Help Zoanthids not opening

[Fr4nkthet4nk]

First thing to check is if you have any critters like zoa eating nudi's or sundial snails on them, you'll have to be very detailed when you look for them cause they're very hard to spot sometimes especially considering the nudi's will often times take on the color of the zoas their eating. I've found the snails will lodge themselves in between the stalks of the zoas also making them hard to see but both will cause your zoas to not open and eventually die. You may wanna dip the colonies just to be safe and as you're doing that you can inspect them more easily. I keep a very clean tank as well 0 nitrates and .01 PO4, you may want to start using something like Red seas reef energy A and B daily.

Ok thank you for your help. This is what I found after the dip. I hope I will see improvement.

 

[BoomCorals]

Ok thank you for your help. This is what I found after the dip. I hope I will see improvement.

Zoas eating nudibranch. I suggest dipping every few days for two weeks and try to look for eggs. Just to be safe.

 

[Fr4nkthet4nk]

Zoas eating nudibranch. I suggest dipping every few days for two weeks and try to look for eggs. Just to be safe.

Thank you! I will do it.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

+1 on the nudi... Wicked little things. Eggs will make it thru the dip so you'll have to do it every few days as they hatch. I'm not sure on the life cycle so I'm not sure how long it takes for eggs to hatch or how long until they can lay more eggs.

 

[Tokash23]

What kind of dip did you use?

 

[Fr4nkthet4nk]

First thing to check is if you have any critters like zoa eating nudi's or sundial snails on them, you'll have to be very detailed when you look for them cause they're very hard to spot sometimes especially considering the nudi's will often times take on the color of the zoas their eating. I've found the snails will lodge themselves in between the stalks of the zoas also making them hard to see but both will cause your zoas to not open and eventually die. You may wanna dip the colonies just to be safe and as you're doing that you can inspect them more easily. I keep a very clean tank as well 0 nitrates and .01 PO4, you may want to start using something like Red seas reef energy A and B daily.

All the other corals are doing awesome. I know zoas are easy to keep but I will have a closer

What kind of dip did you use?

Reef Dip - Seachem and a Turkey baster

 

[Fr4nkthet4nk]

I got this information from another post in Reef2Reef. I hope this will help people like me to get this out of our tank.

Eggs
The life span of the eggs seems to be about 2-3 weeks and to my knowledge, no known treatment will kill them. I would suggest performing QT or dipping zoas regularly for at least 4 weeks. The eggs will in almost every case be attached on or near a zoa colony but they will deposit eggs on the rocks near zoas so those can be considered "infected" as well.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/zoanthid-eating-nudibranchs-life-span.39570/

 

[Cary]

Bayer dip (recipe on r2r somewhere) flushing with a plastic eyedropper and then two containers of rinsing saltwarer dips before putting in the aquarium.

 

[maroun.c]

I had them years back and these are bad and reproduce quick. Best way if yuo can would be to move all your zoas to a Q tank, dip weekly and take out any nudis you see in Q tank. Would be best to clean the Q tank and restart while you're dipping.
I did freswater dips with Iodine which the zoas took great and was quite effective.

 

[Gil03]

Glad you likely found the cause of the problem, i'm sure there's more nudi's that didn't come off in the first dip and if you saw any white spots in between the stalks they're eggs like other posters have mentioned which will require future dips but this is a very manageable issue nothing to get excited over, the zoas will come back fine.

 

[Fr4nkthet4nk]

I will be doing another dip this weekend. I can report that my zoas are opening no all of them but like 50%.

 

[stephanie.m.haskill]

agree. I may be new but I've seen starfish dudes attached to the polyp and they close up and they eat em from the inside out. Usually they are algae eaters but they are known for doin this

I lost 2 sets of zoas due to these starfish, which I was told were reef safe. I found they were overtop of them and would not move until that head was literally gone. You need to get those out asap! I have taken tweezers and plucked out as many as I can and the next day I get lots more. It's a process that will probably never stop...but well worth saving the corals!

 

[Dan7575]

Hope this has been answered now and I’m not highjacking. Just reading through this thread and wondered how you would take the zoas out of the tank to do a dip, wouldn’t they have fixed themselves to the rocks?