closed zoa colonies

[Sea Turtle]

Hi all,

I have been having a problem with my Zoa colonies for sometime now. It all started out with a sand sifting goby that I thought was upseting the zoas. So, I removed him from the tank. However, this did nothing. They still did not come out. I also must note, I added a red slime remover to the tank about the same time. This had an ill effect on some of the sps corals. Anyway, I added carbon and the sps have all recovered, ony the zoas are still closed. Does anyone know what might be causing this to happen? Could it be any of my water parameters? Here is where I am currently at:

dKH: 7.5
Ca: 450
Salinity: 1.0255
Temp: 77 deg
MG: 1305
PH: 8.0

 

[Ben1]

Have you checked at night for Zoa eatting nudis? I had this recently and made a post with pics but cant find it now. Anyhow my son had a buch of differetn zoas and they just stopped opening. One night I noticed some nudis and was able to solve the issue pretty easy.

 

[Sea Turtle]

Have you checked at night for Zoa eatting nudis? I had this recently and made a post with pics but cant find it now. Anyhow my son had a buch of differetn zoas and they just stopped opening. One night I noticed some nudis and was able to solve the issue pretty easy.

I haven't noticed anything really. I checked them over pretty carefully but didn;t see anything. Do they normally come out at night? Also, how do I remove them if this is what the problem is? What else could cause this problem?

 

[Anonymous]

They're pretty tricky to spot. Try a freshwater dip if you can - shake the rock with the zoas on in fresh water and the nudis should fall off. When I had this problem, I did it several nights in a row until no more fell off (I'm not sure if that was because the first dip didn't get them or because nudis that weren't on the colony the first night came back home the next).

While you have the zoas out, have a good luck for sundial snails as well.

For ID purposes...

Nudi

Sundial snail

 

[Sea Turtle]

Can I only do this at night?

 

[Anonymous]

I don't think so. I did mine during lights on (though technically it was dark outside...).

 

[Ben1]

The nudis can take on the color of the zoa they are eatting. In my thread you can see the one in the pic is orange and was eatting some orange zoas. I had green nudis eatting green zoas so they can camo themselfs a bit. I fresh water dipped them, scrapped any eggs off which were layed on the base of the zoas and put them in my frag tank. I repeated the dip after sometime and moved them back in the tank.

topic125573.html?hilit=nudi

 

[Sea Turtle]

But will they get on every single zoa? Even the small colony on the sand that has about 2 polys? Everyone in the whole tank is closed up.

 

[Ben1]

In my case yeah all the zoa closed up, while the palys were fine.

 

[Sea Turtle]

I just checked my salinity and to my surprise it is 1.024. What happens in the reef tank when it gets this low? Could this be causing them to close up?

 

[Ben1]

I dont think so, I run my tanks at 1.025-1.026 and don't think a 1.024 would be any issue. Or maybe a type of fungus? http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showt ... did=691978 Sorry for the outside link.

 

[Sea Turtle]

Ok, after further examination, there are definenetly not nudis on my zoa's, however, when I shined the flashlight on them last night, I saw movement. The zoa, (each colony) has amphipods on them. Not a lot but at least 4-5 on larger colony and 1-2 on smaller ones. Also, I noticed little pod like creaturs on there that are fast. They look almost like a very tiny grey tube with lots of little legs on the side about the size of a large grain of sand. They hate the light and scury off into holes when I shine it upon them. They do not look like copepods. Could this be the problem? I did a little research and found that amphipods can be an irritant to zoas. If this is the problem, what would you suggest? I thought that pods were good for the reef tank?

If I was to do a fresh water bath tonight to try to get rid of them, would this work? Also, I do not have any experience with fresh water baths, does the water temp have to be same temp, ph, etc....

Also, will they just come right back when I put the zoa colony back in to the tank?

How about a mandarin? Will they get rid of this problem? I had one before and it starved, so naturaly I am a little hesitant to add one to my tank. I really can't find any pods anywhere else. I guess that I could search for one that eats frozen food at the store.

 

[Sea Turtle]

This is getting quite frustrating! :x I did the fresh water dip a few time for each colony and yes, I did get some amphipods to shake off them but the zoas still have not opened up. I look at night with a flash light and do not see nay kind of activity on them. Any other ideas as to what may be causing this.

The other thing that was brought to my attention was that Asterina Starfish can pray on the zoas. I have loads of these guys in my tank. Have you ever heard of this?