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Thank you for all the advice. After observing for weeks i noticed there were a couple of polyps that remained closed. They turned green while the rest of its colony was open and healthy. I removed all zoas from the frag plugs and I cut away the polyps that I knew something was wrong with. They were green and didn't open for weeks. To my surprise when I cut open the green moldy polyps they had spiders in them. My zoas are in OT now for several weeks. I have dipped a couple times. Have not found anything. I have $300 in zoas. So now the big question. To restart or not. I want to restart. It is only a 16 gal Biocube and only 3 months old. That is my thought currently. I am also curious as to how I can see if the polyps have eggs in them. I can update this post with what I do.Research on Pycnogonids ("sea spiders") is pretty sparse, at least when it comes to specific species that infest zoa's. Some Pycnogonids do have parasitic larvae that embed in their host and this may be the case with zoa's. Others have claimed to see eggs in the polyps. You will need to keep them in QT for quite some time to make sure they are free of issues.
A thread on Reef2Reef talking about seeing spiders in the polyp here:
Treating Zoanthid Eating Spiders with 0.1% Milbemycin Oxime: How To?
I got a zoanthid frag on 03/27/2025 and while I was zipping that frag with some others, I noticed a zoanthid-eating spider (my first time ever seeing one). I picked it off with some tweezers and thought nothing else of it. I placed the frag in my tank and after a week I realized that the polyps...
The spiders can live for months, and some claim they can live without zoa's as their primary food source for a while. That is why they are so feared/hated.
If I was in your place, starting over or not would depend on whether I wanted zoa's in the tank and how old the tank was. First coral you put in it? And you want zoa's? Maybe I would start fresh. Conversely if you can go without zoa's, I would keep going.
Good luck.
