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

[Tavero]

Do we know that? We know that skimmers and carbon remove some chemicals, but do we know that they remove that particular chemical?

We know that at least I don't use sunscreen though .
Sunscreen and cosmetics would be such a specific reason for male users, ZMS would be much rarer if that were the case. I have also done a several 50% water changes and my corals never look better after them. In fact many zoas look worse directly after one.

 

[Snoopdog]

We know that at least I don't use sunscreen though .
Sunscreen and cosmetics would be such a specific reason for male users, ZMS would be much rarer if that were the case. I have also done a several 50% water changes and my corals never look better after them. In fact many zoas look worse directly after one.

We have also stated that a solution for one tank may not translate as a solution for other's tank issues. I also have no idea if this is an issue or a red herring but I have to at least consider it. I have a control group right now because anything I put into the 20g tank instantly perks up.

I have been doing a lot of water changes in the last 8 weeks and only seen a marginal improvement. If I was putting the toxin back into the water unintentionally it could explain the poor results.

 

[Tavero]

We have also stated that a solution for one tank may not translate as a solution for other's tank issues. I also have no idea if this is an issue or a red herring but I have to at least consider it. I have a control group right now because anything I put into the 20g tank instantly perks up.

I have been doing a lot of water changes in the last 8 weeks and only seen a marginal improvement. If I was putting the toxin back into the water unintentionally it could explain the poor results.

Of course, definitely consider it and try your method. I just wanted to lower your expectations and prepare you to not being disappointed.

My new life rock arrived and is in quarantine. I have prepared a new small tank and put some of my bad looking frags inside.

 

[Snoopdog]

Of course, definitely consider it and try your method. I just wanted to lower your expectations and prepare you to not being disappointed.

My new life rock arrived and is in quarantine. I have prepared a new small tank and put some of my bad looking frags inside.

Oh, I have already been let down twice on things I really thought were it.

Did you do Tampa Bay? How big is your quarantine?

 

[Edgecrusher28]

I mentioned sunscreen before and there is a reason. Something changed in my tank after my tank busted and we moved into the planet aquarium. I have went down avenues of a change of lighting, possible nutrients being missing like trace elements. I had a random thought yesterday that seemed crazy at first but there again maybe it is not so far fetched. Shortly after my tank exploded spring started and we were also called back to work. I could no longer use a walking treadmill desk so I started walking outside at lunch. I would spray myself down with sunscreen before I walked. I did not think much about it at the time but I have my arms in my tank way more these days moving things around or snipping algae, basically getting things were I want them in the new tank. The can just got replaced but I did google the ingredient list, all bad.

homosalate
octisalate
octocrylene
zinc oxide

I do not see these showing up on an ICP test, maybe the zinc would. If marine biologist are saying these chemicals are affecting corals in large bodies of water can you imagine what it would do in a tiny contained area? I am going to do massive water changes starting this weekend and never spray my hands or arms again when applying sunscreen, I will go ahead and get arm length gloves on my next order. It could be a red herring, but who knows. But thinking now, if I have sunscreen on my arms during the weekdays and stick my full arm in the tank 5 days a week then those previous water changes did not do jack.

So the good news is if this idea of mine is correct then it is easy to reverse. I know for a fact within a day or two of being in the 20 gallon, corals amazingly do better and at a 100% rate so far and that would indicate the damage is not permanent. I am not sure how many large water changes would reverse this, I think two or three.

I am still reading on this matter but Benzophenone-3 (BP-3; oxybenzone) affects corals when they are introduced to light. I do not think this ingredient was in my sunscreen but the ingredients listed may have the same affect. It does make me wonder because in the morning my zoas were absolutely more likely to open and then close when exposed to light longer than an hour or two. I am not a marine biologist or chemist by any stretch of the imagination so it is just observation on my part.

I for sure use sunscreen when I go play a round of golf, so it certainly is a possibility. However, as previously mentioned, I have done dozens of 30% water changes over the course of the last year as well as I run a carbon reactor and have also ran polyfilter and Cubrisorb with no visible improvements. I would venture to guess if there was an irritant in the water, then large water changes would at a minimum show a slight improvement.

The Lees wooden air stones came in today so I am going to start my bubble scrub for a few hours, and likely put the air pump on a timer to run at night for a couple hours. It was interesting to see that my LPS almost immediately reacted to the bubbles and began to shed what appeared to be a mucus layer!

Also, toss up your ICP results so we can take a peak at them.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Oh, I have already been let down twice on things I really thought were it.

Did you do Tampa Bay? How big is your quarantine?

Only twice huh, must be nice

 

[Tavero]

Oh, I have already been let down twice on things I really thought were it.

Did you do Tampa Bay? How big is your quarantine?

I have bought indo pacific life rock and my quarantine is around 24l 6.5g. It was tight but it barely fits.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

TANK UPDATE 9/8/23

Overall things have improved significantly on the zoa front with the addition of live rock now over a month ago. Its been a good while since this has happened; however, there is not a single closed zoa polyp in the tank and it has been that way for a good bit now. My second AquaBiomics test results are back and it appears that the live rock has done its job as the diversity score went from bottom 5 percent to nearly 90 percent. I still do not have the full brilliant colors that I once had, but I will keep trying things going forward.


STARTED REEF MOONSHIERS PROGRAM 9-5-23
I have followed this program for awhile but never pulled the trigger on starting it as I have done trace element dosing before. However, this program take elemental dosing to the highest level for hobbyist with daily doses of some of the tricker elements to get detectable levels on ICP tests and they offer some very interesting theories on trace element balance in the our tanks.

 

[Snoopdog]

I have been doing ICP test and paying attention to the results. I was absolutely depleted on many things.

 

[Snoopdog]

Okay, I have to ask. Do you keep any type of macro algae in your tank with the zoanthids? How intense is the macro algae growth?

Would you mind sharing all of your ICP test results? I know you are using ATI the same as me. I have a new theory.

EDIT: I found your ICP for

11-21-2022
02-28-2023
05-11-2023

If you could share the others I would like to look at a pattern I picked up on.

 

[Tavero]

One update of my situation. Since my last post i have completely restarted my tanks with fresh live rock. Since then my zoas look less stressed, have more opened polyps and look overall more healthy. HOWEVER, I can only state that my zoas recovered, if i see new growth. Which as of right now i dont. Moreover, I still fear that they will suddenly start melting again. Future will tell if my whole work was useful. At least my aquascape looks aesthetically more pleasing than before.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Things on my end are about back to optimal and I actually had to break out the band saw to start fragging up some tiles i was using for Zoa grow outs; so that is good new. On the other hand, I am still not 100% sure what the underlying issues was specifically. Going back to the old Iodine conversation, I am going to revise my previous statement and say it is vital to healthy soft corals; but. One time doses of Iodine per the ICP recommendations lead to a spike in Iodine levels and likely result in the complete depletion of it within a few days as it is all further oxidized. I have seen the best results now with daily addition of iodine, I am doing 4 drops per day in my 100 gallon system (ICP verified) and am holding levels around .06/.08.

 

[Tavero]

Things on my end are about back to optimal and I actually had to break out the band saw to start fragging up some tiles i was using for Zoa grow outs; so that is good new. On the other hand, I am still not 100% sure what the underlying issues was specifically. Going back to the old Iodine conversation, I am going to revise my previous statement and say it is vital to healthy soft corals; but. One time doses of Iodine per the ICP recommendations lead to a spike in Iodine levels and likely result in the complete depletion of it within a few days as it is all further oxidized. I have seen the best results now with daily addition of iodine, I am doing 4 drops per day in my 100 gallon system (ICP verified) and am holding levels around .06/.08.

I can finally see new growth on my alien explosion so things are starting to improve. My ugly phase seems to come to an end too. Now, not all of my zoas are open and improving, some look as bad as before. One of them is my 15 year old fire and ice colony that accompanied me from my first real tank on and survived 3 tank crashes. Seems like zoas that are too far gone are destined to die.

I don't see how iodine was the culprit of our problems. I still couldn't find a scientific source which proves that corals can actually absorb elemental iodine. Even in algae growth publications everyone uses organic iodine.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

I can finally see new growth on my alien explosion so things are starting to improve. My ugly phase seems to come to an end too. Now, not all of my zoas are open and improving, some look as bad as before. One of them is my 15 year old fire and ice colony that accompanied me from my first real tank on and survived 3 tank crashes. Seems like zoas that are too far gone are destined to die.

I don't see how iodine was the culprit of our problems. I still couldn't find a scientific source which proves that corals can actually absorb elemental iodine. Even in algae growth publications everyone uses organic iodine.

Yeah after everything that was done in my tank during this process it got to the point I am not even sure what was the real fix. I am sure it was a combination of things between improving the bacterial community and truly stabilizing trace element levels with daily dosage. Whatever it is, I have happy colorful Zoa's again after a real battle. When hornets are happy, things are going well!

 

[Tavero]

Yeah after everything that was done in my tank during this process it got to the point I am not even sure what was the real fix. I am sure it was a combination of things between improving the bacterial community and truly stabilizing trace element levels with daily dosage. Whatever it is, I have happy colorful Zoa's again after a real battle. When hornets are happy, things are going well!

Sure,
There is one thing that both of us had in common though. We added fresh life rock. Then our situation improved. I haved really changed anything else. I didn't increase/change dosing trace elements nor my water change frequency.
The only other thing that is different is another powerhead because i have twice the amount of rocks now and therefore more flow restrictions.

How is it going with your zoas @Snoopdog? Did they recover? Did you add life rock too? Or do they still struggle?

 

[Snoopdog]

Sure,
There is one thing that both of us had in common though. We added fresh life rock. Then our situation improved. I haved really changed anything else. I didn't increase/change dosing trace elements nor my water change frequency.
The only other thing that is different is another powerhead because i have twice the amount of rocks now and therefore more flow restrictions.

How is it going with your zoas @Snoopdog? Did they recover? Did you add life rock too? Or do they still struggle?

Okay so here goes.

I personally do not think live rock did jack. I think when I quit changing things and screwing around with stuff my situation improved. I never did enough water changes so I switched over to moonshiners and slowly, very slowly some things looked better. I was constantly screwing with my lights so I bought a par meter and set my lights, deleted the app so I could not mess with them again.

Caveat, I am not there yet. I still have hair algae in places but starting to see coraline in places which means stability. Some zoanthids are growing, others have not grown in years. The Nirvanas that did not melt look great, starting to see flecks in my purple deaths and those have been missing. Basically right now we are still adjusting on moonshiners. I have always run tons of calurpa and now after these constant ICP test I see how much it depletes my essential elements. Dosing this bottle garbage is just that, garbage. You dose one bottle and sure it may bring your iron up but also brings your iodine to insane levels. At least now we are getting test showing how we are low on things and insanely high on others.

 

[Tavero]

Okay so here goes.

I personally do not think live rock did jack. I think when I quit changing things and screwing around with stuff my situation improved. I never did enough water changes so I switched over to moonshiners and slowly, very slowly some things looked better. I was constantly screwing with my lights so I bought a par meter and set my lights, deleted the app so I could not mess with them again.

Caveat, I am not there yet. I still have hair algae in places but starting to see coraline in places which means stability. Some zoanthids are growing, others have not grown in years. The Nirvanas that did not melt look great, starting to see flecks in my purple deaths and those have been missing. Basically right now we are still adjusting on moonshiners. I have always run tons of calurpa and now after these constant ICP test I see how much it depletes my essential elements. Dosing this bottle garbage is just that, garbage. You dose one bottle and sure it may bring your iron up but also brings your iodine to insane levels. At least now we are getting test showing how we are low on things and insanely high on others.

But you did add fresh life rock? Remember in science it doesn't matter what we believe, but only what change of the same variable/nominator made a difference. Because the rest of your conclusion is the polar opposite to what @Edgecrusher28 now does. He is adding even more elements it seems. You are also running your tank similar to me when all this mess started 2 years ago. Stable, "don't mess too much with parameters" mentality, only rarely adding elements.
After I restarted it with old life rock nothing changed, even thought I did a lot of water changes then, nothing improved. But after a restart with fresh life rock my zoas recover now. Even though my parameters were totally not stable during the first weeks of cycling. I had KH dips from 8 to 4 until I figured out my consumption and calibrated my dosing pump.
My biology in my old tank was probably pretty bad after I dosed 3 different antibiotics to treat my zoas (cyano solution, Chemiclean, Reef Flux) but even then my ICP OES was fine.

 

[Snoopdog]

But you did add fresh life rock? Remember in science it doesn't matter what we believe, but only what change of the same variable/nominator made a difference. Because the rest of your conclusion is the polar opposite to what @Edgecrusher28 now does. He is adding even more elements it seems. You are also running your tank similar to me when all this mess started 2 years ago. Stable, "don't mess too much with parameters" mentality, only rarely adding elements.
After I restarted it with old life rock nothing changed, even thought I did a lot of water changes then, nothing improved. But after a restart with fresh life rock my zoas recover now. Even though my parameters were totally not stable during the first weeks of cycling. I had KH dips from 8 to 4 until I figured out my consumption and calibrated my dosing pump.
My biology in my old tank was probably pretty bad after I dosed 3 different antibiotics to treat my zoas (cyano solution, Chemiclean, Reef Flux) but even then my ICP OES was fine.

I am not saying the rock did not fix it, it is just my opinion.

 

[Snoopdog]

Since going on Reef Moonshiners, our tank is slowly turning around. Not every zoa is doing well but the tank in general is starting to look better as our parameters are getting more inline. We are starting to see growth in corals that had stalled out. Coraline algae is growing faster, pod population has tripled and nuisane algae has noticeably lowered. I think in 4-8 weeks the update will be even better. No water changes, no skimmer.

I cannot say my ICP was fine, there were definitely parameters off.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Since going on Reef Moonshiners, our tank is slowly turning around. Not every zoa is doing well but the tank in general is starting to look better as our parameters are getting more inline. We are starting to see growth in corals that had stalled out. Coraline algae is growing faster, pod population has tripled and nuisane algae has noticeably lowered. I think in 4-8 weeks the update will be even better. No water changes, no skimmer.

I cannot say my ICP was fine, there were definitely parameters off.

That is good to hear! On top of finally having happy Zoas. I noticed a Acro colony explode in growth in just a few shot moths; that was exciting! My flaming Mohicans and the WWC Black Orchids are producing lots of new heads, and that is good news given they were stuck at single heads for a long time.

Are you doing the monthly Rubidium?

What is your daily Iodine dosage?

Did you notice your tank needed a lot of Boron with your initial corrections?