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

[Tavero]

Yeah I agree generally with that you are saying but at this point I am looking to try something else. My Zoa's are doing much better than there were when this whole process started but I am not getting the results i truly want and still have random issues with polyps closing and shirking. I have been doing Kalkwasser dosing for a few months now per the ACI method and have been able to lock down my PH to have swings less than .1 throughout the day. I continue to do my daily dosing per the Moonshiner's program but yet I still have problems. I noticed my ORP usually settles out around 250mV but have random drops at 110-116mV, figured what can it hurt to try Ozone on the tank to see if there is any improvement. Another super annoying thing about this tank is there seems to be a razors edge regarding algae. Even slightest bumps in P04 and algae explodes in the tank.

Fascinating. At this point I'm wondering if it wouldn't be easier just doing a continuous 50% water change per month like some lfs are doing instead of all that dosing, buying gadgets and overall messing around. Because I don't think they have the same problems with melting zoas like we do. Maybe they do? Idk. But they wouldn't be able to afford to sell them if they did. If I had more space available I would make a small test setup for that automatic water change experiment and ignore all dosing except phosphate and nitrate there.

I suppose you don't know what could be responsible for these random orp drops? I see you have a pH of 8.5 is it deliberate to to run the tank that high?

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Fascinating. At this point I'm wondering if it wouldn't be easier just doing a continuous 50% water change per month like some lfs are doing instead of all that dosing, buying gadgets and overall messing around. Because I don't think they have the same problems with melting zoas like we do. Maybe they do? Idk. But they wouldn't be able to afford to sell them if they did. If I had more space available I would make a small test setup for that automatic water change experiment and ignore all dosing except phosphate and nitrate there.

I suppose you don't know what could be responsible for these random orp drops? I see you have a pH of 8.5 is it deliberate to to run the tank that high?

I have heard that a lot of commercial systems us Ozone, but for what reason I am not sure. Local store that import and sell zoa's perhaps do not hold the coral long enough for the long term issues to set in; the buyers ultimately deal with the mystery melt, but that is just speculation.

The high PH is done on purpose, I do KALK dossing at night and run a 24/7 recirculating scrubber with an o2 valve that opens and closes as needed to pin the PH around 8.5. I made a Facebook post on one of the Hydro's community pages and asked to see other peoples ORP graphs and most people who do not use Ozone have ORP's around 315-350 naturally and I can not seem to go above 250 and have drops to 160/180. Who knows, probably a dead end but I will never know until i try and at a minimum I will have a clean smelling tank with clear water.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

Whelp here goes nothing yet again. My Ozone generator is installed an operational. My ORP was pretty steady around 240/260mV regardless of what i did tank wise, such as heavy feeding, dosing, or even fasting the tank completely. From what I have gathered by asking around, most peoples tanks hover around the 300-315mV without the use of Ozone; so who knows. My initial target is going to be 300mV and I will work very slowly up from there to around 350ish.

05-03-24 OZONE INSTALLED.

 

[Tavero]

Whelp here goes nothing yet again. My Ozone generator is installed an operational. My ORP was pretty steady around 240/260mV regardless of what i did tank wise, such as heavy feeding, dosing, or even fasting the tank completely. From what I have gathered by asking around, most peoples tanks hover around the 300-315mV without the use of Ozone; so who knows. My initial target is going to be 300mV and I will work very slowly up from there to around 350ish.

05-03-24 OZONE INSTALLED.

One remedy I tried two weeks ago was to float my melting gorilla nipples in a box and treat them with chemiclean. One measuring spoon per gallon ever two days. 4-5 days treatment time...or so.

Now they are finally recovering. In retrospect I should have treated only part of the shrinking frag so I have a control whether chemiclean was the real reason for recovery. But that's something you could try with a few of your problematic zoa frags.

As of right now I don't own any frags anymore that are afflicted with ZMS. The last ones that looked sick/sad (Magicians and Billy clubbs) finally melted away. Sadly there was no way to target treat them with chemiclean because the polyps were growing on the rockscape.

Edit: how much did that fun cost you? With all the gadgets that are required for ozone, it didn't come cheap right?

 

[Edgecrusher28]

One remedy I tried two weeks ago was to float my melting gorilla nipples in a box and treat them with chemiclean. One measuring spoon per gallon ever two days. 4-5 days treatment time...or so.

Now they are finally recovering. In retrospect I should have treated only part of the shrinking frag so I have a control whether chemiclean was the real reason for recovery. But that's something you could try with a few of your problematic zoa frags.

As of right now I don't own any frags anymore that are afflicted with ZMS. The last ones that looked sick/sad (Magicians and Billy clubbs) finally melted away. Sadly there was no way to target treat them with chemiclean because the polyps were growing on the rockscape.

Edit: how much did that fun cost you? With all the gadgets that are required for ozone, it didn't come cheap right?

Well I already had the ORP probe and Hydros controller installed. So the Ozone unit was like $280 I think; something around there.

For **** and giggles, I am going to grab a spare 40 gallon breeder tank and set it back up and test out a tap water tank with basic dechlorinator additive. If there is any noticeable benefit I will send of an ICP-MS to see what's floating around in the water.

 

[Edgecrusher28]

One remedy I tried two weeks ago was to float my melting gorilla nipples in a box and treat them with chemiclean. One measuring spoon per gallon ever two days. 4-5 days treatment time...or so.

Now they are finally recovering. In retrospect I should have treated only part of the shrinking frag so I have a control whether chemiclean was the real reason for recovery. But that's something you could try with a few of your problematic zoa frags.

As of right now I don't own any frags anymore that are afflicted with ZMS. The last ones that looked sick/sad (Magicians and Billy clubbs) finally melted away. Sadly there was no way to target treat them with chemiclean because the polyps were growing on the rockscape.

Edit: how much did that fun cost you? With all the gadgets that are required for ozone, it didn't come cheap right?

Follow up question for you. What type of substrate do you have in your troubled tank, and are you a substrate vacuum type or leave it-be type? I noticed yet another N03 spike in the tank. It normally holds around 5-10ppm with the ATS running but out of nowhere, it bumped up to 48ppm with no real significant changes. I bought a cheap canister filter from Amazon and did a 50% substrate cleaning and there was a ton of junk coming out of it. I do have crushed coral primarily as my substrate so perhaps I need to be better at cleaning it more frequently.

Ozone observation follow-up. My ORP has since crashed after installing the Ozone generator. It ran around 320-325mV for two days and then dropped like a rock to 150-170mV and now won't go above 230mV even with the Ozone generator running at night. Maybe a probe issue maybe something else; who knows. The fun continues.

 

[Tavero]

Follow up question for you. What type of substrate do you have in your troubled tank, and are you a substrate vacuum type or leave it-be type? I noticed yet another N03 spike in the tank. It normally holds around 5-10ppm with the ATS running but out of nowhere, it bumped up to 48ppm with no real significant changes. I bought a cheap canister filter from Amazon and did a 50% substrate cleaning and there was a ton of junk coming out of it. I do have crushed coral primarily as my substrate so perhaps I need to be better at cleaning it more frequently.

Ozone observation follow-up. My ORP has since crashed after installing the Ozone generator. It ran around 320-325mV for two days and then dropped like a rock to 150-170mV and now won't go above 230mV even with the Ozone generator running at night. Maybe a probe issue maybe something else; who knows. The fun continues.

1mm sand in DT. Bare bottom in frag tank.
I try to vacuum every time I have the opportunity but I only have access to 50% of my sand bed and even then only when I temporary reposition some rocks.

Last time (some months ago) I removed detrius from my bb frag tank, I lost a fist sized caulastrea and a echinopora frag so I won't do that again.

I found a melting fire and ice frag in the frag tank so I will try the chemiclean method there. Though I think it was melting because of lack of light.

Do you have standard solution to check the orp probe?