Amphipods Eating My Zoas Help!

R33fDaddy

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A couple weeks ago I had 10 Polyps of Illuminati Zoas. I few days after that I took "inventory" and noticed I only had 8. A few days after that, I noticed a bunch of shrimp looking creatures in my tank, that everyone here identified as Amphipods. This past Monday when I checked my Tank I noticed them all over my Zoas. Tuesday Morning I counted 7 Zoas and this morning only 6!! This is all happening in my Coral Quarantine Tank. Help please, I don't want to lose all these Zoas.
 

elysics

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Take a fish hatching box and suspend the frag in that above the ground, making sure to shoo all the amphipods off the frag beforehand

Alternatively, take a plastic container, drill a bunch of holes in it for water flow, and clip it to the rim of the tank

Amphipods rarely go into open water
 
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R33fDaddy

R33fDaddy

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Are you sure they aren't dying and the amphipods are cleaning up the dead flesh?
Not dying. The poylp that's missing this morning was wide open and happy yesterday. This morning it's totally missing, absolutely no trace of it.
 

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Are you sure they aren't dying and the amphipods are cleaning up the dead flesh?
+1 to this - pods are rarely predatory.

zoas also melt fast so i wouldn't jump to conclusion just yet that the pods are killing it. ie, something else is causing them to die, they melt overnight, and pods show up to clean up the dead flesh.
 

LRT

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I would dip them in iodine based dip. Melafix or bayer. Anything to kill/remove pods and suspend as mentioned to allow to heal.
People are so fast to blame it on dieing corals. A quick search will show hundreds of instances where pods will eat not only zoas but other corals as well. Especially when no other food source is present and populations are left unchecked..
Check out gammarus pods. There are literally thousands of different species and its nearly impossible to tell them apart. But see if you can identify which ones you have. That being said alot are carnivorous.
I went through the same thing. But with an rfa. Pods ate entire skirt and where nestled around base super irritating it.
I dipped rfa in bayer.
Rfa is now perfectly fine as it was before the pods got to it.

Id suggest getting a wrasse or other natural predator in tank to keep pod populations down.
 

elysics

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---

edit: worng topic lol. Anyway, i have a picture of an amphipod with fluorescent stomach contents, nicely matching the color of one of my zoas lol, there definitely are predators among them
 
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R33fDaddy

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+1 to this - pods are rarely predatory.

zoas also melt fast so i wouldn't jump to conclusion just yet that the pods are killing it. ie, something else is causing them to die, they melt overnight, and pods show up to clean up the dead flesh.
Thought this was the case but I seriously doubt it; pretty sure these things are eating my Zoas. I also have Halle Berry Zoas in this tank but it's too many of them to notice if one poylp missing here or there. I do however notice new Halle Berry Zoas Poylps popping up and all the rest of the Coral looks fine.
 

LRT

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Thought this was the case but I seriously doubt it; pretty sure these things are eating my Zoas. I also have Halle Berry Zoas in this tank but it's too many of them to notice if one poylp missing here or there. I do however notice new Halle Berry Zoas Poylps popping up and all the rest of the Coral looks fine.
Are you using real live ocean rock in system?
If your hunch is the pods are eating your zoas because your literally watching it happen than id go with it.
Just because they haven't gotten to your other zoas doesn't mean they won't once they finish up the ones they are eating.
Id be more than willing to bet you have hunchback gammarus pods like I did.
They are carnivorous and won't typically eat coral but if populations are left unchecked to explode, no other food source is present.
They absoloutely will eat corals.
 

elysics

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+1 to this - pods are rarely predatory.

zoas also melt fast so i wouldn't jump to conclusion just yet that the pods are killing it. ie, something else is causing them to die, they melt overnight, and pods show up to clean up the dead flesh.
The problem is, and i have sadly seen this with about 7 or 8 varieties of zoa before i really stepped in and managed to stop it, yes, sometimes a polyp is just suffering and that causes the amphipods to eat it. But, without those amphipods, that polyp, while suffering, might survive anyway, with the amphipods eating it, it definitely won't.

And what's way, way worse: Once those amphipods start eating that one unhealthy polyp, guess what happens, all that commotion and stress ticks off the previously healthy polyps around the first one as well, even though they were perfectly open and healthy before. And then the amphipods eat those too, spreading this cycle like a wildfire.

Once you put the plug out of amphipods reach, maybe one or two more already attacked polyps die, then the cycle stops.
 
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R33fDaddy

R33fDaddy

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I would dip them in iodine based dip. Melafix or bayer. Anything to kill/remove pods and suspend as mentioned to allow to heal.
People are so fast to blame it on dieing corals. A quick search will show hundreds of instances where pods will eat not only zoas but other corals as well. Especially when no other food source is present and populations are left unchecked..
Check out gammarus pods. There are literally thousands of different species and its nearly impossible to tell them apart. But see if you can identify which ones you have. That being said alot are carnivorous.
I went through the same thing. But with an rfa. Pods ate entire skirt and where nestled around base super irritating it.
I dipped rfa in bayer.
Rfa is now perfectly fine as it was before the pods got to it.

Id suggest getting a wrasse or other natural predator in tank to keep pod populations down.
20210508_001236_1.gif

This is video I took the first night a discoverd them, not sure what kind. These things are big and I'm finding empty shells of them in my tank.

My Zoas are on a Rock so I can't dip them unless I first try to frag them off which I'm inexperienced in doing.
20210513_121819.jpg

If The only option is to try to frag them off and dip then I'll do it, but I would hate to kill them while in the process of trying to save them.
 
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R33fDaddy

R33fDaddy

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Are you using real live ocean rock in system?
If your hunch is the pods are eating your zoas because your literally watching it happen than id go with it.
Just because they haven't gotten to your other zoas doesn't mean they won't once they finish up the ones they are eating.
Id be more than willing to bet you have hunchback gammarus pods like I did.
They are carnivorous and won't typically eat coral but if populations are left unchecked to explode, no other food source is present.
They absoloutely will eat corals.
They made it into my Quarantine Tank via Coral I got about a month ago. Prior to that I had nothing in the tank because I had just moved a bunch of stuff out of Quarantine. I posted a gif of what the look like on this thread. Thanks for any help provided.
 

elysics

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20210508_001236_1.gif

This is video I took the first night a discoverd them, not sure what kind. These things are big and I'm finding empty shells of them in my tank.

My Zoas are on a Rock so I can't dip them unless I first try to frag them off which I'm inexperienced in doing.
20210513_121819.jpg

If The only option is to try to frag them off and dip then I'll do it, but I would hate to kill them while in the process of trying to save them.
Just carefully pull off the piece of frag plug or whatever they came on off the rock
 

LRT

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20210508_001236_1.gif

This is video I took the first night a discoverd them, not sure what kind. These things are big and I'm finding empty shells of them in my tank.

My Zoas are on a Rock so I can't dip them unless I first try to frag them off which I'm inexperienced in doing.
20210513_121819.jpg

If The only option is to try to frag them off and dip then I'll do it, but I would hate to kill them while in the process of trying to save them.
Looks like super close cousin to hunchback. Yup they get huge almost size of large mysis. Molt constantly and make a huge mess in my system.
I wouldnt go to extreme drastic measures. Id dip the zoas they love to eat right now and remove whatever pods you can. Then suspend so they can heal. Dip again if you seen the pods around eating again.
 

LRT

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Get a 6 line Wrasse in there to eat them?
+1 on wrasse!
My pods where literally trying to climb out of my tables when I put wrasse in.
I cant tell you the satisfaction of watching wrasse catch the pods and violent shake/shred these pods against rocks. Totally gratifying feeling.
Wrasse love them
 
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R33fDaddy

R33fDaddy

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Take a fish hatching box and suspend the frag in that above the ground, making sure to shoo all the amphipods off the frag beforehand

Alternatively, take a plastic container, drill a bunch of holes in it for water flow, and clip it to the rim of the tank

Amphipods rarely go into open water
The Zoas are all on rock not a frag :(

20210513_121813.jpg


Is it a way to get rid of the Amphipods?
 

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