatrain7/corals/IMG_0817.jpg

[surfnvb7]

update: all the injured zoas in the picture at the top of the thread seem to be recovering. they are all open, but the polyps are MUCH smaller, with much shorter skirts.



which reminds me, in the past, i've also seen injured zoas with the skirts ripped off, looked almost eaten.......never figured out what that was either. although i'm still thinking bristleworms, some kind of mutant pods, a mystery crab i have yet to find....or a eunicid worm. but one would have thought i would have caught something back when i FW dipped every single rock in my 20g zoa tank.

i went on an all out war, even took the base rock out and dipped it in freshwater until i was certain nothing could have lived....got nothing more than a couple of bristle worms.

[MUCHO REEF]

http://www.michiganreefers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18546&highlight=Mucho

see post 1, 6 and 7

[NanoReefWanabe]

i am kinda going trough the same thing with a zoa rock i bought two weeks ago...

i was excited to see a mini carpet nem on it when i got it home..as well as some funky morphs on the backside of the rock...

i wasnt so happy after a week to find Nudibranchs, Zoanthid eating Spiders, a wack of foraminiferans, and so far 3 limpets...paid for zoa's got a wack of surprises...i just hope none of the nasty stuff made it off the rock to the rest of my tank......

my next setup is going to have a full time quarantine setup to avoid this from happening again.......plus i will never buy another live caught thing again..only aquacultred frags from reputable tanks....

[cook]

This has happened to my palys many times. I always seem to save a few and they come back. No nudis.

[kelled2]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10695079#post10695079 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by ct_vol
I've had a couple of colonies do that to me... I dipped them in TMPCC put them in moderate/low light with moderate/high flow and they've all come back for me... I lost a couple of smaller frags before I started doing this, but haven't lost one since... It always seems to happen to the colonies that are the healthiest/growing the fastest... I've never found out what caused the phenomenon, only how to bring them back...

What is TMPCC ?

[surfnvb7]

Tropic Marine Pro Coral Cure.......its basically an iodine dip you squirt into the water to kill off parasites and unwanted hitch hikers.