Can zoanthid eating spiders live without zoas

Reefer5640 · Apr 22, 2017

I'm having a hard time finding much info about zoa eating spiders. I've pulled my infected zoa colony and dipped it in coral Rx. It is now in my coral QT tank. I've removed about a dozen spiders floating around the water column after the colony was removed from the DT. I'm terrified they will make their way to the other end of the tank to my other zoa colonies. I've noticed they have turned from brown/tan to white since the infected zoas have been removed. My question is- Can they servive without zoas for food? I found one in my monti cap. Can they eat other types of polyps? If they can't survive without zoas, how long should I wait to reintroduce my zoas? As of now my hope is that once the colony in the QT are spider free, anything in the DT will have starved out (assuming they don't make it to my other colonies and they can't survive off anything other than zoas...)

Also, does anyone know the gestational cycle of these spiders? I assume if you get the male carrying the eggs to drop off in the dip then you should be good. I'm going to continue to dip every 3-5 days anyway just to be sure.

Here's some pics of before and after and about 20 spiders I got from the coral Rx dip
Before:

After:

~15-20 Spiders after coral Rex dip:

reef lover · Apr 26, 2017

From what I've read about these guys they actually lay the eggs inside of the ZOA then as the spider grows he eats his way out pretty much...destroying the polyp. So they could b inside the other colonies growing and u wouldn't even know it. I heard of people shining light through the polyps to try to c if they're infested.
And they won't infest any other type of coral.
I would suggest qt all colonies...and expect to b in for a long battle.

Reefer5640 · Apr 28, 2017

Thank you for the reply. So I've read on other forms that people say they lay their eggs in the polyps but I haven't been able to find any solid literature that suggests this is the case. Do you by chance have a link you could share?

The only thing I've really found so far that states anything about what they do with their eggs is on Coral Rx's website which states the males carry the eggs and young with their legs. Nothing about eggs inside of polyps... not to say this isn't the case... I'll have to get a flashlight and try looking through the zoa.

Here's their link:
http://www.coralrx.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=21

And it has been confirmed that they have made it to the other colonies so that really sucks... they are all on a big rock together which is very much epoxy'd, drilled, and doweled to the rest of the aquascape so that is not going to be fun getting them out.

And I did catch a handful that were tan/brown and did some experiments. I left a couple in nothing but water from the tank (no food source, no detritus, no other bugs or anything). They turned white by the next day and were almost non responsive as if they were dead. By the end of day two they were curled up into little balls all huddled together dead. These deaths could most certainly be from the temperature dropping out rather than lack of food but one thing was conclusive from my test which is- turning white means close to death.