Need help with Zoas/Palys

[zibba]

I apologize for the delay...

If you were running GFO and it was grinding a little and leaking into the tank then this could be an issue, I know you said you stopped running it, but there may still be traces of it. Some of it may be in your sump as detritus, within your tubing and pumps so I'd suggest cleaning those. Also did you get the zoas in a bad shape or healthy because this could be an influence as well. Lastly, I forget what these things are called, but they irritate zoas, when they extend their tentacle string to feed. I attached a picture of the thing I am talking about, you should get rid of these. Whenever I see one I get rid of it because they make some of my zoas close up. They usually are white, tan, or black, but if you let them stay they get covered in coralline algae which makes it harder to spot them.

I stopped running it before I upgraded my tank, which added about 400-gallons to the volume. That should have left me without (or an extremely minuscule amount of) GFO powder.

The zoas were all in good shape when I added them and stayed open as expected for about a week, then slowly started going downhill. This has been a reoccurring theme for a long time.

I definitely have vermetid snails in the system and I try to get them off of frags when I see them bothering them -- I didn't see the one you pointed out though . Good catch. But I don't think that they're the main issue as it's more wide-spread and I'm seeing closed up polyps where there aren't any of those vermetid snails around.

Yes directly into the tank. Nothing else was harmed either

I may consider this, but I'll need to do some more research. Can you post some links to short-cut that process?

Update

I was planning to go with the chemiclean or H2O2 route so I started moving all of the affected zoas to my separate frag tank, where I was going to treat them and observe. I started moving them last night and I noticed 4 bristle worms under one of the frag plugs. I didn't think much of it but I did pull them off and I flushed them.

This morning, I got a picture from my girlfriend who pulled out 19 bristle worms from the frag tank while trying to feed a lobo. I've always thought they were beneficial, but could they be the reason they're closed up?

If so, I'll likely dip all of the frags to get the bristle worms off and monitor. If not, I'll just continue with my plan of treating the frag tank with chemiclean and/or H2O2.

 

[CoralHut]

I apologize for the delay...



I stopped running it before I upgraded my tank, which added about 400-gallons to the volume. That should have left me without (or an extremely minuscule amount of) GFO powder.

The zoas were all in good shape when I added them and stayed open as expected for about a week, then slowly started going downhill. This has been a reoccurring theme for a long time.

I definitely have vermetid snails in the system and I try to get them off of frags when I see them bothering them -- I didn't see the one you pointed out though . Good catch. But I don't think that they're the main issue as it's more wide-spread and I'm seeing closed up polyps where there aren't any of those vermetid snails around.



I may consider this, but I'll need to do some more research. Can you post some links to short-cut that process?

Update

I was planning to go with the chemiclean or H2O2 route so I started moving all of the affected zoas to my separate frag tank, where I was going to treat them and observe. I started moving them last night and I noticed 4 bristle worms under one of the frag plugs. I didn't think much of it but I did pull them off and I flushed them.

This morning, I got a picture from my girlfriend who pulled out 19 bristle worms from the frag tank while trying to feed a lobo. I've always thought they were beneficial, but could they be the reason they're closed up?

If so, I'll likely dip all of the frags to get the bristle worms off and monitor. If not, I'll just continue with my plan of treating the frag tank with chemiclean and/or H2O2.

I can't seem to find the thread but look into dinoflagellates and hydrogen peroxide dosing. That's the regimen we utilized. You can also simply dip the zoanthids in h2o2 3% (the one for cleaning wounds) solution for a min or two. The bristleworms would not be detrimental unless they are in such huge numbers that they are always physically touching the zoanthids. They are excellent detrivores and a valuable clean up crew.

 

[Aqua fire/medic]

Any updates here?

 

[zibba]

Any updates here?

We transferred a number of zoas that were closed up over to our frag tank and did a chemiclean treatment on them. It's been about a week now and some zoas seem to be opening up more, while others remain closed. It's still to early to say that things are getting better or staying the same. We're continuing to observe at this point.

We still have some zoas in the main tank that are closed up -- and many that are looking just fine. We're going to be more diligent about monitoring the zoas at night to see if there's anything that might be attacking the zoas. Last night, K pulled out a number of bristle worms and said that there were hundreds in the tank. Perhaps they're irritating the zoas but perhaps they're just eating detritus or dead tissue on the zoas. I'm not sold that the worms are causing the issue.

I'll continue to post back as we try different things.

 

[tuna_bullet]

not all zoas are the same I would move the unhappy ones, flow and light have a lot to do with how happy they are, start low and move towards the top till you find there happy spot....

 

[zibba]

We've certainly tried moving the zoas around within the tank to change up lighting and flow but have not noticed an improvement. We're even continuing to do so in the frag tank. It really doesn't seem correlated to flow/light -- seems bacterial/viral or some other predator.