What's Up With My Zoos?

estein02

estein02

Member
I've had 4 zoo frags in my DT for about a month and a half now all doing very well up until the last week when one of them stopped opening, this one is on LR a little lower in the tank...maybe the 2/3 from the top. I did the iodine dip before I attaced the frags to the LR so I'm not sure what is happening. Anyway, one day they looked great all open wide then the next just a few of them opened, now even less open. My water parameters are good...amm, trites and trate all 0, pH 8.2 - 8.4, temp 77 - 79 and salinity is 1.025. The lighting is a Current Nova Extreme T5. Any ideas? Thanks...
 
shrimpi

shrimpi

Active Member
did your flow change?
Mine did this about 2 months ago and I almost cried! The only problem was that they werent getting enough flow.
I think corals 'take a break' often for no reason. Keep an eye and see what happens before you do anything IMO.
They look 'healthy' they arent disentegrating or anything.
Jessica/Shrimpi
 
estein02

estein02

Member
They look like they have thinned out to me, unless it just appears that way because they are closed. Nothing changed...the PHs are in the same position they have always been in. Guess I'll wait it out. So when they die they disentegrate?
Thanks...
 
shrimpi

shrimpi

Active Member
well you know, theyll turn white and kinda start to fall apart and eventually be gone.
All corals kinda do that when they are dead/dying
Jessica
 
bronco300

bronco300

Active Member
did you search them thoroughly in case there was something already in your tank that is irritating them...zoa spides, zoa pox, zoo eating nudibranches...sundial snails..?
 
myzislow

myzislow

Member
Like bronco said check for parasites like nudis and spiders. The nudis can sometimes be very hard to see if they're babies. I had a fresh batch hatch on a colony once and I picked off like 25 baby nudis at one time that were barley visible to the eye. One more thing you may want to look into is the zoa specific disease zoa pox. Don't be alarmed but it looks like you colony may have some early stages of the disease.
I just battled a horrible case of zoa pox but luckily i caught it early enough and my zoos have made a full recovery. Look for white/yellowish bumps on the closed polyps. I found that the disease usually started at the base of the zoa and then would spread through out the the whole colony if left unattended. The affected zoas would have the obvious white bumps and then over time would slowly shrivel up and almost disintegrate.
If it is in fact zoa pox there is a very simple treatment that worked great for me. You do dips with the medication Furan-2 over a course of the 3 days and repeat if need be. I only did a three day cycle and it worked well enough that I didn't need to do 2 cycles of dips. There are more specific instructions found here: http://zoaid.com/articles004.php
I circled the affected area that I think you may want to look more closely at.
Hope this helps.
 
califishdude

califishdude

Member
My zoos did this also. I left them alone for about a week or so and no change. While i was spot feeding my other corals i dropped some on them and the next morning they blooming. I not sure if it helped or if they were done hibernating
 
estein02

estein02

Member
Thanks so much for all of the help. I looked more closely to see if I could see anything and the only thing that really stuck out was this round thing on the side of one of them. Not sure what this is. I didn't notice any sundial snails or spiders and I'm not really sure I see alot of the spots. If I were to remove this frag to dip it should I just try another iodine dip to see if that helps at all? Also, the frag is attahed to the LR with 2-part epoxy...will it be diffucult to pull of the rock with that epoxy holding it on? I don't really want to move the LR around.
Thanks again...
 
myzislow

myzislow

Member
That looks like a sack of Zoa eating nudi eggs. they look like little white curly things and are usually stuck on the zoa itself pretty well. What I do is get a clean razor blade and gently scrape them off and with my other hand I try to suck the eggs up with a pipette or turkey baster.
Now to have eggs that means you must have some nudis in your tank. Just keep an eye out really well. I seem to have the best luck finding nudis right when i wake up in the morning before the lights turn on. I look for a section of zoas that looked bothered and are closed up. More times then not there is a nudi in the area.
Your zoas though closed look very healthy
Good luck
 
myzislow

myzislow

Member
Originally Posted by estein02
Is there anyway to get rid of the nudis?
I would not recommend freshwater dipping zoanthids. An iodine dip(lugols) with saltwater will work, though I have never personally used this method. There is a specific formula you follow but I'm sorry I am not very familiar with it.
I have had success by removing them as I see them by sucking the nudi up with a pipette or a turkey baster(same with the eggs). Another method is to take the zoas and get a small bowl of your tank water and lightly splash it around in the bowl shaking it gently back and forth. This will knock off most of the nudis or any other pests that may be on the zoas.
I still have an occasional nudi every now and then but for the most part I have them under control. From now on it's a good idea to dip any new purchases or shake them off in a bowl like i mentioned above before putting any new colonies in your display. Whenever i get a new piece from my LFS there are usually some sort of pest that comes off when i shake them prior to putting them in my tank.
Here are a few shots of my zoos after they have recovered:

 
gohabsgo

gohabsgo

Member
i had same thing with mine ,one day all perfct and the next they where exactly like yours?i still dont know and it's been almost 2 weeks
 
petjunkie

petjunkie

Active Member
You can freshwater dip zoos, just make sure they all close up before hand, freshwater's really good for getting those nudi's out, add a couple drops of lugol's and do a really good search on the eggs since those have to be manually removed.
 
estein02

estein02

Member
I imagine that I should dip all of the zoo frags instead of the one that is currently affected. The othe 3 are on LR that I can easily remove from the tank, but this one is not. It is attached to a large piece of tonga with epoxy. Does anyone know if the frag can be easily removed even though the epoxy is in place?
 
S

sudc

Guest
You can definitely freshwater dip zoos.
I had a patch of about 30 on a rock with a eunicid worm in it. I took out the rock, put it in ro water and did a iodine dip at 25x recommended dose to get the worm out. The water was literally as dark as coffee from the iodine. I let the rock sit for 10 minutes before the eunicid came out. Rinsed it with more ro and back in my display.
The zoos were REALLY upset and didn't open for about 3 days but not a single one of them died from either the iodine or ro water.
 
estein02

estein02

Member
This is not my picture (I couldn't get a good one), but it is definitely a zoo eating nudi. The only difference is the one that I found was all brown.
Now I have to get those eggs off. I'm worried that when I try to scrape them off they'll float away too quickly to be sucked up. What would happen if they did fall and I couldn't find them? Would a snail or hermit eat them or would they hatch? I could only find one of these nudis so far but I imagine that there are more. Would they only be on the zoo frags or could they be anywhere?
Thanks again for all of the help.
 
estein02

estein02

Member
Woopie...my zoos opened back up! Now I want to add some more and make my tank look like myzislow's...yeah right! Thanks again for all of the help.
 
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