Calling all Zoas experts: Help. Pic

[Reloadeddevil]

Lately my zoas seem to close and meltway. One thing i have noticed on all the zoas that have closed and melted away is that when the polyps close they have red ring at their closing mouth. Any idea as to what might be causing them closing and melting away. About 70% of my zoas are okay but 30% are closing or seems like about to close.

Here is the pic.

 

[KJAG]

Different types prefer different water conditions in my experience, higher/ lower nutrients, flow etc. I had a colony of Space Monsters go downhill recently while everything else looked great, so I dipped every day in Lugols for a few days and they're recovering nicely. Have you done an iodine dip?

 

[Reloadeddevil]

Thats what i am thinking of doing actually.

 

[Brettinteriors]

Have you added any new zoas/paly lately. I would be on the lookout for zoa eating nudibranches and zoa spiders.

 

[90greefman]

Move them to higher flow to keep any algae from growing on them in that state. Once that happens they are usually done. All my Zoas are different in regards to placement. I have about 50 different kinds and it's all trial and error where they like to be in relation to flow and light. Would also recommend doing the dip. I like revive personally. Good luck.

 

[DrTerro]

Your PO4 are high. I would dip them. However using a tukey blaster you can blow the stuff off of them. Need to also be put in higher flow. I have a toothbrush I use religiously and it does great. My 2 cents

 

[secretreefer]

i would say dip in coral rx, then lightly "scrub" that black/red stuff off with a soft toothbrush and a mixture of 70 tank water/30 hydrogen peroxide (don't soak the polyps, just scrub them out of water and rinse them in another bowl of clean DT water. then return to DT put in medium flow and medium light.

 

[pcfish]

Dip in furan 2 has worked for me in the past

 

[Reloadeddevil]

Thanks a lot guys, i really appreciate all the help. Also my other LPS are doing just fine as u can see in the pics. I am just heading out to get Lugols solution.

 

[Reloadeddevil]

Just figured out what the problem might be. I dipped four plugs in Lugols solution and guess what drops out of the frag plugs? 10-12 copepods. No wonder all of those zoas's outer skirt was always closed inward. I did a little search and found out that copepods do irritate zoas enough to close up and meltdown. Also another interesting observation that I made that my target mandarin was not seen in 2-3 weeks. Put 2 and 2 together you get heavily concentrated copepods population in the absence of damage control element thus the Mandarin. So will head out tomorrow to get green mandarin. Hopefully this will be the last of zoas closing and melting.

 

[A. grandis]

Some amphipods eat zoas, some doesn't.
I've never heard of copepods eating zoas.

I think your case is bacterial infection and you did very good dipping them in Lugol's!
Keep watching them and, if needed, dip them again after a day or two.
I normally cut and remove the affected polyps with bacterial infection because they take so long to come back to normal and because it takes away the bacteria from the tank with the affected polyps.

Good luck,

Grandis.