Mystery Zoa melt, my search for a cure (follow my journey).

[Edgecrusher28]

Given the crazy amount of information out there, along with endless accounts of experienced reefers who out of nowhere begin to struggle keeping zoanthids long term. I wanted to make a dedicated post where I document all of my attempts at solving my miserable and dying zoanthid collection issues. Additionally, I wanted to make a post where others can share their remedies or suggestions for me to test that isn't buried by 5 years of newer posts. Seeing as I cant enjoy my tank at the moment, I might as well turn its struggles into a mini project and share it with all of you. Please give me a few days to compile and post all the information and data I have collected up till this point. I will try and put together some pictures of my tank, and zoa's documenting my progress; so hold on, cause here we go.


ABOUT MY TANK AND ITS HISTORY AND CHECMISTRY. (pending- updates to follow).


ATTEMPTED TREATMENTS THAT DID NOT WORK FOR ME. (KEY WORDS ARE FOR ME).
Hydrogen Peroxide scrubs.
Hydrogen Peroxide 50/50 dips at 5 and 10 mn intervals.
Hydrogen Peroxide 100% (3% fluid) concentration dips at 2 mn intervals (Actually ended up burning the mat on some frags and creating blisters on the polyps).
Coral RX dip 10 and 15 mn intervals.
Coral RX highly concentrated dip 10 and 15 mn intervals (Double the recommend dose).
Dipx dip 10 and 15 mn intervals.
Dipx highly concentrated dip 10 and 15 mn intervals (Double the recommend dose).
Iodine dip 5, 10 and 15 mn intervals using 1ml per gallon.
Iodine highly concentrated dip 5, 10 and 15 mn intervals using 4ml per gallon.
ChemiClean full tank treatments X2
Flux Rx treatment x1 14 days
Flux Rx treatment X1 double the recommended dose. 14days
Flux Rx treatment x1 four times the recommended dose (I'm an idiot and this hurt the tank). Did big water change after a week.

FUTURE TESTS.
Sechem Metroplex, Kanaplex, and NeoPlex baths.
API General Cure and Erythromycin baths.
Kordons Malachite Green, Methylene Blue, Rid ICH plus baths.

IN PROGRESS TESTS.
-48 Hour Methylene Blue treatment (24 hour dip is completed)
-Vitamin C and Multivitamin dosing (These frags will be my control for this remedy as I will not dip them for awhile in any of the other remedies).

COMPLETED TESTS.
-24 hour Methylene blue treatment. (Minor changes for the good, but perhaps too early to tell.)

Before treatment. A once beautiful and FULL colony of Nirvana, now sad and pathetic.


After 24 hour MB treatment and one full day of recovery in tank.


One week update (Coming soon).

How they looked long ago before I even tried

 

[Edgecrusher28]

ABOUT MY TANK AND ITS HISTORY AND CHECMISTRY.
The tank is a standard Marineland 75 gallon aquarium with a Trigger systems CR44 Sapphire sump. All-in-all I estimate this to be around a 100 gallon system. It has been up and running for 1.5 years now with an on going zoa issue that is approaching 1 year in length after the initial onset of a Derbesia algae outbreak.

Equipment:
Reef Octopus Regal 150 INT skimmer.
Ice Cap Medium Pro internal algae turf scrubber.
Innovative Marine Helio PTC Smart Heater dual 350w elements.
Dual eFlux 6009 DC Flow return pumps.
80lbs of Caribsea Aragonite Special grade substrate.
Gallon Box - 1 1/2” Spheres Ceramic Biomedia
4- AI Prime 16 HD's running 3D reefs shades and diffusers with a slightly modified Salty Pops lighting schedule.

TANK CHEMISTRY.
Ammonia-0
Nitrite-0
Nitrate 13.3ppm
Phosphate .110ppm
Calcium 480ppm
Magnesium 1440ppm
Alkalinity 10.5dKh
PH 8.2
Temperature 76.4.

ICP TEST DATES.
4-5-22 ATI- Zoa's look great
10-8-22 ATI- Zoa's started to look like hot garbage
12-02-22 ICP Analysis
12-26-22 ATI
12-30-22 ICP Analysis
01-09-23 ICP Analysis
01-26-23 ATI
02-16-23 ATI
03-21-23 ATI
04-16-23 ATI- Pending*

I was doing frequent ICP tests to ensure that my water parameters were matching my testing results and additionally I was trying to dial in trace element dosing. Elements that are/were being dosed to combat the issues are as follows using ATI's elements solution:
Chromium
Iron
Iodine
Manganese
Vanadium
Zinc
RESTULTS DID NOT IMPROVE OVER MONTHS OF DOSING

OTHER DOSING SOLUTIONS THAT YEILDED NO CHANGE OR IMPROVEMT.
Reef energy AB+ at 20ml per day on an auto doser.
Acro Power at 60ml per week hand dosed.
Brightwell Amino Acids 1ml per day, dosed every other day.
These items were not dosed at the same time, but spread out over the year period.
Reed Roids-Periodic feeding that was in line with keeping phosphates in check.

WATER CHEMISTRY ADJUSTMENTS THAT DID NOT WORK FOR ME.
Water temperature changes-
80F- No change
77F-No change
75F-No change
73F-May have been mental, but I felt that corals started to look less happy. Zoa's were still miserable so I went back to 77 over several days.

Water Salinity: Using Hanna checker along with refractometer with calibration solution each test.
1.027-tank looked like less happy
1.026-No change, and this is the normal salinity I run the tank at.
1.025-No change
1.024-No change with Zoa's, but LPS started to look crabby.
1.023-Zoas still sucked and I lost a once healthy Acan colony so I stopped my experiment here and slowly went back to 35ppt.

LIGHTING CHANGES THAT DID NOT WORK FOR ME. (10hr peak photo period with one hour ramps on each end).
First off, the Zoa's are kept in PAR ranges from 110-180. This has been verified many times with a Apogee Meter. Ultimately I broke down and bought my own in fear that the rentals were damaged and giving bad readings (hint, they were just fine).

Moved frags to 80 par over 2-3 weeks no change, and they started stretching.
Moved frags to 220 par over 2-3 weeks no improvement, but also not decline either.
Removed whites, and ran more blues no improvement.
Ran more whites no improvement.
Ran Green and Reds at 45% without any improvement over 4 weeks.
Stopped being ridiculous and went back to my previously known good light schedule.


HERE IS AN EXMAPLE OF MY ZOAS PROMLEMS AND SYMPTOMS.
Tightly closed polyps
Partially open polyps but lacking color and brilliance.
Colony's that were about 50/50 open and closed.
Stretching stalks in high par-180
Umbrellaed polyp heads
Black patches in the polyp face
Brown dusting on polyp and bases despite blowing them off frequently.
Open polyps but retracted lashes (This has been more common for me presently)
And the mother of all suckness, melted and completely gone and dead zoa's. (Although a majority of my collection is closed and slowing receding, not instantly melting).

 

[Edgecrusher28]

WHAT ABOUT THE OBVIOUS ISSUES THOUGH?
As many would say, do not put the cart in front of the horse. Perhaps there is a simple or obvious solution or problem that is being easily overlooked, and I would say they are right. However, I have really put in a significant amount of time, money, energy, and genuine effort in resolving this issue without any success. Putting so much time and effort into a tank and having such poor results are extremely frustrating, but yet oddly intriguing.

SO YES, I HAVE CHECKED
Water Parameters
Lighting
Flow
Pets
Pets fish
Metal Pollutants
stray Voltage
and more crap that I cant even remember anymore.

MAYBE THIS IS A BACTERIAL ISSUES, THAT DOES NOT NEGATIVLY AFFECT STONY CORALS.... LETS SEEE

 

[MischiefReef]

Given the crazy amount of information out there, along with endless accounts of experienced reefers who out of nowhere begin to struggle keeping zoanthids long term. I wanted to make a dedicated post where I document all of my attempts at solving my miserable and dying zoanthid collection issues. Additionally, I wanted to make a post where others can share their remedies or suggestions for me to test that isn't buried by 5 years of newer posts. Seeing as I cant enjoy my tank at the moment, I might as well turn its struggles into a mini project and share it with all of you. Please give me a few days to compile and post all the information and data I have collected up till this point. I will try and put together some pictures of my tank, and zoa's documenting my progress; so hold on, cause here we go.


ABOUT MY TANK AND ITS HISTORY AND CHECMISTRY. (pending- updates to follow).


ATTEMPTED TREATMENTS THAT DID NOT WORK FOR ME. (KEY WORDS ARE FOR ME).
Hydrogen Peroxide scrubs.
Hydrogen Peroxide 50/50 dips at 5 and 10 mn intervals.
Hydrogen Peroxide 100% (3% fluid) concentration dips at 2 mn intervals (Actually ended up burning the mat on some frags and creating blisters on the polyps).
Coral RX dip 10 and 15 mn intervals.
Coral RX highly concentrated dip 10 and 15 mn intervals (Double the recommend dose).
Dipx dip 10 and 15 mn intervals.
Dipx highly concentrated dip 10 and 15 mn intervals (Double the recommend dose).
Iodine dip 5, 10 and 15 mn intervals using 1ml per gallon.
Iodine highly concentrated dip 5, 10 and 15 mn intervals using 4ml per gallon.
ChemiClean full tank treatments X2
Flux Rx treatment x1 14 days
Flux Rx treatment X1 double the recommended dose. 14days
Flux Rx treatment x1 four times the recommended dose (I'm an idiot and this hurt the tank). Did big water change after a week.

FUTURE TESTS.
Sechem Metroplex, Kanaplex, and NeoPlex baths.
API General Cure and Erythromycin baths.
Kordons Malachite Green, Methylene Blue, Rid ICH plus baths.

IN PROGRESS TESTS.
-48 Hour Methylene Blue treatment (24 hour dip is completed)
-Vitamin C and Multivitamin dosing (These frags will be my control for this remedy as I will not dip them for awhile in any of the other remedies).

COMPLETED TESTS.
-24 hour Methylene blue treatment. (Minor changes for the good, but perhaps too early to tell.)

Before treatment. A once beautiful and FULL colony of Nirvana, now sad and pathetic.


After 24 hour MB treatment and one full day of recovery in tank.


One week update (Coming soon).

How they looked long ago before I even tried

Good luck on your experimenting, following for progress results.

Out of curiousity, aside from
initial introduction dip what made you decide to dip in the first place? General deterioration? Concern about pests?

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Good luck on your experimenting, following for progress results.

Out of curiousity, aside from
initial introduction dip what made you decide to dip in the first place? General deterioration? Concern about pests?

No other reason than it seems to be a reasonable solution or first attempt to correcting corals with issues. Oddly though, I have never found a single pest or bug aside from the ever so occasional asterina starfish, but never on a coral only in the sump. But yes, the reason for the dips were because the corals did not look healthy.

 

[Tavero]

Adding my earlier written findings here:
The only treatment which showed any success at all were repeated dips in chemiclean (Erythromycin?) of at least 1h duration. Concentration was one scoop (60mg) in 100 ml saltwater. The recovery chance for this treatment was around 50-70%. Still not that great but higher than the 0-10% i got for anything else until now.

@Edgecrusher28
One common nominator i can see in your setup are the frag plates, which all seem to be made from the same material. Im not assuming anything, but just posting observations.

 

[aSaltyKlown]

Was anything done differently to the tank prior to them starting to decline in Oct? Have you tried to not dose anything? Maybe set up a small tank with some LR and a few of the zoas with no dosing, just WC.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Adding my earlier written findings here:
The only treatment which showed any success at all were repeated dips in chemiclean (Erythromycin?) of at least 1h duration. Concentration was one scoop (60mg) in 100 ml saltwater. The recovery chance for this treatment was around 50-70%. Still not that great but higher than the 0-10% i got for anything else until now.

@Edgecrusher28
One common nominator i can see in your setup are the frag plates, which all seem to be made from the same material. Im not assuming anything, but just posting observations.

I have done 24/48hr baths in both general cure and erythromycin without any improvement. Unfortunately, I found out that these meds had expired in 2019, so I am waiting for the new ones to arrive to test again.

As for the egg crate, the idea of chemical leaching has crossed my mind, but after a year and a half I just don't see how it could still be an issue but then again who knows. Secondly, if the egg crate was causing unwanted contaminates into the tank I would assume more than just soft corals would be affected

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Was anything done differently to the tank prior to them starting to decline in Oct? Have you tried to not dose anything? Maybe set up a small tank with some LR and a few of the zoas with no dosing, just WC.

Nothing major that comes to mind during that period; however, I did not make much of an effort in tracking what was done to the tank like I do now. The only real change that comes to mind was an algae outbreak around or shortly after that time. It was significant enough that it covered many of the zoa frags entirely. Presently however, there is not a single strand of algae in the display tank; I guess that is one positive of this whole nightmare.

About a week ago I completely discontinued any trace element or other dosing aside from ALk, CAL, MAG and Vitamins. I figured it was obviously not making any difference, I might as well stop adding another element to the confusion for the time being. Secondly, there is another somewhat identical tank sitting next to the troubled tank that Is up and running after about 4 months worth of dark cycling. It has one frag of Zoa in it with a cheap light (60 par) I guess I could move some frags over there but am concerned of transferring a potential bacteria issue to that tank.

 

[mfollen]

How close have your major and minor elements been to target levels in ICP tests during your trace dosing?
How often would you ICP test?

 

[Edgecrusher28]

How close have your major and minor elements been to target levels in ICP tests during your trace dosing?
How often would you ICP test?

ICP TEST DATES.
4-5-22 ATI- Zoa's look great
10-8-22 ATI- Zoa's started to look like hot garbage
12-02-22 ICP Analysis
12-26-22 ATI
12-30-22 ICP Analysis
01-09-23 ICP Analysis
01-26-23 ATI
02-16-23 ATI
03-21-23 ATI
04-16-23 ATI- Pending*

The only issue I ran into was getting iodine too high, which was odd because it showed zero until it hit .6ppm. Someone had suggested that the aluminum and bromine were a potential issues. However; today marks two weeks exactly that I have been running Cuprisorb and Polyfilter in an attempt to pull those out. Next ICP test goes out here in a few days so will know for sure, but there were no noticeable changes for the good.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

MALACHITE GREEN TREATMENT IN PROGRESS.
I have started my 48 hour extra concentrated Malachite Green bath today, starting with a x2 strength dose and will replenish the medicine after 24 hours; stay tuned. Test subjects are a sad plate of Pandoras and a frag of GMK and Utter Chaos.



METHYLENE BLUE POST TREATMENT RESULTS.
Coming up on the six day mark post treatment, and there has been really no noticeable changes in these Zoa's. I also dipped a few frags that I set aside to monitor and they did not improve either.

 

[Tavero]

I have done 24/48hr baths in both general cure and erythromycin without any improvement. Unfortunately, I found out that these meds had expired in 2019, so I am waiting for the new ones to arrive to test again.

As for the egg crate, the idea of chemical leaching has crossed my mind, but after a year and a half I just don't see how it could still be an issue but then again who knows. Secondly, if the egg crate was causing unwanted contaminates into the tank I would assume more than just soft corals would be affected

I never wrote anything about chemicals leaching. If you want to figure out the cause you have to think more out of the box. What i meant was the reef plugs/ discs in general. Like i wrote in the other thread i am pretty certain this is some kind of bacterial infection. But why does it start and how to prevent it? Here is my idea. What if the infection starts from below the zoanthids. Maybe there are anoxic conditions responsible? Or there is detrius trapped and overgrown by zonthids which is now rotting.
In that case chemiclean wont help either.

I will start to print a part of my frag plugs from PLA to compare their health with each other. They seem to like the surface of my reef rack more than my plugs out of cement or coral gravel.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

I never wrote anything about chemicals leaching. If you want to figure out the cause you have to think more out of the box. What i meant was the reef plugs/ discs in general. Like i wrote in the other thread i am pretty certain this is some kind of bacterial infection. But why does it start and how to prevent it? Here is my idea. What if the infection starts from below the zoanthids. Maybe there are anoxic conditions responsible? Or there is detrius trapped and overgrown by zonthids which is now rotting.
In that case chemiclean wont help either.

I will start to print a part of my frag plugs from PLA to compare their health with each other. They seem to like the surface of my reef rack more than my plugs out of cement or coral gravel.

I see what you are saying, I thought you were talking about the frag plug base/table area. Anyways, at this point I would say anything is fair game, and I now more so than ever am leaning towards bacteria issues versus parasite/fungal after the few round of treatments I have done. This is purely speculation, but I was thinking perhaps the infection could pass through or infect the Zoa's mesogloea, kind of like the process of osmosis or something similar. There has to be a correlation to why more Proto/Paly type zoa's are often times not affected, yet the true Zoanthus species are the first to show symptoms. I read somewhere that paly type zoa's have a thicker mesogloea and they often times contain sand or other particles. Could these be natures way of giving these zoa's a slime coat in theory, and lessens the efficacy of the bacteria....

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Little update on the few things that I have been able to get done. The double dose 48 hour Malachite Green treatment frags have been recovering in the tank for the last 24hr, and so for nothing to report back as of yet; status quo unfortunately.

SEACHEM NEOPLEX, KANAPLEX, AND METROPLEX TREATMENT COMPLETE.
The 48hr double dose of my Seachem's Trio bath is complete and the frags and plates are back in the tank recovering, I will have update photos in a few days. I have the highest hopes for this series of treatments, as it is the broadest antibiotic treatment I have on hand as well as it treats fungal, bacterial, and parasitic infections both interior and exterior; fingers crossed.

 

[EricR]

Following since all my zoas (4-5 different kinds) that had been doing fine for close to a year are now on a 3 month, downward spiral.

In my case, issues started shortly after HOB setup change (so thought flow issues) but now I have no idea what's going on so pretty much gave up.
*ICP test looks pretty good with low Iodine being the only thing left for me to try to deal with, I guess

 

[Tavero]

My chemiclean treatment didn't work this time. Even after several treatments i could only see a short improvement before they continued to keep melting.
So today i pulled the plug and removed all Lord of the Rings and Alien explosions (100 polyps).
Something noteworthy was the peculiar smell during the removal. I definitively smelled H2S. This smell could come from my rotting zoanthids but also from the rotting life rock beneath them.
One questions would be if this H2S is the reason for my melted zoas or just the result.
But now that already 3 colonies on this rock have died, I am thinking about sealing the pores and surface with a thin layer of concrete reef glue. It can't be coincidence.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Just getting back from vacation, will get some update photos when I can. However, there was no noticeable improvements on the Seachem Trio treatment. I also put a few random frags in the same treatment solution and left it there for 5 days over vacation and just got them back in the tank. Lets see if increased exposer time will help.

Next up:
Aqua-Mox Forte Amoxicillin.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Here is an updated picture of all the frags in question after a variety of 24/48 hour extra concentrated baths for fungal/bacteria and parasitic infections. Overall, there is little to no change in the Zoa's after recovering from their treatments for a week. You can still see most of the frags are only partially open and a few continue to have the black patches in the face of the polyp which still baffles me. New ICP test should be back in a few days, but I have nearly ruled out water chemistry as the issue here as it has been solid now for months.


ZOA FRAGS AFTER A WEEK RECOVERY FROM THEIR SEACHEM TRIO BATH (NO CHANGE).



CURRENT TREATMENT IN PROGRESS: 4-18-23
-72HR super concentrated (500mg daily) Amoxicillin bath. The frags that are in this bath are the original frags I used to test the Methylene Blue solution. So they have been untouched now for a few weeks are seem to be the best candidates for a new test.

 

[Tavero]

@Edgecrusher28
Wanted to ask you this before but kinda forgot.
Are you using GAC? Or any other method or removing terpenes and organics?
Also have you made your coral frag plates yourself or did you buy them?